Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:00:27: Squiggly Career video book

00:04:37: A quote on vulnerability

00:06:51: What does vulnerability mean to you?

00:08:06: Four types of vulnerability

00:16:04: Proving and perfecting vs stretching and learning

00:17:33: What do you use as your armour at work?

00:22:50: Vulnerability watchouts

00:28:14: Ideas for being comfortably vulnerable at work…

00:28:30: … 1: share your emotions by flagging your feelings

00:32:12: … 2: build useful boundaries

00:36:35: … 3: signal your situation

00:40:30: … 4: reframe disagreements to differences

00:43:46: … 5: share your work-in-progress projects

00:47:07: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly show where we talk about the ins, outs, ups and downs of work and give you some ideas for action and some tools to try out that we hope will help you, and it always helps us, navigate your Squiggly Career with a bit more confidence, clarity and control.  And this week, we're going to be talking about a potentially tough topic, we will see.  We're going to talk about vulnerability at work.

Sarah Ellis: So just as a reminder, we are giving away a free video book for all of our podcast listeners at the moment.  First question, what is a video book?  It is a mixture of Helen and I on camera, other people sharing their Squiggly Career stories, animations, lots of workbooks.  It's about 50 minutes long, you can watch it in short videos.  I think it's a really interesting, fun, dare I say, way to learn and just a different way to learn.  So I definitely recommend giving it a go. 

We will put the URL on the show notes.  We'll also share it on all of our social channels.  It's litvideobooks.com/the-squiggly-career. If you're like me, you'll be like, okay, well, I've missed that already, which is why this is the one time where you might want to go to the show notes!  And you get a special code, which is SQUIGGLYCAREERSPODCAST, all in capitals, and that means you can download the book and you can keep it, you can do it on websites, so just on your laptop, also works on mobile.  And you can also download it for when you don't have Wi-Fi, which I think is a really good new feature that they've done, really aimed at people commuting, obviously not in the car, that'd be a bit weird on the screen; but if you do get a train or if you're on the tube or anything like that, or if you're underground for a bit, I think it could be quite helpful.  If you get a chance to watch it, we'd love to know some feedback, what works well about it, ideas for "even better if", anything that we're missing, a bit of an experiment for us.  So, we really like to hear just how you're getting on.

Helen Tupper: You reading that URL really reminds me of something I said before about 200 episodes ago, which is a very funny -- if anyone needs a funny YouTube clip, it is Pete Tong, I think it's on Dance Anthems, reading out a URL for the first time, and it is really, really funny!

Sarah Ellis: That's such a 1990s reference!

Helen Tupper: I know, it is quite funny.  It's like of the era of ADSL, you know when the internet was those noises.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah. Helen Tupper: Anyway, it's quite funny just to listen to him reading out a far, far too long URL, akin to you describing that one!  So yeah, for ease, that will be on the show notes, and you can message us, all those places.  But yeah, free video books are cool. So let's get back to vulnerability then.  I was surprised we hadn't covered this more.  And Sarah and I normally WhatsApp each other in the week about things that we think are important to talk about in the podcast.  And we were messaging each other about vulnerability, how it's quite a big topic.  And often, the stuff on it is like, we should all just be more vulnerable.  There's a lot of articles and research about how important vulnerability is.  But it's kind of hard to know, "Well, how do I do that?  What do I do differently in a meeting?", for example.  And also, I don't think it's that comfortable for everyone to do. So it's like, "Well obviously vulnerability is better, but practically how am I supposed to take this thing into my kind of average week at work?"  So, that's what we wanted to address this week; not really the case of vulnerability because it's pretty much been proven by Brené Brown in almost every book and every TED talk she's ever done.  It's like, go to Brené Brown for the evidence.  But I guess we wanted to take that evidence about vulnerability being so important and think about, well, what are you going to do differently in your day so that you can make your working week better, and create a space where other people can be vulnerable too?

Sarah Ellis: And if you do need a quick reminder of the "why should I care" like, "Why should I care on vulnerability?" I did listen to, re-listened, I think I'd listened to it before, Adam Grant and Brené Brown in conversation on the TED podcast.  And it is really interesting, because if you want to be brave, if you want to do things that are a bit different, if you want better relationships, you get better performance outcomes, there is a really strong business case for vulnerability.  But what I really like actually, reminding myself about the way that Brené Brown frames vulnerability, she's not trying to say we should just all be vulnerable all the time, particularly not at work.  She does then work really hard to describe what that looks like and what doesn't work. So I think we've tried to sort of apply our usefulness and practicality lens today to really think then about what this means for you today at work in particular, but then also what you might do individually and as a team, that just will help you to do better work.

Helen Tupper: So, a quote to start us off, because if we're going to be useful, I think it's useful to have a quote so we can all start on the same point about what vulnerability is.  This one is from the World of Work Project, and they say that, "Vulnerability in the workplace is the ability to express and expose in words and behaviour who we really are and what we genuinely think and feel".  I thought there's quite a lot in that I think, but to me it felt like it gave vulnerability its due in terms of, it's not an easy thing and often it is your words and it is your behaviours, it is how you're thinking and how you're feeling; there's quite a few elements in that I liked.  What do you think of that quote?

Sarah Ellis: I mean, I'm not sure I'll remember it tomorrow!  It's not a pithy quote, is it?

