The Tougher Kind of Authenticity and Vulnerability
I had two contrasting but connected experiences recently:
An interpersonal dynamics class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
A conversation with a client concerned about how his company was making major capital investment decisions.
About the class, here’s what the Stanford web site says: “Known to many as the ‘Touchy Feely’ class, Interpersonal Dynamics has been voted the most popular elective for 45 years running at Stanford GSB.”
My weekend-long version of the class started the Friday evening before last and ran to Sunday evening, with a 12.5-hour day Saturday. It was fantastic, challenging, strange, uncomfortable, eye-opening, and a lot more.
Apart from simple ground rules, one icebreaker, and a little content about feedback and relationships, the weekend has no content. People talk. Whatever comes up comes up. The stated goal is to learn how to learn from other people. It doesn’t take long for some friction to emerge. People work hard to address that friction and get to a better place.
It’s astonishing to me you could come to know, like, and care about 13 other people – strangers – so deeply in just 26.5 hours together. I feel closer to them than many people I’ve known for years. And I think it’s because we were authentic, vulnerable, and ready to address conflict directly.
There’s a lot of discussion about authenticity and vulnerability these days. Indeed, I’ve led clients in sharing formative life events that are often personal and even painful, for the sake of seeing one another as people and building a team. Sharing these events is helpful in forming bonds, and whoever shares can count on a supportive reaction.
But that’s just a start. I believe it takes more courage, and benefits the group more, to address real and living conflicts: substantive, interpersonal, or a combination. Yes, people shared personal things in the Stanford program, including me. But I think what really built the remarkably close connections was the authenticity and vulnerability to say: you did X and it made me feel Y … and then work through it.
Back to the client and our discussion a month back: the client himself is very smart, well-educated, and qualified, and there are many like him at the company. In these major decisions, the challenge is not intelligence, data, or analytical tools. In this client’s case, he talked about the unfortunate role of personal agendas in shaping these major decisions.
What might be lacking is more authenticity and vulnerability: the courage to say something like, the way you are suggesting X makes me feel Y. For example, you seemed to move quickly past the data and that makes me feel uncertain about your motives. It means getting out of their heads and the substance of the discussions, and into their hearts, their relationships, and conversations about trust.
In my experience, success and failure in the business world often come from – to a surprising degree – human factors and even dysfunction. Bringing the interpersonal element – yes, feelings – into the conversation with skill and courage can be a success factor.