THE COURAGE TO BE VULNERABLE

Why Authenticity Matters in Business, Leadership and Life

You can have all the qualifications, experience and business acumen in the world. But if you cannot be authentic, vulnerable and real, how can you truly connect with the people you’re trying to lead, coach or advise?

For more than three decades, I’ve worked alongside business owners, directors, leadership teams and organisations. I’ve been a business owner, entrepreneur, governance adviser, coach, mentor and interim CEO. I’ve sat around boardroom tables, navigated difficult commercial decisions, helped businesses grow, managed crises and challenged leaders to become better versions of themselves.

But here’s something I’ve come to understand more deeply over the past two years.

The greatest lessons in leadership don’t always come from the boardroom. Sometimes they come from the moments that bring you to your knees.

And sometimes being a better business adviser means being prepared to show the person behind the professional.

THE BEAUTY OF SURVIVAL — MORE THAN A BOOK

Last month, I had the extraordinary privilege of being one of 12 women who came together to share our deeply personal journeys with breast cancer in a beautiful, published fine-art book, The Beauty of Survival, with proceeds going to Cancer Support NZ.

A vision brought to life by Dr Cat Stone and Tess Woolcock, with an incredible creative team, photographers, makeup artists and women who were prepared to expose far more than their physical scars.

We exposed our vulnerability.

Our fear. Our grief. Our courage. Our changed bodies.

And the parts of ourselves that cancer has changed forever.

Every woman in this book has a different story. Different experiences. Different scars. Different circumstances.

But we share something incredibly powerful.

We know what it means to have life interrupted, to face uncertainty and to discover a strength we didn’t know we would need.

The photographs are extraordinary. But the beauty isn’t simply in the images. It’s in the honesty behind them. It’s in the courage to be seen. And it’s in the sisterhood that has formed between women who understand what it means to go through the fire — some more than once — and still find reasons to rise.

VULNERABILITY ISN’T THE OPPOSITE OF STRENGTH

We have created an expectation in business that leaders should always appear confident, decisive and in control. That business owners should have the answers. That CEOs shouldn’t show weakness. That advisers should be the people who have everything worked out.

But life doesn’t operate that way.

Behind every title is a human being. Behind every business owner may be financial pressure, family difficulties, grief, health challenges or fears they haven’t shared with anybody.

And behind every employee is a life that doesn’t simply disappear when they arrive at work.

How can we genuinely develop people if we aren’t prepared to understand the people we’re developing?

As a business adviser, I don’t believe my job is to tell business owners what they want to hear. It’s to ask the difficult questions. To challenge assumptions. To understand what drives them. To recognise what may be holding them back.

And sometimes to share my own experiences so they know the person sitting opposite them understands that business and life are not separate worlds.

Vulnerability doesn’t make you less credible. When coupled with experience, integrity and sound judgement, it makes you more effective.

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