by Kevin Kruse
INDIVIDUAL: With friends, siblings, and spouses it’s always easier to just brush things off that are bothering us. It’s sometimes easier to keep things a secret than to explain the truth (“Uhm, yes, that was my ex-girlfriend who texted me”). Well, it’s easier in the short term. The problem is that little things don’t disappear; we just hold on to them and carry them with us, eventually blasting them out during some other disagreement. And of course your friends and family aren’t mind readers, or feelings readers either. When you are upset about something, try using this phrase to start the conversation. “I feel , when you .”
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SHOW WEAKNESS
Brandon Brooks was looking forward to the game. As a six-foot-five, 340-pound offensive lineman in the NFL, his job was to stop opponents from sacking his quarterback, and to open up holes for his running backs. It was his first year playing for the Philadelphia Eagles, who signed him to a $40 million five-year contract the previous summer. That comes out to half a million dollars per game. And this wasn’t going to be just any game, it was Monday Night Football. For the players it’s a chance to strut their stuff in front of a nationwide, even global, audience.
This particular Monday, the Eagles were to face off against the Green Bay Packers. Although both teams were struggling throughout the season, they were still fighting against long odds for a playoff spot, and of course for pride. Nobody wants to look bad in front of ten million viewers on live TV.
On game day, at five in the morning, Brooks woke up, rushed to the bathroom, and threw up violently. It felt like he had stomach flu. He got himself to the Eagles stadium, but despite team doctors’ best efforts, instead of suiting up for Monday Night Football, Brooks went to the hospital. The Eagles lost to Green Bay 13–27.
Two weeks later it happened again. After feeling fine all week in practice, on game day, at five in the morning, Brooks experienced uncontrollable vomiting. Too weak to even stand, this time he would miss the Eagles game against division rival the Washington Redskins. Fans and sports reporters alike wondered, What is his mysterious illness? Three days later, standing in front of his locker surrounded by the media, Brooks talked about his condition:
I found out recently that I have an anxiety condition…. I have like an obsession with the game. It’s an unhealthy obsession right now and I’m working with team doctors to get everything straightened out and getting the help that I need and things like that. For me, it’s just I always want to be perfect in what I do and if I’m not perfect it’s not good enough, and sometimes that just really weighs on you. And I have to learn how to kind of chill out and understand it’s OK to make mistakes. It’s OK to not be perfect (Frank 2016).
I had a chance to have dinner with Brooks about a year after his impromptu press conference. He told me that before he knew he had an anxiety condition, his goal was to be perfect. Literally. He said,
My goal was to not give up a single sack for the entire season. That’s all I thought about. Before the game my mind would race through all the scenarios against whoever I’d be up against. If he moves his left foot out, where will I move? If he moves here, I have to move there. After the game, if I had one bad play, that’s all I’d think about. I’d replay it over and over (Brooks 2017).
He said signing the big contract with the Eagles amplified his emotions; he feared failure because he didn’t want to let anyone down. Brooks now sees a psychologist each week and has been exploring the roots of condition. It’s hard to describe but listening to Brooks talk, I could tell he was just as driven to win and driven to be great as ever, but somehow the pressure was off. He said he now realizes that he can’t control everything that happens in the game, knows mistakes will happen, and when they do it won’t be the end of the world.
Brooks told me he had no hesitation about coming out publicly about his anxiety. He doesn’t pay attention to the haters on social media, and all the Eagles coaches and players have been supportive. Since letting go of the need to be perfect, and by openly sharing his struggle, Brooks has emerged stronger than ever before. Little did we know at the time of our dinner, but Brooks didn’t miss a single game of the 2017 season, he was nominated to the Pro Bowl, and the Eagles would go on to win the Super Bowl LII.
THE NEED TO OUTRUN THE LION
“Will you tell me about a time when you failed?”
It’s the first question I ask of all my guests on The LEADx Leadership Show. From Dan Pink to Captain Sully Sullenberger to Alan Alda, from bestselling authors to entrepreneurs and big company CEOs. When have you failed and what did you learn from it?
My guests invariably chuckle nervously and stall with some kind of joke like, “Wow, there have been so many times it’s hard to pick just one!” And then they give me something real. Something they’ve never talked about in an interview, and often a story they’ve never even told friends or colleagues. Listeners of the show tell me all the time this is their favorite question, because to hear a supersuccessful person talk about anything other than their achievements is so rare.
In one survey of over 210,000 business leaders, 43 percent indicated they “have no problem being seen as vulnerable.” This leaves over half who have some kind of problem with vulnerability (Figliuolo 2017).
Why do we instinctively hide our weaknesses? Anyone who’s ever watched the Discovery Channel knows there’s an evolutionary component. Nothing good ever happens to the slowest gazelle. Today, we might not have to outrun a hungry lion—or more accurately, outrun one of our friends—but we still learn early lessons about what happens to the weak. Our parents may give not-so-subtle signals like “suck it up” or “stop being a baby.” In grade school we get picked last for the dodgeball team, in high school we get cut from basketball, and we get bullied throughout. Socially our instinct is to do everything we can to fit in; we’ll do almost anything to avoid the shame and pain of failing. If the herd rejects us, well, we’re back to that hungry lion.
