565 | Embracing Vulnerability: Confronting Your Weaknesses for Personal Growth

Chris LoCurto 0:00
On today's episode, discover how embracing vulnerability as a leader can cultivate a more resilient and connected team that is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day, wherever you are. Today we're diving into the power of vulnerability and leadership, we're going to be exploring how sharing our weaknesses can lead to greater personal and professional growth. And I know I've lost probably about 75% Right there, don't go don't leave, don't go anywhere. Oh, Chris, what do you want? You want me to get all emotional and share my feelings and all that kind of stuff? No, that is not what we're talking about today. So don't already, you know, put in your mind what you think today's episode is going to be about? I'm not going to talk to you about how you have to go and you know, light incense and sing Kumbaya. I don't know, if you do those two things together, whatever, and be all mushy. That's not what I'm talking about. Today, we're talking about vulnerability from a different aspect. And you've probably learned about it or been taught about it.

So don't worry, everything's gonna be fine. You're going to be fine. It's going to be okay, so let's let's dive in. The thing I want to talk about is, what does it mean, to have vulnerability? What is it? How is it that vulnerability can be a strength when it comes to leadership? And I think this is something that so many people don't understand. They think vulnerability is weakness. I've been teaching leaders and owners for so stinking long. And you know, even just team members, it doesn't matter who it is. Quite often, there are certain beliefs when it comes to emotions, right or vulnerability. The biggest one is that vulnerability is weakness. Right? Don't show your vulnerable because then they're going to pick you apart, they're going to know how to attack you. They're not going to know how to use that against you. It's going to give them more power. There's all kinds of thoughts that go through people's heads. You know, I can't tell you how many women CEOs, presidents entrepreneurs, that have said, Oh, no, there, there's no way crying is an absolute? No, no, because it is it just is pure weakness. You know, and the funny thing is, is that we have this great event called strat plan, where one of our buddies, Brent van Haren, who's been through it multiple times, says if nobody cries at strapline, it wasn't good enough, you have to go back there, which is a joke. However, there are times that business is so emotional, that business is so tough and so difficult, that it brings upon this emotion of Matt just hurt, pain loss, all kinds of things that somebody can experience when going through change or growth or, or seeing the things that are holding them back. So the funny thing is, there's this concept that crying is weakness, according to who I'm not, I'm not asking you to go cry, I'm not going to tell you to go crying for your team. That's not what I'm saying at all. But we have to take a look at this and know, where did that come from? Right from people who obviously can't be in touch with their emotions. You know, if you've been to a Next Level Leadership Live Event, then you have probably seen me, you know, fighting to hold back tears at every single event because something emotional happens, something big always happens at the events that that emotionally impacted me, you know, there's a discussion or an experience or a story from stage or something that, that eventually, I get choked up about. Right.

