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Over the past decade, vulnerability has become one of the most celebrated leadership virtues. We’ve collectively learned that sharing more builds trust, openness equals authenticity, and that the fastest way to connect with others is to reveal what hurts.
Yet many high-achieving leaders are discovering a fascinating truth beneath the hype. Vulnerability without self-trust doesn’t build connection; it creates uncertainty. Like opening the floodgates before reinforcing the dam, it can backfire and weaken authority, destabilize teams, and leave the leader feeling exposed rather than empowered.
Vulnerability itself isn’t the issue. It’s your timing, context, and nervous system regulation. Remember, a fire can warm up a room or burn it down, depending on how it is handled.
Why Leaders Are Confused About Vulnerability
Brené Brown popularized the research that appropriate vulnerability strengthens trust and psychological safety when paired with boundaries and self-awareness (Brown, 2018). Yet what often gets misunderstood is the word “appropriate.”
High performers tend to swing between the two extremes. Either they stay guarded and emotionally unavailable like a vault at Fort Knox, or they overshare when they feel uncertain, hoping transparency will create relief. Both destroy harmony and neither builds sustainable trust.
Vulnerability works when it’s intentional and grounded, not when it spills out of you for relief. One gives people clarity while the other leaves them holding something they didn’t ask for.
When Vulnerability Builds Trust
Here are three conditions that should be met for your vulnerability to be seen as beneficial:
First, your nervous system is regulated. Research in affective neuroscience shows that when leaders are emotionally regulated, others perceive what they disclose as safe and coherent rather than destabilizing (Porges, 2011). Or as my mom puts it, it’s not what you say that matters most, but how you say it. Your tone tells the nervous system whether it’s safe to listen.
Second, your intention is to relate rather than relieve. If you’re sharing to be understood, to normalize a human experience, or to demonstrate what it’s like to have a higher emotional intelligence, then your vulnerability creates connection.
Third, the container is appropriate. A private conversation in a safe space with a colleague or small, carefully curated team is very different from a large team meeting or in a public forum.
In these contexts, vulnerability signals confidence. It says, “I know who I am, and I’m not afraid to admit that I’m human.” It lands like grounded truth, not emotional chaos.
When Vulnerability Backfires
Vulnerability backfires when it’s about the leader needing relief instead of the relationship needing clarity. When it lands as chaos instead of coherence. That’s not leading, that’s live-streaming your inner turbulence.
When leaders share from a place of anxiety, burnout, or self-doubt, that unease spreads fast. The room can feel it before anyone names it. Research on emotional contagion shows that leaders’ emotional states directly influence team morale, performance, and perceived safety (Barsade & O’Neill, 2014).
In these moments, vulnerability doesn’t build trust. It puts the weight on everyone else. The team starts feeling like they need to steady the leader. This is where many leaders unintentionally undermine themselves. They mistake honesty for leadership when what is actually needed is containment. A cracked foundation doesn’t need more windows; it needs reinforcement.
Vulnerability Requires Self-Trust First
In my E.M.P.O.W.E.R. process, this distinction lives most clearly in the wield stage.
To wield means knowing when and how to bring your inner world into the moment. You’re not stuffing your feelings down, and you’re not dumping them everywhere either. You’re choosing what belongs in the room and when it belongs.
Self-trust is the foundation. When you trust yourself, you don’t need constant validation through disclosure. You can feel uncertainty without outsourcing it. You can process emotion internally before deciding what belongs in the room. Grounded discernment becomes a superpower.
The Nervous System Test
Leadership Essential Reads
Here’s a simple way to know whether vulnerability will serve or sabotage you.
Before sharing something personal, pause and ask yourself: Am I sharing to connect or to cope?
If your body feels tense or scrambled, vulnerability tends to leak out instead of landing. It’s like trying to pour water into a cracked pot. But when your body feels steady and clear, what you share actually lands. It settles the room, like an anchor hitting calm water.
Studies on interoceptive awareness show that leaders who can accurately read internal bodily cues make more adaptive social and emotional decisions under pressure (Füstös et al., 2013).
Your body often knows before your mind does. It whispers long before the brain starts shouting.
Vulnerability as a Leadership Skill, Not a Reflex
The leaders we trust most aren’t the most emotionally open. They’re the most grounded. They don’t process out loud in front of everyone. They integrate first, then share. They can admit they don’t have all the answers without losing others’ respect.
When vulnerability comes from self-trust, it lands with weight. You can feel the steadiness behind it, and that’s what people trust.
The Bottom Line
Vulnerability isn’t about saying everything to everyone all the time. It’s about saying the right thing, at the right time, from the right internal state. Like tuning a guitar before stepping on stage.
When guided by self-trust, vulnerability becomes a bridge that carries people forward to success. When driven by your dysregulation, it becomes a leak that drains the room. Leadership today requires discernment. And the leaders who master grounded discernment earn and sustain trust.
