Imagine this scenario: you are the CEO of a start-up who must tell staff that you have run out of funds and can no longer pay their salaries. How many would stay to work twice as hard for half the pay? Any leader who has successfully navigated through a difficult situation knows that leading change requires vulnerability.
That is the challenge that faced serial entrepreneur Archana Patchirajan. Her staff did stay and eventually their company sold for $14 million. Why did they stay? It was a great place to work with strong relationships and a foundation of trust. The vulnerability Patchirajan showed when she shared the company’s dilemma with her team led to a happy outcome.
Leading Change
If you don’t think that most of your staff would react the same way, you might want to change your approach to leadership. Get out of your comfort zone and do what does not come easily. Stretch and be vulnerable, then ask for help and create a new future.
Being vulnerable is not a sign of weakness, because every leader who wants to effect change has to show courage, strength and vulnerability. It is a matter of being uncomfortable, doing things differently, so leaders who are not willing to stretch and create a new culture will likely generate the same results or even go backwards.
Vulnerability is a Choice
If you are leading a transformational change, focus on how to guide and support the team and their results rather than protecting your own self-image:
- Take ownership and face the truth. Communicate openly about what is not working and the influence you had on the less than satisfactory results.
- Get to know individuals and what motivates them, then treat them as they would like to be treated, with care and respect.
- Support and guide them to be accountable for the results they have committed to achieve.
Choose to focus on tracking progress and accept exactly what stage the results are at. This may require time dedicated to planning and focusing on high pay-off activities and sometimes saying no to other projects which may mean that not everything can be done and choices have to be made.
Change requires that each person on a team focus on how they affect the results and it starts with the leader. When the leader has demonstrated vulnerability, shared, and reached out for help then change will be easier. Greater success should follow.
Check out Results-Centred Leadership, a program that focuses on critical leadership skills for leading change.
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