Heaven knows we’ve all had plenty of opportunity in recent times to question the value of staying positive. As crises pile up, one on top of the other, it’s very easy to slip into a critical rant and end up throwing things at the TV, as more doom and gloom comes at us from the news programmes.
Causes for concern
Indeed, my original idea for this blog was to share with you either a story about the perils of going too early with the Christmas Tree, or the dangers of allowing youngsters too much freedom with the use of their devices. I’d had a business meeting on Friday morning in a local café, when I encountered the offending Christmas Tree. This caused me to have dark thoughts about ‘wasting’ two months out of twelve in idle anticipation and taking the focus off the ‘now’, in favour of an event which is still an age away. Later on that day, I went out to a local pub for dinner with friends and family, when I witnessed a young man sitting beside his mum taking no part whatsoever in the conversation going on around him. He had his face glued to the noisy, bright and very animated display of his device two inches from his nose. I saw him again at the end of the evening and, you’ve guessed it, he was still intently peering at his little screen. I imagine he’d been in that state for a couple of hours, more or less.
Talking about vulnerability
Plenty of material there to sharpen my negative saw on and offer you some worthy material, which may well have got a few heads nodding in agreement. But instead of doing that I stopped, had a think and went instead with an idea I’ve been meaning to write about for a long time, namely vulnerability. Ironically, I haven’t written it because it I didn’t want to make myself vulnerable and possibly overshare. I was encouraged however by a LinkedIn post from Gary Neville, who was confiding in us that he felt very vulnerable sitting in his dressing room waiting to go on and make his debut performance as a presenter of ‘Have I Got News for You’.
A vital principle
So, my simple point today is to tell you how the word ‘vulnerable’, as a desirable trait for a coaching style of leader, was volunteered to me by a new coachee recently. That may not sound much, but believe me it’s a big deal and a cause for celebration. I have spent many hours in the past decade, working with perfectly good managers/directors/leaders. I’ve also sometimes struggled to get across the vital principle of ‘vulnerability’ is actually a first step to becoming a stronger leader – not a weaker one. I found myself doing mental cartwheels, as my own words came back to me without any apparent effort on my part!
I apologise if my overall message is slightly garbled, but I’m afraid that’s all part of the fun – these ‘tiny’ steps forward make a massive amount of difference in the long run, but they may be a bit tricky to recognise and extricate when they first appear.