Helen Tupper: Brutal reflections!

Sarah Ellis: Does that count as vulnerability?  No, I don't think it does, actually, having spent some time thinking about it.  But I think you're right, sometimes we don't want to distil things too far, that they lose their meaning.  And I think it's really important when we're thinking about vulnerability to maybe acknowledge some of the things that hold us back.  So, I think some people definitely get concerned about oversharing, like what's appropriate and what's not.  I think it can feel too vague and ambiguous.  So what does, to Helen's point about where we started today, what does this actually look like?  What would I change?  What action would I take?  So we've had a go at that for you today. Also, I think there's a really interesting dynamic over the past probably only five years or so, where everybody started talking about this whole, "Bring your whole self to work" thing.  And you think, "Well, what happens if I don't want to bring my whole self to work?" which is a very probably me reflection.

Helen Tupper: That's such a you thing to say!

Sarah Ellis: But I have seen some much more nuanced responses to that, maybe in the last couple of years, which I think are much more helpful, because I do wonder whether things inevitably sometimes then swing in a completely different direction where you think, "Well, I want people to have choice and agency, and take accountability", in terms of what they share and how they share, particularly at work in terms of what's helpful for you as an individual and what's helpful for your team.  So sometimes I think there's this pressure to bring your whole self to work where I'm like, "Well, I'm not sure that'd be good for anyone if that started happening". So, I think a useful first question that both Helen and I have reflected on is, what does vulnerability mean to you?  And if you're in a high trust team, if you're in a team where you feel like you get on pretty well, I actually think hearing people's responses on that question are quite interesting, because Helen and I came up with different answers ourselves, just like, "Oh, what does that mean?" particularly in a work context, like what does vulnerability mean to you at work? So my response was, not having a pressure to pretend to be perfect, and asking for the help that I need.  So they were just the two things, and I did this as quite a quick exercise, so maybe not getting too deep and meaningful too soon, almost quite a quick fire like, "How would you answer that question?"  Helen, what did you come up with?

Helen Tupper: Super-different to yours, I just went really, really quick and just typed it down.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, yeah, same.

Helen Tupper: The first one, I talked myself out of once I typed it.  So, the first one that came into my head was, "Oh, it's sharing without caring".  And I was like, "No, no, I don't like that, because I think --" well, what we'll come on to.  I was like, "I think you do need to care a little bit about who and how you're sharing".  And so then I got to, "Afraid to say, but being able to do it anyway" was where I got comfortable.

Sarah Ellis: That's nice, and it rhymes, which feels very you!

Helen Tupper: Standard Helen!

Sarah Ellis: So, we promise this isn't going to be like a Brené Brown podcast, but we did want to talk about one bit of work that she has done in this space, which we think is really useful when you're starting to think about what might vulnerability look like for you at work, because she talks about these four different types of vulnerability.  And if you kind of have those in mind, you can almost self-assess, "Well, where do I sit on these different dimensions at the moment?" So, the four types of vulnerability are, number one: a willingness to speak up; number two: the courage to trust others; number three: the resilience to keep trying, and she talks about there even when you've failed; and number four: behaving in line with your values, so even if that might not be comfortable, for example the situation you're in or consistent with the situation you're in, but you're able to stay true to you.  So with those in mind, willing to speak up, courage to trust others, resilience to keep trying and behaving in line with your values, we thought we might do like a, almost like a high/medium/low on how we feel we are right now, to give us a bit of a sense of what's working well for us in terms of vulnerability based on those four different dimensions, and then when we might need to do a bit more work.  So you go first, Sarah, there you go.  That's me passing that one over to you!

Sarah Ellis: "You be vulnerable now.  Okay, I've been vulnerable, now you be vulnerable!"  I actually found these helpful though as a starting point.  So willingness to speak up, I think I would have been very low much earlier in my career, and now I think I'm medium.  I'm going to sit on the fence a bit with that one; medium.  The courage to trust others I think is my lowest, so I'm going to say that's low.  Resilience to keep trying; high.  I'm gritty, I'm good at getting up and I'm very determined.  And behaving in line with my values, I would say high as well. So the one that really stuck out there for me was the courage to trust others, and that made me ask myself some hard questions, and reflect on some of my behaviours some of the time, partly to do with -- I say partly, potentially quite a lot to do with my need for control, and sometimes how that shows up in a way that I don't feel proud of.  And I can think of an example recently of where that happened, where you know when you do then start to get into useful actions that will just make you a better person to work with and for. There are some around there that I think I have got to accept some vulnerability that will feel uncomfortable, because most of the time, being vulnerable, even a bit, feels uncomfortable.  And there are some things I think I need to do differently around that one that would at least nudge me from low to medium.  So that was my starting point. Helen Tupper: With this one, I would say just on the surface, I don't think I'm very good at being vulnerable, would be my honest.

Sarah Ellis: I agree! Helen Tupper: Thanks for that feedback!

Sarah Ellis: I actually meant to ask you before the podcast, I was like, "How honest are you going to be about your own lack of vulnerability?"

Helen Tupper: Quite; not that honest!  So yeah, but then I went through these and I was like, oh, maybe --

Sarah Ellis: Are you giving yourself a bit more credit based on this?  Is that why you've used this criteria, because you were the one that put this in the script?!

