There is a peculiar piece of advice floating around these days that says personal growth requires us to “be vulnerable.” Like many pieces of advice, it contains considerable truth—and just enough ambiguity to get us into trouble.
Vulnerability does not mean wandering through life emotionally naked, announcing every insecurity to anyone unfortunate enough to be standing nearby. Your coworkers probably don’t need a detailed inventory of your childhood wounds before the Monday morning staff meeting.
Real vulnerability is something much more useful.
Early in my career, I had the privilege of working for Stephen R. Covey, my first boss out of college. He once taught me something I have never forgotten: “You can afford to be vulnerable on the outside if you are invulnerable on the inside.”
That sounds like a contradiction. It isn’t.
Being invulnerable on the inside means having a reasonably secure sense of who you are. Your worth isn’t determined by whether everyone agrees with you, admires you, applauds you, or gives your latest idea a standing ovation.
And because your identity isn’t hanging by that thread, you can afford to be vulnerable on the outside.
You can say:
Or perhaps the most terrifying sentence ever uttered by an adult human being:
Try it sometime. Preferably while sitting down.
The paradox is that admitting weakness often requires considerably more strength than hiding it.
So how do we practice productive vulnerability?
First, admit mistakes quickly. When you’re wrong, resist the temptation to assemble a legal defense worthy of the Supreme Court. Say what happened, take responsibility, fix what you can, and learn from it.
Second, ask for feedback before you’re desperate for it. Ask someone you respect, “What’s one thing I could do better?” Then perform the nearly supernatural feat of listening without explaining why they’re mistaken.
Third, attempt things you might not be good at. Nothing reveals our attachment to ego quite like becoming a beginner again. Learn an instrument. Take a class. Give a speech. Try something where competence isn’t guaranteed.
Fourth, separate performance from identity. You can give a lousy presentation without being a lousy person. You can fail at a business venture without being a failure. You can make an embarrassing mistake without changing your fundamental worth.
That’s the “invulnerable inside” Covey was talking about.
Finally, be selective about vulnerability. Vulnerability without judgment isn’t courage; sometimes it’s just oversharing. Trust should be earned. The objective isn’t to expose everything to everybody. It’s to stop hiding important truths merely because acknowledging them makes us uncomfortable.
Personal growth requires an interesting combination of strength and humility: enough humility to admit that we need to change, and enough inner strength to survive discovering where.
So build your foundation on the inside.
Then you can afford to take off some of the armor on the outside.
Turns out it’s awfully difficult to grow while wearing the stuff anyway.