So what's wrong with that? Well, what's wrong with that is is that people's perception is is that weakness? Now, I don't consider it to be weakness, I consider a weakness if if we're going to talk about the area of something like crying, then I think it's weakness when you cry at the drop of a hat. You know, if, if your coffee order didn't go right today, and you're crying about it? Well, that that to me is a struggle, right? That should not be well, it depends on how much you love coffee. You could be emotionally moving as well. But I think you kind of understand what I'm talking about. That's not what we're hitting today. What we're hitting today, is this concept of being vulnerable with failures, being vulnerable with not knowing not having the answers, being vulnerable with, you know, sharing aspects of something that maybe you wouldn't normally in the past. We're not talking about getting all mushy, we're not talking about sharing all your feelings and you know, telling everybody everything about your your past history. We're talking about utilizing vulnerability as a strength. How could it possibly be a strength? Well, there's many, many different ways, and we'll talk about this as we go along. But if you just understand something super important that we talked about, again, reference trapline, one of the things we talked about with this, you know, this leadership team at any event that's sitting around the table is, is this aspect of trust? Do you trust the people, the leaders that you work with the leaders around this table? Always, always? Well, I should say probably 95% of the time plus, people will say, Oh, absolutely. Oh, I totally trust the people around this. Oh, absolutely. I've worked with these guys for years. Oh, absolutely. And then as we dig into something, it's kind of like a little setup here. We dig into this aspect of vulnerability, you know, do you bring your biggest mistakes to the table? Well, no, no. Okay. Do you share that you don't know the answers to this thing that you're working on? Well, no, I don't know. Have you shared with the team, your biggest screw ups in the last year inside the business? No, I know, I haven't done that. Why not? Well, and there's always this stuck spot that people get it. And that stuck spot? Is that trying to put words to why I don't think I could be that vulnerable with them. I don't trust that I could be that vulnerable? How would they treat me? You know what they think I'm an idiot? Would they treat me like, you know, I don't belong there? Am I going to, is that vulnerability going to reveal that I'm a, you know, a fake, that I'm a fraud, that I don't exactly know what I'm doing as a leader. There's a whole bunch of thoughts that go through person's mind. Right? And I'm assuming, as you're listening to this episode, you've experienced that yourself. You've probably had some of those thoughts, right? The key is why do I not get that vulnerable with other leaders? why don't why not get that vulnerable with team members? Fear, nothing, but fear. Fear that they're going to judge the daylights out of me, fear that they're gonna think I'm not smart enough, not good enough, not experienced enough, that I don't have all the answers. And I'm supposed to all have this fear walls up inside of us and keeps us from being vulnerable. Now, what we share as well is the biggest aspect of that is a lack of trust. I just talked about how leaders always trust each other. Except for this area of vulnerability.

There's an old military saying, I can trust you with my life. But can I trust you with my money and my wife? Now, it's a silly saying, but it has a great valid point to it. The more important things than my life are in bad priorities, money in my wife. I mean, worst case scenario, flip that around, and money shouldn't be that big of a priority over your life, right? My wife should be my biggest priority in there, right? I can trust you that we're going to go out into the battlefield and you've got my back, you're going to take care of me and I'm going to take care of you. I have no problem with that. But boy, I sure wouldn't put you too close to my wife. Right? This is the concept. Why? Because that's the place I'm really vulnerable. You know, my life out there on the battlefield is one thing, but man, my home life, that's where I'm really vulnerable, right. And I can't trust you with that, while I use this, that old military saying, to help leaders to see that they don't truly trust the people around the table like they thought they did. That they do think that they really trust everybody around the table until we get to the more vulnerable aspects of their leadership. So why do we not trust? So like I said before, because I don't know what the people around the table are going to do with that vulnerability? Are they going to hurt me with it? Are they going to hold it against me? Are they going to act as though I'm not smart enough? Good enough, yada, yada, yada, all those things, right? The crazy thing? This is the the misconception here is that we tell ourselves all these potential lies. I mean, it could be truth, you might find somebody who's a total jerk. You might find somebody who does want to use that against you might find somebody who's just incredibly selfish and self centered and narcissistic and is looking forward to holding something against you. If that person is on the leadership team. We probably need to have a big discussion with whoever is the head leader there. Right? The owner, the president, the CEO, somebody needs to recognize that that's not what you need on your leadership team. Right? If you're gonna operate a leadership team, well, you know, maybe you know, there's a ton of People out there where people are numbers, they're not the ones listening to the show. Right. So the the person who is perfectly fine with having, you know, a narcissist who's looking to hurt other leaders on their leadership team, that person is not listening to the show, right? The people listening to the show actually care they actually want