Helen Tupper: And now based on your feedback, I mean I'm looping all over the place.  So, the willingness to speak up, I think that might be low, because in a work context, I can.  But actually, sometimes about how I feel, I don't think I always do.  So if you said to me about a project, for example, I can totally speak about a project, I can speak up, I think, if I disagree.  But sometimes, I don't think I always share exactly what I feel.  So I'm going to be harsh on that with a low, because I think the other ones aren't so bad. The courage to trust others, I think I'm quite high on that.  I think I give people a lot of space, I'm pretty trusting.  The resilience to keep trying, I'd say medium to high.  You are grittier, because you have this tenacity I've not seen in anybody else; this tenacity.  But I think I'm medium to high.  Failure doesn't bother me, I just want to move something forward.  And I think I'm high on behaving in line with my values.  So that's why I've given myself a low on speaking up, because I thought, "Well, you can't be medium on that too.  Or arguably, based on Brené Brown's definition, you're good at being vulnerable", and I don't think I am.  What is your little -- I can see Sarah and I can hear her little smile!  What is that definition missing?

Sarah Ellis: No, so I think what you have identified there in that willingness to speak up is, you know sometimes you can skip past these too quickly.  And I think your point there about feelings is a really big one for you.  And I know you really well, so even with me, and we've known each other for 24 years, you don't tell me what you feel very often.  As a friend, you don't tell me what you feel very often, let alone as a business partner.

Helen Tupper: That's because I'm fine, Sarah, all the time!

Sarah Ellis: Oh, I know.  I know, because you tell me a lot that you're fine!  And we'll come on to it, because I think it's also okay for you to just say that you're fine, but I think perhaps one of the things to then think about is, you know the sort of the shadow that you cast.  And when you say to me you're fine, I'll sometimes think, "Well, okay, I know she's not broadly fine, but we know each other really well, and it doesn't take away any vulnerability from me". So you're not signalling to me that it's not okay to be vulnerable, because we know each other so well.  But if I think about then other people that we work with, by you sort of shortcutting that vulnerability, by basically sort of saying, "I'm not prepared/need to be vulnerable, so I'm just sort of going to skip past it", if other people in our team heard your, "I'm fine", probably as much as I have over the past few years, then the risk, certainly based on what I've read, is people might be like, "Oh, does she not trust me enough to let me in?" so there's a bit of that.

But apparently the bigger risk is then, because some people will have a much higher need for vulnerability than you have, sort of how much of yourself you want to share, I don't think you have a very high need for sharing; whereas some people will have a very high need for sharing.  So you imagine if you've got that, then the problem can sometimes be, and actually Adam Grant talked about this because he's very private, I think he has quite a low need for sharing in a work way, that then it has this knock-on impact of you take away the permission and the safety -- they talked about, they linked it to psychological safety -- for other people to then share, potentially. So, I think sometimes it's about understanding that this is actually very, very individual, because the answer isn't for then you to have to really change who you are either, but there might be some small adjustments that you might want to make that then help with that trusting environment that obviously we would be trying to create.  And I think we have some shortcuts because of our friendship, and because of how long we've known each other, but those shortcuts wouldn't apply beyond you and I.

Helen Tupper: I am learning that a lot through you, because you've called me on it on a few points.  And I think that, because what I don't always connect with is the value of vulnerability.  I read the reports and all that kind of stuff, I read Brené Brown's work and that's very interesting, but I don't personally connect with it because I'm like, "Well, I don't need it".  I honestly think most of the time I don't need it.  But what I do connect with is the point you said about, your vulnerability can create the permission for other people.  And I do very much connect with creating a space where other people can share what they think, and if that means that you need to share some things in a slightly different way in order to give people the space to feel comfortable to do it themselves, then that gives me the motivation to do it more.  But I actually personally don't feel like I have a need.  I'm like, it doesn't, I don't need to share, but I do care about other people.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, but also recognising that is only one aspect of vulnerability.  So another aspect of vulnerability, which is a useful prompt or provocation I think is, would you rather be proving and perfecting or stretching and learning?  And I think you're really good at that.  So, proving and perfecting is like, "Everything's got to be right first time, and I feel like I've got to consistently prove myself".  You probably don't go out of your comfort zone because you're like, "Well, what happens if I fail?  I want to show my excellence and my expertise really consistently".  And I was like, well that's not you.  You're really happy for things to go wrong. When we did our podcast episode, When Good Enough Is Great, you'd got 4 million examples and I'd got none, because you're really good at that, like, "I'm just going to learn and stretch and adapt as I go".  So I think it's also important we all recognise what we do well already in this area, whilst seeing maybe there's some gaps we've got as well.

Helen Tupper: And that vulnerability is, I think that's why those definitions are so useful from Brené Brown, that vulnerability is bigger than just exposing your feelings.

Sarah Ellis: Yes.  I think if you just looked at it through your lens, I'm like, "Well, okay, that bit, sure".  That's like a slice almost of vulnerability, I think.

Helen Tupper: And almost on that slice, I wonder whether there's a visual in that.  Maybe we'll do it on PodPlus, where if you had a pie chart with each of these as quadrants, how big are each of those slices could be quite a nice way for you to visualise vulnerability, which then I think makes it much easier to talk about in Teams as well.

