The Importance of Vulnerability in Leadership

Montserrat NB gained her CMP accreditation in 2020 and is a passionate advocate for developing leadership skills, as well as contributing the global business events industry.

By Montserrat Nuñez Badilla, CMP

Meeting and Events Lead, Boston Consulting Group

When describing a leader, adjectives such as strong, determined, knowledgeable, popular, and visible come to mind. Leaders are always heard, seen and imitated. Vulnerable would probably seem like the direct opposite of leadership. 

When describing vulnerable, you find it associated with weakness, not exactly what you want your leadership to be related with. Leaders are known to be examples of success not of failures, people that inspire and are followed. It would make sense to hide your vulnerability when trying to lead, especially in professional settings. We are looking to present our best version, over-achieve, and over-perform.

As leaders are called to inspire and lead, we must ask ourselves: are we feeling inspired by these definitions? After what we have all collectively lived these past years, are we looking for inspiration in the same places and admiring the same values as we used to?

Our own professional industry has proven how meaningful true human connections are, how people are in fact inspired by having genuine connections, amd this speaks to our leadership relations as well.

Vulnerability in leadership is empathy and connection. It means acknowledging our team´s struggles by sharing our own, letting our peers know they are not alone in their insecurities, challenges, and flaws. Vulnerable leadership builds trust within our teams and creates an environment where we can present our entire professional selves, promoting the diversity of ideas that lead to creative problem solving. It creates a safe space for development and innovation.

With our industry starting to gear into action once more, we might find ourselves getting ready to get back into action, full event mode ready to tackle those high expectations, minimal timelines, and challenging budgets. We are so ready to get back into action! But let’s not forget the high levels of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure our industry and its people have gone through, along with the rest of the world, let’s not allow these past three years go by in vain.

Let’s remember that our industry is the human connection industry. Let’s inspire and lead by creating true, genuine and meaningful connections, vulnerable connections.