At work, at least traditionally, we were penalized for our “weaknesses,” too. If we make a mistake, we’re liable to be reprimanded. If we reveal that we’re sick, or that we’re dealing with an ailing parent, or that we’re getting a divorce, suddenly our ability to put in long hours gets questioned. If we don’t know something, we get judged by those who overvalue domain expertise. And let’s face it, a big part of “executive presence” is a display of confidence.
So why should we suddenly go against two hundred thousand years of modern humans’ evolutionary biology and social constructs to suddenly share our weaknesses?
THE JUNGLE HAS CHANGED; WE SHOULD TOO
We no longer live in the jungle; we are not at risk from the lion. Neither literally, nor metaphorically. The world of work has changed and behaviors that worked through the industrial revolution have now become liabilities. Vulnerability is the key to thriving in the new environment.
VULNERABILITY BUILDS TRUST. We no longer operate in a hierarchical command-and-control structure where power and authority are the keys to getting things done. Today it’s all about relationships, social capital, and, to borrow a term from General Stanley McChrystal, building a “team of teams.” Trust is often called the lubrication of relationships. Indeed, neuroscientist Paul Zak has conducted research on trust in the workplace and found that in organizations high in trust, people collaborate more effectively with their colleagues, are more productive, and they stay in their jobs longer (Zak 2017). If you think about your most trusted friends, invariably they’re the ones you can tell anything to. So when someone at work reveals a weakness or some kind of fault or shortcoming, we can’t help but trust them a bit more than before. Who tells us their weaknesses? Our closest friends! Zak’s research shows that trust is reciprocal; the more you trust me, the more I trust you, and a virtuous cycle begins.
VULNERABILITY INCREASES EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT. Vulnerability builds trust, and trust is one of t
he top three drivers of engagement, which is the emotional commitment employees have for their organization and its goals. When we’re engaged, we care. And when we care, we release discretionary effort and we’re more likely to stay in our companies longer.
Our parents or grandparents looked forward to working at one company throughout their entire career. Today, we can (and do) find new jobs with the click of the mouse. The reality is that the most talented workers also have the most opportunities for employment elsewhere. Great leaders care about their connection with their direct reports, and a great connection begins by showing your weakness.
VULNERABILITY DRIVES INNOVATION. The new world of work is so crazy someone had to come up with an acronym to describe it: VUCA. Volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Technology innovation is accelerating exponentially, leaving formerly great companies behind. According to McKinsey, the average lifespan of a Fortune 500 company in 1935 was ninety years; today it’s just eighteen years (Borpuzari 2016). There is only one way for an organization to survive, and that’s through endless rapid innovation. And innovation requires a lot of failure.
Entrepreneurs more naturally understand this idea and often preach “fail fast.” While nobody intentionally sets out to fail, there is an understanding that innovation requires a lot of experiments, most of which won’t work out. But after each “failure” you learn and adapt and try again. Great leaders know they must model the way and share their own failures—and celebrate the smart failures of others—to build a culture of effective risk-taking. I often say, “There is no win or lose, only win or learn.”
BEING VULNERABLE IS HEALTHY. Let’s be real, it’s just easier and less stressful to live authentically. It takes courage, but requires less energy. Vulnerability researcher Brené Brown reports that perfectionism strongly correlates to increases in anxiety, depression, and substance abuse.
“Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around, thinking it will protect us, when in fact it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from being seen….Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval….Healthy striving is self-focused: How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused: What will they think?” (Schawbel 2013).
If a 340-pound professional football player can literally be felled by his need for perfection, you can be certain that the stress you are carrying around is taking a toll as well.
WHEN YOU FALL DOWN, I LIKE YOU BETTER
My friend Christine is a great presenter, and also a very nervous one. At one conference, right before her speech, she came to me visibly stressed. I tried to make her feel better by asking, “What’s the worst that can happen?”
She pointed down to her high heel shoes. “I don’t know, I could fall down!”
The conference host read Christine’s introduction and then loudly in the microphone, “Please welcome, Christine MacAdams.”
The audience applauded and as Christine got to the second step of the stage, yes, she tripped and fell down. And that was the moment she won the audience over.
Social psychologists call it the pratfall effect. It’s the tendency for people to like—even to be more attracted to—an individual who makes a mistake. In most studies this effect only applies when the person making the blunder is viewed by others as socially superior. An inept person making a blunder would just be viewed as, well, still inept.