Sarah Ellis: And the other question that I found really interesting as I was working through, "What does this mean for me?" -- I think that's almost for any podcast episode we do, I hope that our listeners are always thinking, "What does this mean for me?" because that's how we can be useful -- is, "What do you use as your armour at work?"  And this is almost often like the characteristics or the features that we have built up usually during our careers, which essentially do hinder rather than help vulnerability.  So probably some learnt behaviours that we have reinforced over time, that then stop you from sometimes being vulnerable in a way that would be useful for yourself and useful for other people. I was trying to reflect on this and also connect some dots between those kind of definitions and armour.  Also, interestingly, apparently this armour is particularly unhelpful if you're in the midlife, which is sort of 35 to 50.  I was like, "Oh, that's us!"  Maybe we could pretend that we're still 30 but we're sort of not.

Helen Tupper: We've both had our big birthdays now, Sarah, so we can't be confident we're 30.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, we have both.  Also, we are both recovering from your big birthday as we record this.  I'm surprised you're not croakier, but that's a chat for another day.

Helen Tupper: Two-day recovery period, that's a good part of it!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, it's a good job we didn't do this on a Sunday, let's put it like that; Sunday morning, 6:00am, post the big birthday!

Helen Tupper: Bad idea! Sarah Ellis: And so this is quite useful, and I think the reason apparently in midlife it's such a challenge is by that point, those behaviours have become quite entrenched.  So almost recognising entrenched, unhelpful behaviours, knowing how hard it is to then change them; but if you can't even spot them, if you can't see them, you can't do anything about them.  For some people this could be perfectionism, this could be needing to always be the expert in the room, often I think things to do with your identity. I think for me, when I started to then really think about this, I think it takes a while to figure out what is the armour you've put around yourself, I didn't get to this straight away; I went for a walk and I was listing some things on it and I was like, "For me, it's being in charge".  For me, it feels quite vulnerable to not be in charge, I don't like the idea of it.  I think it'll be to do with control.  And if I think about some of my behaviour sometimes, say like in our meetings together and things, when we have our team together, it'd be quite a vulnerable thing for me to do a lot of letting go in those meetings. 

And I sort of know that about myself.  So I kind of got there when I thought about it, but I don't do it.  And it's back to that point around the courage to trust others. This is why it ends up starting to feel really vulnerable because you're like, "What kind of person am I?"  You're like, "Of course I trust other people, and of course I don't have to be the only one in charge".  So at those points, you then start to really like question your own personality, obviously, and you're like, "I sound horrendous"!  But it's helpful I think, because I think armour for me was, by being more introverted in often quite extroverted environments, and working for quite extroverted people, I think part of my armour, like surviving some of those moments in my Squiggly Career was, "Okay, you need to take control, Sarah, you need to be in charge, you need to speak up and your voice needs to be heard, and you need to be more dominant", than perhaps my natural personality is. I think I've learned that.  Now I'm much more comfortable with my introversion, and very open to how brilliant that's been for me, understanding that, but I think I've got some hangovers from pretending to be an extrovert and perhaps some of the environments that I was in that needed that, and now I'm like "Well, my environment doesn't need that of me in quite the same way", but I still do the same thing.  And you know when you don't find it hard to think of examples, that's when you start to realise that, "That's obviously a very real thing for me", and then you can start to think about, "Okay, now I've spotted it, what's the 'so what'?"  Can you talk about you now?!

Helen Tupper: Yeah, talk about me.  No, I was just thinking, before we go on to me, deflection, I was just thinking about the role of your environment as well.  Your ability to be vulnerable, I think it does go alongside that psychological safety, like what's the environment that you're working in.  And so, I think if people want to connect those dots, then probably the episode that we've done with Amy Edmondson on psychological safety could be a useful listen.  I will link to that on the PodSheet in case you're thinking, "But how does the company that I'm in create the environment for me to be vulnerable?" So, back to me.  I think the armour I use probably is enthusiasm, or some kind of deflection.  I just sort of smile my way through stuff.  I do!

Sarah Ellis: I know you do!

Helen Tupper: But yeah, I think I just put that armour up, and I don't even do it consciously.  So, you know you said about, it's not like I go, "I'm just going to pretend to be happy and something doesn't matter to me", I just go, I don't know, I think it's just a learned behaviour.  It's probably learned through the way I've been parented as well, that it's better to smile and go through it than to be sad and go through it.  It's how I've been brought up with the situations that I've been through, and it's just therefore quite a big thing for me to reprogramme myself in certain situations, or even see when it's not helpful.

Sarah Ellis: And so, a couple of vulnerability watchouts before we go on to some ideas for action that we've come up with.  Firstly, you don't have to be vulnerable all the time and everywhere, and I think it is important to apply judgment to vulnerability.  There's some great work from Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, in Why Should Anyone Be Led By You, on selective vulnerability.  They actually pull that out as a specific leadership sort of characteristic that they see is useful as a leader.  And I talk about that with Rob when I interview him in a couple of weeks' time, so worth listening to that.  But essentially here, there is sometimes a wrong place and a wrong time. So we have, for example, quite an operational meeting on a Monday, and if you have had something tough happen that's really significant, it's probably not the right place for it.  What we do have in that meeting is we've created an agenda item called Red Flags.  So, we've given everybody a small moment for potential vulnerability if you need it, and everybody, as part of that, we go, "Right, what's your priorities; what's something you're looking forward to; any red flags?" Red flags could be, "Oh, actually my kid's not been very well so they're not at school today", so you're just shining a bit of a spotlight on, "I might be feeling a bit tired [or] something a bit stressful is happening". 