you know, they're their teams to operate well and care about people and, and love on folks and there's more to their business than just making money. So there's this misconception that is, I can't be vulnerable, because all the things that we just filled in, what I need you to understand, or what you need you to understand is that vulnerability is only going to be seen as weakness by those who are weak. Vulnerability is only going to get you in trouble with folks who are selfish, self centered, and I should use the term trouble loosely. Because really, you have the opportunity for incredibly healthy boundaries. But the person who wants to use that against you as the person who's going to reveal themselves very quickly to be a real piece of work. A real jerk, real selfish, self centered person who apparently doesn't care much about the people around them. So we have to understand that there is a strength to vulnerability, if we are willing to learn about if we are willing to trust. Now, as I say this, I want you to realize that this is a personal journey. This isn't something that is just you know, all of a sudden, tomorrow, you're incredibly vulnerable and nothing matters, right? You have to ask yourself the question, do I actually trust the people around the table? Or the person I'm speaking with the team member I'm speaking with? Do I trust these people with my vulnerability? Can I can I be in a place where I can, you know, believe that they're not going to take advantage of the situation? I would ask that question first. Right now, for me, somebody like me, I've been doing this for a very, very long time. There are many places that I can be vulnerable, and people trying to take advantage of it all the time. I don't care. You know, for the first 2030 years of my life, I absolutely cared about it. I don't care at this point. Right? My vulnerability, I'm not hiding vulnerability, because I'm worried about some jerk who's going to try and use that against me or try to, you know, if it's going to reveal that I don't have all the answers. I'm not worried about that right now. Right? What do I care about helping people? And so as I look at my vulnerability, I do ask the question, Can I trust the people around the table with this? And also ask the question, is this amount of vulnerability something that I have to worry about? Right? Do I even have to care? What if somebody just responds as though I'm a total idiot? So what? Why do I care? What's my goal? My goal is to help people. And so maybe that's a person I start putting some healthy boundaries in, in place with and start to separate myself from that person. Right? That's something that you can do. But what about all the other folks that aren't going to do that? Here's where we start to reach that, that strength, that superpower of vulnerability. Those who aren't the person that we're afraid of. And keep in mind, that is probably an incredibly low percentage, as we talked about this, this person that we've made up in our minds and how these people are going to respond, that's probably an incredibly small percentage of people. Like there might be one in this group that you're thinking of right? For the rest of the folks that aren't going to act like that. When they see my vulnerability, and when they see that I am willing to show that I don't have the answers. I don't know the answers.

Something you will hear me say a lot, when I'm not sure of myself is Hey, guys. I think this is the answer. I'm not sure. Check me on this. This may be it. It may not be. I'm not 100% on this. I don't have a problem saying I actually don't have the answer on this. You know, our, our team, who coach and guide and direct owners, leaders, team members, key leaders, they don't have a problem going. I don't actually have that answer. Let me try and get that for you. Let me let me find out what that answer is. Here's my best guess. But understand that, you know, I'm not I'm not 100% on this. We don't have that problem. Why? Because our job isn't to be 100% Right? With every answer under the sun. Our job is to help you get to the best answers we possibly can get to the best perspective. Our job is to have answers in the areas that we're experts in. But I Every now and then somebody will ask a question about something I'm like, I don't even know that that that's how did you get to that question? Right? Because it has nothing to do with the context what we're talking about. It's just a wild, you know, curveball. So don't try and act as though I have the answer. You Yeah. But then I have to say that I don't know the answer. And as an expert on things, doesn't that sound terrible? No. It would sound terrible if it was about the stuff I'm an expert in. But it doesn't sound terrible, when it's stuff that I'm not. Right. And I know for a fact that people appreciate when you don't know the answer, and you're able to admit it. People appreciate that vulnerability. People would rather not get a bad answer, spoken by somebody as though it's authority they'd rather get an answer of I'm not really sure. But let me see if I can't find out, then well, here's the answer. And it's wrong.