The term “pratfall effect” was coined by social psychologist Elliot Aronson in 1966 to describe the results of his study looking at how we view people after they make a “blunder.” He recruited college students who were told they would be listening to a tape recording of a student who is trying out for the college “quiz bowl” competition. The recorded contestant was asked fifty questions, but in half the recordings, the contestant spilled a cup of coffee and could be heard saying, “Oh my goodness, I’ve spilled coffee all over my new suit.” (If that language seems implausible, remember, this was 1966.) Afterward the study participants were asked a variety of questions to gauge how well they liked the quiz bowl contestant. It turns out, the blunder of spilling the coffee increased likability by 45 percent. Aronson explained, “a superior person may be viewed as superhuman and, therefore, distant; a blunder tends to humanize him and, consequently, increases his attractiveness” (Aronson, Willerman, and Floyd 1966).
The pratfall effect is so powerful that people even like robots better when they make mistakes. European researchers studying the new field of social robotics gathered almost fifty college students and a two-foot-tall humanoid robot. The participants were split into two groups. In each group, the robot asked questions and then gave instructions on how to use toy blocks to build simple structures. In one group the robot performed flawlessly, and in the other group the robot was programmed to make mistakes. It turns out, both groups rated their robot the same in intelligence (i.e., making mistakes didn’t make people think it was less smart) but the robot that made mistakes was viewed as more likable (Mirnig et al. 2017).
Do your team members put you on a pedestal? Show them you’re human for a better connection.
THE HERO’S JOURNEY
Standing in front of three hundred people, I knew I bombed again. All that preparation, all the rehearsing, and all I got was a polite golf clap. That is, from the people who weren’t asleep. I walked off the stage embarrassed and disappointed that my message wasn’t having an impact.
Why weren’t they more interested? Didn’t they know what I had accomplished? I’m an Inc. 500 award-winning entrepreneur. I won a Best Place to Work in PA award for great workplace culture. I built a business from $0 to $12 million in revenue in four years and then sold it in a big exit. And let’s not forget I’m a hotshot New York Times bestselling author!
But after my sixty minutes, the truth was undeniable. Clap. Clap. Clap.
I knew I had to make a change. If I wanted to help more people, I’d need to learn how to be more effective as a communicator. I paid a ridiculous amount of money for one of the world’s top public speakers to personally coach me. I read dozens of books not just on public speaking, but on persuasion and psychology. I wrote and rewrote my speech two dozen times. I began to study stand-up comedians not for the jokes but for their timing.
My number-one takeaway after all this work was: people want to learn from people they can relate to. People trust people who openly share their weaknesses, their failures.
So I began to open my speeches by talking about my business failures. How I had to lay off 30 percent of my employees. How I was such a jerk-boss that one employee actually threatened to beat me up. How I was once demoted. And then I shared how I changed. What I did differently that then led to the award-winning companies and multimillion-dollar company sales.
With this change, the audience leaned in. They asked questions. They clapped loudly. And every now and then, I get a standing ovation.
FRIENDS, I JUST hit you with a “hero’s journey” story to make a point. It’s all true. I did stink as a speaker and now I’m pretty darned good. But I told the story in a particular way. I opened the story in a particular way. And if I were a betting man, I’d wager that you were hooked by the first couple of sentences, curious about how I got better, and you felt happy for me that I was suddenly getting standing ovations.
The hero’s journey is a term that refers to a classic storytelling structure that goes back for centuries. The idea has been popularized by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and PBS’s 1978 documentary The Hero’s Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell. Campbell details seventeen different stages of a typical hero’s journey story, which includes the call to adventure, crossing the threshold, and even unusual things like “woman as temptress” and “atonement with the father” (Campbell 1973). Others have summarized it in a variety of ways, and my own simplification of the monomyth is simply as follows:
Act I: Hero is in trouble and forced on an adventure
Act II: Hero overcomes problems with the help of new allies/friends and special objects/weapons
Act III: Hero defeats the enemy and wins, only because she is transformed by the trials and tribulations of Act II
You can see these patterns in the works of Melville, Dickens, Faulkner, Hemingway, Twain, Tolkien, Stephen King, and so many others. Hollywood taps into this centuries-old winning formula over and over again. Think of The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter, The Lion King, and definitely Star Wars. You could tell almost the same story simply by changing the character and setting.
Star Wars opens with an attack on a ship carrying Princess Leia, who sends R2D2 off to recruit a reluctant Luke Skywalker. Luke is just a kid with no game whatsoever. But with the help of new friends (primarily Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda) and some new tools (a light saber and the Force) Luke is transformed into a Jedi who destroys the death star. He and his friends are celebrated.
So what does Star Wars have in common with, say, the Wizard of Oz?
The Wizard of Oz begins with a disgruntled teenager, Dorothy, being forced by a tornado into a new, colorful but dangerous world. She sets off on a literal road of adventure attracting new allies and friends (Glinda the good witch, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow) and getting some new tools (ruby slippers). Now transformed, Dorothy is able to defeat the bad witch, confront the Wizard, and return home where everyone is happy.