And I think that has actually really helped our team to feel like they've got the space to be vulnerable, even in a very operational moment.  But equally, I mean it's quick, "Any red flags?" in two minutes.  So, you're not going to have a deep and meaningful chat just then, so it's just worth thinking about when's the right time. I think that point about it being very individual is really important, more important, I think than I'd appreciated before I started reading and listening to more about vulnerability.  So, what you're not trying to do is come up with a playbook for vulnerability, I think, for your team.  You're not trying to say, "Well, this is what it should always look and feel like".  I do think you've got some choices to make like for yourself like, "What does vulnerability look like for me?  Are there any moments where I get in my own way in terms of vulnerability?" so it might be like Helen's, "I'm fine" thing; that might be me feeling like I always have to be in charge of everything. 

And then you can start to figure out how you will adapt, but not looking for consistency, I guess, across the team. If it's not anticipated, so if vulnerability comes out of nowhere, and there's a lot of it, and it can be very overwhelming for people, if you're doing that to somebody, so if somebody doesn't know it's coming and then you maybe don't get the reaction that you're hoping for, I feel like in that situation, everybody's losing.  Let's say I need to have a big chat with Helen about something and she doesn't know that that chat's coming, I then don't get maybe the support that I'm looking for from Helen, and then everybody sort of goes away dissatisfied.  And actually, we've talked before on the podcast, we have made that mistake before. Or, sort of signalling the support that you need, and actually saying to people, "I think it is okay to take accountability", and to say, "I'm having a bit of a difficult time with something.  When would be a good time for us to talk about that?" rather than springing it on someone, and then really hoping that someone's got incredible emotional intelligence and empathy to be able to react really well.  That could be right in the middle of their phenomenally busy, back-to-back meeting day, and they're probably not going to be at their best.  So, I think it's also all having a little bit of empathy for each other to go, "Okay, I think there is sometimes a bit of a time and a place to do this really effectively".

Helen Tupper: I am rubbish at that, and I think what you are is very, very good at catching it for me; because I think suddenly I'm being vulnerable, it's often unexpected because I don't do it regularly.

Sarah Ellis: You don't do it day-to-day, yeah.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I don't do it regularly.  So it will just come out in a term we'll quote in a minute about sort of an emotional leak will happen.  And then I will probably be in a conversation with you when you're not expecting it because you don't expect from me generally, and I'll just announce something that I'm feeling.  But you are actually, and it's probably not very fair of me, you are very good at then being able to respond in the moment, just because of your skills.  And I probably don't do it with other people, because other people aren't the same as you, but yeah, just listening to you I'm like, "That's really not very good of me that I'm fine for like 360 days, and then on day 361, here's a big thing that I've been bottling up that I just need to get out right now, in this moment, when you weren't expecting it".  So sorry, Sarah, in hindsight!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, we have had quite a few of those, haven't we?

Helen Tupper: Yeah, we have, sorry!

Sarah Ellis: But I also go, "Do you know what though, that is one of the things I'm good at".  If anything, it actually just makes me feel proud that I've got some of those skills to be able to adapt in that moment and sort of see, "Helen needs something that she very, very rarely needs.  So okay, let's figure out how we can sort of support each other in those moments".  But then I think then there's 4 million skills I don't have, and so lots of people wouldn't necessarily be able to do that.  So I think you're right, sometimes just knowing that, and then just seeing, particularly I think probably if you're having conversations with managers, have you got a manager who has got some of those skills?  If not, give them a chance of being able to support you by maybe teeing it up or spotting the right time.

Helen Tupper: So, we are now going to get into how to be comfortably vulnerable at work, which kind of sounds like a strange phrase, but hopefully you're getting with this.  We know it can be uncomfortable, so what practical things that you can do so you can just make this more part of your days.  So, I'll go with the first one, and then we'll swap between Sarah and me. So the first one is moving from, "I'm fine", there's a reason I'm saying this one, everyone; moving from, "I'm fine" to, "I'm feeling…" as a way of sharing your emotions more openly.  And I think this is particularly relevant If you are somebody like me who defaults to saying, "I'm fine", almost unconsciously, and it's just that becoming more conscious of your incompetence in a hopefully not too harsh way.  Every time you hear yourself saying, "I'm fine", just press pause and go, "Actually, I'm feeling..." You don't have to go into it at length; I could just say, "Do you know what, I'm feeling a bit frustrated by that conversation [or] I'm feeling a little bit concerned about the direction that this is going in", and just saying that then invites the other person to then ask a question.  So it doesn't have to be a flood of feelings, it's just a statement of that emotion that you might have at that moment.  And actually this selective vulnerability thing comes up here as well.  There's a nice quote from Liz Fosslien, who wrote the book No More Hard Feelings, that we've had on the podcast previously, and she says this quote, "The way to embody selective vulnerability is to flag feelings without becoming emotionally leaky". What I do to Sarah is I'm emotionally leaky, I bottle it all up and then I do a burst once a year normally.  And actually, selective vulnerability is to flag the feeling and say, "Okay, well to be honest, I am feeling a bit frustrated at the moment", or just to flag it; you don't have to necessarily go full-on flood, but the flagging is important.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and actually I reflect last week, I've got some stuff going on personally, and you asked me a couple of times if I was okay.  So, bless you trying to be all supportive and empathetic, I was like, "Oh, so cute when you try to do that!"