So when I'm vulnerable? And that's just on giving answers, right? It could be vulnerable on shared experiences, or personal experiences, hey, when I did this thing over here, you know, you're working on this project. And, you know, man, I screwed this up once, you know, a few years back, because I wasn't paying attention to this, this and this. And so I want to make sure that you're looking at that, because here's how it affected me. And here's how it affected the team and being able to be vulnerable with mistakes, being able to be vulnerable with things that I've screwed up being and the truth is, the funny thing is with our business, you know, people are glad to hear our mistakes. They're like, Oh, gosh, I'm glad to hear you screwed up. And that's like, that is literally what our business is about. Our business consists of pulling together information from when we've made mistakes and fixing those things, and helping other people, right. So literally, our business is because I've screwed up a whole ton of stuff. And I've learned how to fix it. And then I've learned how to teach others how not to make the same mistakes. Right, so it's based on screw ups. So if I can't be vulnerable with, Hey, I've screwed this thing up, I've messed this thing up, man, then I've got a real problem. But here's what happens to the person who hears that vulnerability. It creates connection. It creates growth, it fosters growth between me and that person, if it's a team, it fosters growth between me and that team. Because now the team who's most likely in so let me let me kind of put this out there as well. So many leaders are spending too much of their time worried that their team members see through them. Leader, your team already knows your faults. Let me let me just be very clear with that. Let me just though, you know, let you off the hook on this one. Let me relieve some stress, they already know. They know where you screw up. They know where you suck. They know where your pride is, your ego is they know where your lack of knowledge is, your team pays attention to you. So don't act like they don't and don't try to hide that. Instead, remember, your job is to lead people to success, not the other way around. Right?

So hiding that junk just doesn't matter. When I can reveal to my team, I've screwed up. I've messed up, I'm, you know, I don't understand this thing over here. I don't know this, I don't have the answer to this over here. Then what happens is it creates a great opportunity for growth with me and that team. When somebody is looking at me going, I don't want to look stupid to Chris, I don't want to fail in front of Chris, I don't want to disappoint Chris, then when I can be vulnerable and show them my own disappointments. It allows them to be vulnerable themselves. It allows them to drop that guard some it's not fully, but it allows them to begin dropping their guard. And realizing that having that that guard up the whole time is actually just going to separate them from me. So as I'm vulnerable, it becomes kind of like this. I use the word superpower. I probably shouldn't say superpower, but it's up. It's very powerful. As I take the personal journey of being vulnerable, it becomes this catalyst with my team, with my leadership team, with my team members, with clients, whoever it is, come through Next-Level Life. You will hear us be vulnerable. Counter strapline, you will hear me be vulnerable getting our lead our coaching programs, you will hear vulnerability, right? It creates this ability for the other person to trust us more to see that we are you know we have no problem pointing out our own flaws. And that allows them to speak into it. So as we begin this personal journey, which is your personal journey will be their personal journey as well towards vulnerability. The next thing we begin to see is resilience.

So, I shared this a while back on, you know, what does it mean to be resilient. And resiliency is is just going to quickly just give kind of an example of resiliency is like taking those knocks every day, you know, you take a bunch of knocks, but instead of it knocking you all the way back, the resiliency allows you to bounce back, it may or may not be for a loop, but being resilient, and you become resilient, having experienced a bunch of different knocks, right? It allows you to snap back, like a rubber band, it allows you to come back to that center. And even if it keeps knocking you back further than the fulcrum of center is still kind of like not in the same spot anymore. You can become resilient, where that fulcrum moves in a direction of negativity, and you're still staying strong, right? Because you're able to bounce back, you're able to overcome. This is what we want from our teams. This is what we want, when it comes to a team that's dealing with difficult projects, difficult customers, difficult tasks, bigger projects, bigger, you know, scaling things. We want a team that's able to take hits, and bounce back, we want a team that's able to be resilient. Guess what, when you are not able to be vulnerable, what happens you spend a whole lot of time and you know, you've done this, guess what your team is doing this as well, your family is doing this, you spend a whole lot of time trying to protect yourself. This is the one that just drives me absolutely batty. People will spend hours a day trying to protect themselves from having failures from screwing things up. They will do whatever they can to make sure that they don't disappoint, let somebody down, somebody's gonna see something.

