How I learned to be a more vulnerable and authentic leader

In my early 30s, I went from managing a small team to managing a larger team. Some of the members were remote. Some were matrixed into me.

I’m naturally an introvert. And at the time I was a new mom, wanting to get home to my kids and my husband, who had quit his job to support me and my dreams.

I was very conscious of two priorities: work and home. So whenever I was traveling and people’s work product was taking longer to get to me or the quality was starting to erode, it meant I needed to be on the road longer. And it took me away from my family.

I interfaced with probably thirty to forty people any given day. Of the forty, let’s say ten of those people started to get frustrated with me. Their turnaround time on emails got longer and longer; their answers got shorter and shorter. They had a bit more edge to them. They showed no discretionary effort. They just did the minimum.

I saw the pattern and then stepped back and thought, Shit. This is bad. I’ve got to tell my husband I’m going to be gone longer. And I thought, Why am I in this situation, and who owns this problem? And I realized: I did. I was the common denominator.

I got a coach for the first time and asked her to do a 360-degree review of these ten people. She interviewed them, and what came out was not pretty. They didn’t know who I was. They had invited me out when I was in town to a social hour to have a beer, but I didn’t show up. I didn’t eat with them at lunch. I would rather sit by myself than sit with them and socialize. I rarely said “thank you” or applauded their work. All of this made them think I was in it for myself, that I was a ladder climber. And they assumed I would take all the credit.

What I realized was that they knew nothing about me. And it devastated me. I cried. And the coach said, “You need to learn how to navigate this. What do you think is the cause of this?”

And I said, “I see the symptoms but I don’t know what to do. I’m an introvert. I don’t do social hours. I’m a new mom with three kids in diapers and I want my marriage to work. I travel enough and I want to be home. At lunch, I don’t want to socialize — I want to re-energize and get my energy back up. And in the mornings on Monday, I don’t ask how everyone’s weekend was because I’m doing my process in my head. So, I don’t share my stories; no one knows I’m an introvert, or a new mom, or that my husband quit his job. I don’t think they need to know.”

And my coach said, “Yeah, they do. They need to know who you are. You’ve got to share something. Otherwise they will assume the worst. Humans fill the void.”

My coach asked what else was bothering me, and I said, “The quality of their work is bad. They’re just throwing crap over to get it done, and it shows. I’m getting impatient, especially when I’m working fifteen-hour days and traveling. And it’s hard to be this compassionate person.”

But then my coach asked me, “What are the attributes of a leader you would want to follow?” And a light went on, which gave me the energy to try to fix some of these relationships.

I went home and thought about who I would talk to and how I would fix it and decided I needed to fix the relationships with all ten people. Why? I’d been impatient with all of them. I hadn’t gone to their events. It was rude. I’d been impatient with their quality, and just because I was unsatisfied didn’t mean I could be disrespectful. They didn’t know I was an introvert. They didn’t know my struggles. And if I wanted them to follow me without question, I needed to earn it. I hadn’t earned it; I’d demanded it.

So for a week I did two-a-day sessions, and I apologized. It was crushing. But each conversation got good and I ended up fixing all ten relationships — so much so that six of the ten have followed me to other companies.

And what I learned was that I need to be me. I need to share my fears, who I am as an introvert, why I want to get home to my family. They have to know the quality I’m looking for and that they can come to me with questions. That I work hard, too. As soon as I started sharing more vulnerably who I am as a person, it blew their minds and we started to fall into place as a team.

Since then, each and every time I’ve become more authentic and more vulnerable as a human being, the more successful I’ve been as a leader.

As told to Sara Kalick, head of Leadfully, as part of an in-depth interview available in the Leadfully Library. This post was originally published at Leadfully.com on August 9, 2016.