Helen Tupper: So patronising!

Sarah Ellis: And you did ask me a couple of times, but I think I actually responded, well I know I did, I responded in quite a short way because I was like, "Do you know what, I've had so many emotions and feelings", I was like, "I genuinely really want to focus on work", but I actually didn't give you that extra bit of context.  And so you might be thinking, you could easily then have -- I mean to be fair, you might have just moved on.  Yeah, you probably did, I'm going to guess, but you tell me if I'm wrong!  But you might have been thinking, "Well, why?  So something's going on with Sarah and she's just not telling me".  Then, you could start to worry or you could start to get distracted. Actually, all I needed to do was give you a very, very small extra bit of data there, was to go, "I genuinely am fine.  I really want to get stuck into work.  I'm really excited about a couple of the projects that we're working on, so I really want to get into that.  I feel like the work here is actually what is helping me with some of that other stuff", and I didn't quite do that.  How long did you spend worrying about me last week, Helen, when I just did that shortcut?

Helen Tupper: So, not a lot at the moment, but it did come to mind repeatedly.  So, I know with you that time and place is very important, but what I can't do, given that we don't often have a great amount of time and place where I know it would be better for you, I can't just go, "Oh great, I'll ask Sarah how she's feeling in three months and two days".  So, I will still sort of check in to see whether it is useful to create a different time and place, but if you shut me down quite quickly, I will move on and then I'll ask you again next week, or the week after.  But generally, I do know you would never -- timing is so important with you!  I'll try and create a time, but if it's not the right time for you, I'll just move on.  And then, yeah, that's my learning.

Sarah Ellis: So yeah, selective vulnerability, flag those feelings.  And I think you can do that in a really short way, I don't think you have to write an essay about them.  Like you say, I think I could have given you 10 seconds more last week or a voice note versus just a WhatsApp message, and that would have been enough. So idea for action two is about building useful boundaries.  So this is where Brené Brown talks about this idea of vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability.  I think this is particularly important at work, because what she is actually never saying is, we should all be vulnerable all the time.  I think sometimes people make that mistake with her work.  I think people look at it at the surface and just go, "Everyone should just be sharing all the time".  Well, that's the last thing we should be doing because for loads of people, you and me included, I don't want to do that, you don't want to do that either, you definitely don't want to do it.

Helen Tupper: All right

! Sarah Ellis: But also, I definitely don't want to.  And so what she talks about is, focus on what is useful about what you're sharing for the other person or for your team.  And so that's actually a useful boundary.  And I've got a brilliant example of this from where somebody prompted me to do this, one of the clients that we work with. So we work with Sky and we've done quite a lot of programs for them, really enjoy working together.  And my dad died earlier this year, and they knew that because we'd had to reschedule something.  I was very happy to be open about what was happening, but obviously we weren't giving loads of detail. 

And our client sent me a message just before a meeting, and really helped me to create a useful boundary where she said, "Oh, Sarah, firstly", they'd already acknowledged it but, "we just wanted to obviously acknowledge and express our thoughts with you.  But I didn't know if you wanted us to bring it up on the Teams meeting", because we were having a meeting, a virtual meeting about a programme, but I equally didn't want to not say it.  So she was sort of going, "You tell me what is useful and create that boundary". So actually, it really helped me to create a boundary, because I didn't want to talk about it. 

We were about to have a very practical meeting where I was like, "How do you make that segue?" and I can't do that, I find that very difficult; like, "I'm just going to talk about something that's incredibly difficult.  Now let's talk dates".  It's just too hard for me, I don't have that range, apparently.  And so, that small gesture, I don't think I'll ever forget it.  It was such a useful two sentences for me, and I just wrote back and said, "That's so thoughtful, I really like really appreciate it, thank you.  Actually for now, I prefer to just focus on what we need to talk about for work, but thanks for checking".  And that was almost enforced boundary-setting on me from somebody else, and I was like, "That's the best thing". Whereas, then for some other things I had, I think I was still figuring out those boundaries and I was like, "How do I do this in a useful way?"  And actually I think between us, and you obviously were incredibly supportive during all of that time, we did create some useful boundaries for our team, because obviously they knew stuff was happening with me personally, I didn't want to share loads, but I wanted to share enough that was useful, as in when am I going to be around; when I'm not going to be around; how am I working?  The team do need to know that, because suddenly I didn't quite disappear, but I disappeared a bit.  And so, you do have to be quite mindful of that. We've both experienced it in the last year, whether it's big life things that are happening, whether that's health or other people in your family, I think you do have to figure out what is useful for you and what is useful for other people.  So you've got to combine both of those things, which is hard.  It is hard when hard stuff is happening, and then you're trying to do that as well.  You're like, "Oh, God, it's a lot to get my head around".

Helen Tupper: And I think there's a difference in vulnerability at work versus when you need help and support more generally; I think these are different things.  So, you go to a friend for help and support in I think a relatively un-boundaried way, because they're your friends and that's part of what friendship's all about.

