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personal matters into traditionally
impersonal business settings. The lines
between personal and professional
lives will become even more blurred
with opportunities for leaders to really
understand and care for the people
with whom they work. What’s the payoff?
It includes teams who care personally,
who are invested deeply in succeeding
in a common goal, and who demonstrate
loyalty to leadership. Will it be easy?
Almost nothing worth doing is ever easy.
empathy to actively build trust with
your teams: being vulnerable and being
honest.
Building trust through
vulnerability
The trust triangle
So what is trust and how is it understood?
Frances Frei, Professor of Technology
and Operations Management at the
Harvard Business School, breaks down
trust into three component parts –
logic, authenticity and empathy.
First, if there’s an issue with logic that’s
causing a breakdown of trust, it could
be for one of two reasons: the quality
of the logic or one’s ability to effectively
communicate that logic. Secondly,
most people can sniff out inauthentic
behaviours very quickly, and so not
bringing your whole self to work or
being afraid to show vulnerability leads
to an erosion of trust. Finally, empathy
(or the ability to believe that someone
Frances Frei
is not self-interested) is the final piece
of the trust puzzle. Frei believes that
this is the most common reason for the
breakdown of trust – as most people
believe that others, including their
leaders, are self-interested. Simply,
if any of the three areas of trust are
shaken, trust breaks. And without
trust, everything becomes much more
difficult. In examining what a great
leader will look like in the next decade,
there are two overarching strategies
I examine below that you can use to be
more authentic and show greater
LOGIC
AUTHENTICITY
EMPATHY
16 | November 2019 | GRAPHIC ARTS MAGAZINE
Ox ford def ines v ulnerabilit y as
“exposed to the possibility of being
attacked or harmed, either physically
or emotionally.” Synonyms include in
danger, in jeopardy and unsafe. No
wonder we avoid showing vulnerability!
A s m e n t i o n e d p rev i o u s l y, B re n é
Brown is an expert in the intersection
of vulnerability and leadership in our
modern workplace. She’s all about
embracing emotions and feelings that
are seldomly part of the conversation
in the modern history of leadership.
She argues that trying to remove,
eliminate or ef f iciently take the
‘humanness’ out of business is not
only is a waste of time and energy, but
a missed opportunity to create a work-
place culture for your employees and
customers that celebrates all that the
human heart has to offer.
Brown has found that while some may
think that talking about difficult feelings
is 'too kumbaya' or 'too touchy feely',
these conversations take a lot of courage.
Another excuse for ignoring human-
centered conversations at work are
leaders who don’t believe there’s time
for them and that they shouldn’t be
made a priority. She recommends that
leaders calculate the cost of distrust
and disconnection in terms of produc-
tivity, performance and engagement
when difficult conversations are buried
or ignored. (Spoiler: the number is
potentially huge.) And this brings us to
an impor tant f inding in Brown’s
research. She’s found that all leaders
come to a critical decision point for their
teams: either invest a reasonable
amount of time attending to fears and
feelings, or squander an unreasonable
amount of time trying to manage
ineffective and unproductive behaviour.
Brown reminds us that the process of
having potentially uncomfortable,
human-centered conversations is going
to be difficult, even awkward at first. But
that’s okay. She adds: “If you’re not in
the arena getting your ass kicked on
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