So, leaders, is this important? Let's just look at it financially. How much money are you spending on people trying to not screw up and show it? Right? We're okay with failure as long as it's not fatal failure. And it's not as long as it's not the same repeated failures, right? We're okay with failure. But here's what I want you to recognize. If you have folks that aren't able to be vulnerable enough with their screw ups, that I promise you, they're spending way too much time protecting themselves from screwing up or protecting themselves from anybody finding out that they did. Think about that for a second, let that sink in. How much money time lost opportunity is going into your team not being able to be vulnerable. So as we walk down this personal journey of vulnerability, as we become vulnerable as our team becomes vulnerable, we start to create a better connection a better, better growth, we start fostering this growth process that allows people to be able to make mistakes and bounce back, screw things up and bounce back and learn that the failure is okay. As long as we do something about it right. As we walk down this path, it starts to create resiliency. So in other words, you're not going to rip my head off because I screwed this thing up over here. Nope. Let's fix it. Let's do something positive about it. Oh, okay. Well, let's do it. I can handle that. Yes, you can. Now, what did you learn? What are you going to do about it? You've heard me say a bajillion times our processes. You know, when when there's a failure? What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? How do we fix it? How do we make sure it never happens? Again, nowhere in there is oh, by the way, rip, the team members head off. It doesn't exist. When you have that type of process. The person realizes they can be vulnerable. They realize they can keep sticking their neck out. It's not going to get chopped off. They can take risks. Leaders, you want your team taking risk. Right. That's how we get things done.

So yeah, this is a very powerful thing. As I begin the journey of being personally vulnerable, then my team members see it. They accept it, they recognize that it's okay. They recognize that they can be vulnerable themselves, that instead of spending half the day trying to protect themselves and not screw up. I've got them doing actual real good work. I have Getting Things Done. So, first thing is we have to understand that vulnerability is okay. Hey, folks, a couple of years ago, I was visiting with a client. And the CEO said to me, Chris, we're not going to hit our goal. I asked him what he meant. And he said, We're gonna miss our three year revenue goal coming out of strap plan by a few months, I didn't realize it at first, that he was having a little fun with me by saying they were about to triple their company in less than three years. How freaking awesome is that? Folks, these are the kinds of results that businesses get by coming through our four day strat plan event. On average, we find $2.1 million worth of revenue in the next 12 months that the company was not planning on. And this event is for all sized businesses. If you're small, medium, or large, it works for every single business, because it's not industry specific. It's about gaining all the information about all the things inside of your business that are holding you back from success, and then giving you a plan and a process on how to walk that out and be successful in your business. By discovering the things that are holding you back, it helps you get to all of those goals that you've been planning on for a long time.

So if you're ready to get the perspective, you need to solve what's holding you and your business back. So you can grow faster than you need strap plan to learn more, go to Chris LoCurto.com/StrapPlan. That's Chris LoCurto.com/StrapPlan. Second thing is what does it look like when we are being vulnerable as leaders inside of our team. So we've already talked about how this begins to create an enable in foster growth, deeper connections, trust within a leader in a team member trust with leader and leaders trust with the leader in a team. But here's an amazing thing that we need to start realizing. And that is that it begins to build trust between team members. So not only does a team member not want to let you as a leader down, but the last thing they want to do is look stupid in front of the rest of the team. They don't want to let anybody down. They don't want to look like they don't know what they're doing. They don't want to note look like you know that they're not smart enough, not good enough. So a great thing begins to happen between team members themselves, the more somebody feels like they can be vulnerable, and they see that it's okay, and they're they're not going to get their head cut off, they start to take those same risks with other team members. And if we've got a good team of people who are working to, you know, become better and not tear each other down or tear each other apart. Trust begins to be built between team members.