Sarah Ellis: Of course.

Helen Tupper: Whereas at work, I think there are boundaries and there is a filter for, "Why am I sharing it with this person; how is it useful for me?" like you're saying, useful for them.  So a failure, for example, if you feel horrendous about a failure and you just want to get it off your chest, that might be something you share with a friend.  If you feel bad about a failure and you think the team would be better by knowing it, then that might be useful for the team to be aware of.  And I think it's just, what's useful for people to know about but it still might be useful for you to get it off your chest, it might just be not with someone at work and that's the important thing. Number three about how to get comfortably vulnerable at work is to signal your situation.  So let's say you're going through something, so Sarah mentioned some sort of health things, and you think, "Okay, I probably should bring this up, but I don't want to talk about all the details at the moment", maybe because that does feel a bit too uncomfortable, or maybe too personal.  So you've kind of gone, "I think this is useful for the team to know that this is something that is happening, but I don't need to talk about everything". 

Actually, just signalling the situation is a way that you can be vulnerable without feeling very uncomfortable. For example, it might sound like, if you've got the health thing, which is something that I've had recently, I might say, "Something's going on with my health at the moment, it's causing me a bit of a concern and it's why I might be a bit distracted in our meetings.  I would prefer to talk to you about it when I've got more information, but I just want you to be aware of the situation".  And so then the team know that something's happening, maybe understand why you might be responding differently, but I haven't had to go into all the details and I've taken back a bit of control by saying, "I'd prefer to talk to you about it when…", as in, "Don't feel like you have to check up with me every moment on how it's going".  So I've taken the control, I've raised that flag about something is happening, but I've given myself a bit of permission not to give everybody all the gritty details at the moment.

Sarah Ellis: The other thing I think that you did really well in that situation was both the before and the after.  So afterwards, we had a few things where you will have been a bit distracted because you were waiting to figure some stuff out.  And you did just say to the team, "I appreciate my energy might have been a bit weird today [or] you probably didn't get the Helen that you're very used to".  And also, you show up incredibly consistently, which is a really good thing, that's what everybody wants from their leaders.  And I've worked for a few people like this who are very good at recognising, "Okay, I haven't shown up in the way that I normally show up".

I had a really interesting conversation once with a boss, and I was on a call virtually with her and someone from procurement, bizarrely, because I really do remember it, and it felt really off.  You know when you have a phone call, I was like, "She's really off with me, this doesn't feel right".  And then of course, what did I do?  "I think I've done something wrong.  Maybe my suggestions were bad".  I hadn't anticipated it, but I was like, "That was not right", and I made that all about me.  I was like, "I have got this wrong", and I was like, "Okay, I'm just going to have to ask her", because it did feel so weird.  Then when I asked her, she'd got stuff going on at her kids' school, some quite serious stuff, and I think she probably hadn't quite appreciated maybe how much then it affected how she showed up in that moment, but it had really affected me. Now, I'm probably a bit like, I'm relatively good at sensing.  So for me, I probably really felt that, and I'm quite good at spotting someone's behaviour's a bit different.  So, other people maybe not as much as me, but then actually she was brilliant.  So when I said it, she was like, "Oh no, actually I've just got this thing going on".  I didn't need her to tell me, I just basically needed to know that I'd not had some sort of career-limiting conversation with procurement, which is where I'd got to. 

By the time I saw her, I was like, "My career is doomed because she used to think I was brilliant, and now she thinks I'm rubbish". Actually one of the things that she said to me after that is she got a lot better.  She was actually someone who never gave loads of details, she was quite a private person; absolutely fine.  But we did sometimes, as her leadership team, get the odd message from her.  Say, first thing in the morning, she was clearly on the train, just going, and she was very extrovert in the main, "Oh, I might be a bit quiet today, just I've got some stuff I'm sorting out with a parent", you know, just literally hardly any detail and didn't really kind of tell us loads, but we didn't need that.  But we did, it was suddenly just going, "You might see a slightly different version today", and I think that's really helpful, because that's signalling as well. 

And, if you can do it proactively, rather than reactively, I think even better. So, idea for action number four, which is actually getting away a bit from feelings, thank God, we've all had enough feelings for one day, to thinking about other ways to be vulnerable.  So, we talked about people having the space and the safety to speak up.  I think it can be really helpful to reframe disagreements to differences, to actually think about when you are going to have discussions together as teams where you are going to have different points of view, and people might not agree, and you perhaps really want to create the space for that kind of debate; it feels like more of a debating conversation. I think in lots of organisations, and I hear this from loads of people that we work with, you know everybody says, "People really love working here, but we are a bit too nice".  I hear that a lot, "Everyone's a bit too nice".  Some of this will definitely be cultural, but you don't want to always be agreeing because actually that person who thinks something different, maybe because they've spotted a problem.  They've spotted a problem with the process or they've seen someone else do it better, but they don't have the vulnerability to go, "Actually, I've got a different point of view here [or] I think we could do this in a slightly different way". We all know those meetings that are a bit antsy or where there's a bit more tension, maybe because it's a certain project.  Usually the more cross-functional they are, I would say, the more likely it is to happen.  We all happily agree when we're all in marketing and all want to do exactly the same thing.  But when you've suddenly got marketing, sales, finance --

Helen Tupper: I feel like it should be CROSS-functional with the cross in capital letters!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, yeah!  And actually, sometimes if those things were named in a way where it's like, you know, we sometimes talk about challenge and build, like we have challenge-and-build conversations internally in Amazing If.  In challenge-and-build conversations, I expect to hear lots of different points of view, I'm not expecting everyone to agree.  I expect to feel uncomfortable some of the time, particularly if I've put forward an idea for challenge and build, and I expect to do a lot more listening than I do speaking.  And so suddenly I've got a frame of reference for what to expect, and then I'm prepared to be so much more vulnerable. I find challenge-and-build meetings hard because I love creating ideas, and then at times I hold on to my ideas too tightly.  And so that helps me to be vulnerable by going, "We're doing a challenge and build about an idea", because the problem I have is I go, "It's my idea", so I have to really take ownership, so then I feel very personally connected to ideas.  And the more you care and the more committed you are, the harder it is to then be vulnerable because you're like, "Oh, you're not critiquing an idea, you're critiquing me".  And so, there's a real potential for me to not want to do that. But actually, challenge and build, I never find hard.  I don't go, "It's really fun hearing people talk about all the things that are not going to work about something", but I actually approach it with a lot more openness and curiosity.  And I think you start to realise openness and curiosity are really big features of vulnerability, of all of the slices of vulnerability, as well as the kind of the feelings that we've talked about today.

Helen Tupper: And idea number five is sort of a build on from Sarah, so more connected to day-to-day work than the feelings that you might be having.  It's about sharing your work-in-progress projects.  So, why this is important is because it can feel quite vulnerable to share work that isn't done yet, or isn't done the way you want it to do yet, because we might feel this pressure for it to be perfect or for it to be something that people want to support and celebrate and we've got just that little bit more work to do, so it can be vulnerable to put it out there before it's ready.  But if you can start positioning things as, "I wanted to share this with you, but it's something that I'm still working on" or, "I'm not fully up to speed on project XXX yet, but I'd really like to have a conversation with you about it anyway". So it's sort of admitting that it's not perfect, or that it's not done, or it's still in progress, but not letting that status stop you from having these discussions that could help move your work forward.  So many people aren't prepared to say, "I've not got the answers yet, I've not managed to complete that yet, it's not quite where I want it to do yet", so they either don't have the conversation that could help them, or they maybe present it as perfect, but put quite a lot of pressure on themselves, and we're trying to get away from that.  We want you to share more, share earlier and then that does take a little bit of vulnerability to do that, but the more that you practise it, the easier it will become.

Sarah Ellis: And you know that point about the courage to trust others?  What I think you have to do there is you are trusting other people not to judge you; not to judge you because you haven't had time to read something yet, trusting other people to not feel like, "Well, they're not very good at their job because they've not got to this thing [or] they haven't got all of the answers yet", and I think sometimes that can be quite a big deal because people almost expect that to be the response. So let's say I'm like, "Helen, can we talk about this that I sent you a week ago?", or something, and you might think I'm accusing you of going, "Well, why have you not read it yet?" 

But actually having that confidence and the vulnerability to say, "I'm really happy to chat about it.  I haven't had a chance to read it through yet, but do you know what, let's have the conversation anyway, see where we get to, and that'll probably still speed us up".  I think particularly in power relationships, that might feel really hard, because you might be thinking, "Does my manager think that I'm not prioritising right or not making enough progress?"  So it's also the courage to trust others in terms of how they're going to respond to that, to you being work in progress. I do think there is a tension there sometimes because we want everyone to have this work in progress, learning mindset.  We know good enough is great loads of the time, we want progress over perfection, and then I think we can sometimes all get a bit judge-y when we're like that.  It's like, "Oh, well that's not right and that's not right", and when I say "we all", "I"!  But you know when you're like, "But why is this bit not done; why is that bit not done?" and you have to really learn to let go of that if you want to create this safety to have that kind of vulnerability, I think.

Helen Tupper: And I just think actually just the language, I mean I gave a few alternative statements like, "I'm still working on this", but I actually just think the work-in-progress language is nice enough in itself.  I could just say, "That's still work in progress for me", and I think the easier you find these statements to say, the easier and more often you'll say them, which is I think, find your language with this, that makes it really, really important. So, super-quick summary of the five points we've covered about how to be comfortably vulnerable at work.  Number one: move from, "I'm fine" to, "I'm feeling..."; number two: build a useful boundary; number three: signal your situation; number four: reframe from disagreement to difference; and number five: share your work in progress points.

Sarah Ellis: So, we hope that's been a helpful episode.  We'd love to hear any other examples, so we know there are some Brené Brown superfans out there.  So if you have been inspired by her work, I'd love to know what have you done differently as a result; what's really helped you; how has it improved your performance; how has it made you better at work?  And if you try any of the things that we've talked about today, again, we'd love your feedback because it's always helpful for us to know where, and where we're not, being helpful.

Helen Tupper: Everything will be summarised as ever on the PodSheets, which you can get either from our website, amazingif.com, or on social, where we share it, just @amazingif on LinkedIn or Instagram.

Sarah Ellis: So, thank you so much for listening and we're back with you again soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye, everyone.