So again, we talked about this from the leadership aspect. Now drop it down inside of your team, how much can you get done with people who aren't trying to protect themselves from other team members on a daily basis? Right, not just leadership. But they don't you know, how many times do we know people won't work with other team members, because that person is just a real jerk. I don't like working with that person. They never listened to my ideas, they are difficult, they always want to take control of everything. yatta yatta yatta fill in the blank. What happens when we start realizing that a lot of the issues inside of a team is because they don't trust each other. Because they don't understand each other. When we can push this vulnerability by example, we'll talk about that, then what happens is as people start to realize that their walls can come down, they can bring their walls down in front of other team members, you know, and again, it may take some time and they may have to adjust. They may realize that some people they can't do that with and others they can, you know, it's going to be a process. But we start building trust between team members, which absolutely improves communication. What's the number one issue every business is struggling with? Number one, lack of high levels of quality communication. When my walls come down, and I can be more vulnerable with you, we can get more stuff done. I can be more honest with you. We can handle failure together

better if we screw this up. It's not you know, the blame game. It's not throwing somebody under the bus. Instead it's working together to go you know what, let's take responsibility. We screwed this thing up. How are we going to fix it? How do we normally handle these things? You know what happened? Why don't you know all that stuff? What Let's do it. Let's solve this. Instead of, well, I hope nobody figures this one down this way. And, you know, if it does come my direction, I'm gonna throw Frank under the bus, I'm gonna throw Jeanine under the bus. You know, instead it becomes this, this honesty between team members, this is a difficult thing to create on its own. This is a difficult thing to experience if you're not leading the process, right? So it's got to start with you, if we will start with the leadership. And again, whoever's listening to the show, you may be a team member going, it's going to start with me, that's fantastic. The thing is, is that we have to start by recognizing this is not a weakness, this is a strength. It's okay. And if I will begin with it, and somebody struggles with it, then ask myself the question, Does that mean I need to shut everything down? Do I need to shut my, my vulnerability down? Or do I recognize that this person, it may take some time before they get there, it may take some time before they feel like they can be as vulnerable as well. So what are some practical steps for cultivating team vulnerability?

First, it has to start with self awareness. You've heard us say that a bajillion times, you've got to start acknowledging your strengths, as well as your areas for improvement. This is a first step towards leveraging vulnerability for for personal and professional growth, right. So you got to start with you. And then here's my suggestion, then work with your leadership team, if you're a leader who has leaders, fantastic if your business owner who has leaders, fantastic, help each leader, do this together, grow together, have conversations about where we're struggling. Now, don't let this be a, hey, let's tear people down in conversation, that that's one of the worst things you could possibly do. But leader, be vulnerable, discuss it with your leaders. Here's an area that I may be sucking in here's an area that I may not be doing something well in whatever it is I you know, start with you speak about the self awareness. Here's something that I've become aware about. I literally just today, with my leadership team meeting, how we're there's some things that we're getting some roadblocks on and I said to the to the leaders, I'm like, Hey, listen, if you're seeing something in me that I'm doing or not doing, I need you guys to call me out on it. So I'm not the one holding this thing up. No problem in doing so. No problem in making that happen. Why? Because I trust these folks, I definitely trust that they will take a bullet for me. I can trust them with my lives and my money and my wife. I don't have a problem with any of those three, right?

So it starts with self awareness, share that self awareness with your leaders, and encourage them to become self aware as well. Where are they struggling with vulnerability? Where do they not trust? Where do they not bring things to the table? It's super easy to point out when somebody has screwed something up. And you found out about it. And they didn't bring it to the leadership team to discuss it to get better answers or better insight and all that kind of stuff. You know, because they felt like well, they couldn't they had to handle this on their own. You can call that stuff out and go, Hey, it's okay to come here and tell us here that you screwed this up. There's nothing wrong with that. Don't hold back on that, you know, share that information, bring it to the group. Let's all discuss this together, yada, yada, yada. Hopefully all that makes sense. Encourage your leaders, then encourage your leaders to be vulnerable with their team members. And overtime begin to share that same concept. help the team to become self aware of where they are strong and where they're being vulnerable and where they're not being vulnerable, so that you can help them with their professional and their personal growth. Another thing you need to do, you've got to be promoting open communication. You've got to create a culture where team members feel safe about sharing thoughts about sharing ideas about sharing concerns. You've got to be fostering an environment of openness and trust. Listen to me, way too many times. And not every team ever is coming with genius ideas I completely understand. I understand you've got some folks out there that are thrown out 37 ideas and about one minute and most of them suck. I get it. I understand. That's probably the first thing that comes to mind when I'm talking about this. This open communication right this culture of of, you know, team members feeling safe when they're sharing their thoughts and ideas. It's got to be okay to throw out bad ideas. It's got to be okay for somebody to share, and not be told that stupid, or that'll never work or Yeah, no, that's not what I'm talking about. You've got to treat people with dignity when they are bringing their thoughts, their ideas, their concerns to the table, it doesn't mean that they've got a great idea. But here's something I have discovered. When people are afraid to share their ideas, many times, listen to me. Many times, they don't share the idea correctly. Let me say that again.

Often, when people want to share an idea, they're so concerned about judgment, that when they share their idea, it sounds stupid. But when you dig in and ask some questions, and some perspective gathering questions, find out what they mean, find out what they're looking at, then there's times you will find that they didn't share everything well. And as you continue to ask questions and dig in, you find something good, you find a really decent idea. So when somebody feels like they can't share, then it's possible, it's shutting down the actual concept of what they're trying to share. So may not sound very good. So if you as a leader can dig in, and a Listen, you're gonna know the really silly stuff up front, the stuff that just isn't usable. treat them with dignity, thank you for sharing that, that's let's put that idea down on paper, let's do something. treat them with dignity, right. Because if you've got the one person who throws out the 37 ideas, and you rip their head off, or you treat them like crap than the one person who has one good idea definitely doesn't want to take the risk of sharing their one good idea. Because they're afraid of how they're going to be treated.

So treat people with dignity, eventually, you're going to get the good thoughts, the good ideas, right. So foster that environment of openness. So that you can get to trust, the more trust that you have, the more vulnerability you'll get, you'll see some people taking some risks that wouldn't normally do so and you might get some better ideas. Next thing you need to do, you got to build a supportive network, you've got to surround yourself with, with mentors, with peers with even team members who value vulnerability as a strength. People who are willing to provide perspective people that are encouraging you during challenging times, right? You're looking for the kind of folks again, it's fantastic. If you can get mentors, it's great. If you could get peers in this area, it's, it's more vulnerable to have a team member do this. But once you get there, you don't struggle with it. Right. Like I say, literally today, to my leaders, guys, tell me if I'm doing something that I shouldn't be, or if I'm not, you know, there's something I shouldn't be doing, you know, kick me in the butt, I don't want to be any, you know, I don't want to be the reason this thing is getting held up. Right? When you trust people, and you recognize that they have your best interest at heart, and they're not going to use it against you to tell you you're stupid or not good enough for you know, whatever, then all of a sudden, it becomes much easier to trust them with your vulnerability. So surround yourself with those people, family members, if you've got solid family members that aren't looking to take you down a notch, great. Those are the kind of people to put in place. Folks, I have people I love dearly business owners, friends, clients, family members, that I would never put in that peer circle. Right?

I shoot, I still have people for decades that always are trying to take me down a notch because they think they're gonna feel more powerful when they do have at it. That's not my focus, my focus is to lift you up not to hold me up. Right? Those are the people you don't want in your inner circle. Those are the kind of folks that you're going to put around you. Right. instead find those folks that are encouraging, find those folks that are supportive, that they're able to be vulnerable themselves, put those people around you. Next thing you need to do is you need to encourage team vulnerability. Here's where as I said earlier, this is where you must lead by example. This is where you need to even consider creating opportunities for team members to share their vulnerabilities right. This is that aspect of fostering this culture of vulnerability of empathy, which leads to collaboration. You've got to find the right opportunity for you to share and then try and create opportunities for team members to share. Right, the more they see Your vulnerability. And I'm not saying you need to go out there every single day and tell the whole team about a failure that you've had recently speak to the areas that they're struggling in, speak to the areas of their work, help them to hear your failures, and I promise you, it will create that culture where they feel like it's okay to do the same. Right? They feel it's okay to be vulnerable as well. And if they find out that it's not, and they see leadership, they can trust leadership, then I promise you, if somebody's being a jerk on the team, it's gonna come your way you're gonna hear about it.

Next thing is, I can't say it enough embrace failure as a learning opportunity, right? Failure is the greatest teacher for the person who's willing to learn, right? Shift the narrative around your business when it comes to failure. Help them to understand celebrate failures, right? I'm not talking about, hey, you really screwed this up, we're gonna celebrate, but instead celebrate when people are growing and learning from their failures. Help them to see that failure is okay. Help them to see man. There's nothing like when somebody pulls off, uh, you know, they fail at something and they turn this thing around, and they do a great job with it. There's nothing like you sharing, hey, here's what happened. And here's how they got to winning with that. Here's how they got to success with that. But let's focus on the failure guys. It was okay that Tony over here failed. He was okay, that surely screwed this thing up. Because she didn't stop there. She dug in her heels, discovered what went wrong, discovered how to fix it, busted her butt and look at where we are. When you can share that, then what you're doing is you're helping people to recognize failures, okay? If I bust my butt to fix it. I don't just sit there in a corner crying. I don't sit there, you know, feeling sorry for myself. I figure out what went wrong. And how do I fix it? What do I do about it? Yes, the pain from the failure sucks. But what do I do about it? Right? So when you can do that, and you can celebrate failures, then what?

Again, failures that end up in in success, right? That it helps team members to know that they can take risks, I want my team taking risks. Lastly, you need to celebrate small wins period, you need to celebrate by recognizing achievements. It doesn't matter how small it is. You need to reinforce a a positive supportive type of team culture. Right? Even if there's no failure attached to it. People need to know that small wins are appreciated, desired that they are great that this is something that we want to experience we want everybody to to to have small wins now. What I'm not saying is don't go celebrating something that somebody should be doing it already anyways. Right? I'm I am one of these people. It is super easy for me to see that I over compliment. People like crazy. And I over compliment my daughter who's five. There's things one of my daughter's our youngest son, there's things that you need to recognize that people should just know to do. We don't need to celebrate that you accomplished the same thing. When my daughter comes out and she's like, Daddy, I brushed my hair. Uh huh. Right. We're before it's like, Great job, baby. I'm so proud of you. No, no, no, no, no, no, you you are old enough to brush your hair, you're old enough to make this happen, right? Same thing with team members. I want you to celebrate small wins. But if somebody accomplished something that they should be doing anyways, that's we need to probably hold back on that celebration, right? Instead, let's focus on the things that wow, this is a new win. This is something beyond what you're you were already expecting from you celebrate those things so that it continues to drive a culture that says, even if it's small, we want to celebrate, we want to win, we want to tell you that we appreciate you. So in conclusion, here's what I want you to do. I want you to embrace this concept of vulnerability as a foundational element of authentic leadership. Yes, authentic leadership. I want you to use this vulnerability to foster stronger team dynamics. And what you're going to discover is it's going to drive a whole lot of business growth, professional growth in your team, personal growth as well. It will grow your leaders it will grow the unity to grow your culture. So vulnerability real true vulnerability, not just sitting around in a circle, singing Kumbaya or telling all of your, you know, the sad, bad things that have happened in your past, help people by you being vulnerable and leading them to being able to be vulnerable as well kick that trust up, kick that communication up, kick that business success. Well, folks, that's all the time we have for today. Hopefully this has helped. You want you to take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next level.