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When I was in a leadership role, and as I had explained, my last gig was running an agency of a 70-person team, I – not only then but also prior to other leadership roles I took on – I remember my male counterparts asking me sometimes to be a little bit more assertive. Which I would say could also in–in itself mean to be a little bit [tougher] more tough in how I’m leading. And I remember how I would, yeah, kind of not be able to understand why I needed to be tougher in my leadership. So, even though it’s perceived that we need to be tougher, I think what’s more important is that we have [the] intention and that we really know where we’re taking ourselves: what the vision is, but also why we’re going in that direction. Hence, I definitely believe it is important for us as leaders, whether you are female or male to certainly have [the] intention, and certainly know the direction that you’re taking – I vision. But I don’t believe that it is important to execute this in a tough way.


Being that, when we act in a tough way, we’re actually, usually, either in modus of survival, or in a modus of stress; and if we can take ourselves out of this survival mode, or out of the stress motors, we’ll actually find that we can be far more clear and more creative, and more determined to where we really want to go. Hence, I think that actually, it is important for us as male and female to be more vulnerable. And, therefore, I think the concept of vulnerability is absolutely precedent in today’s times. And the concept of vulnerability for me means to take courage in just being in the unknown. You certainly have an intention and you have a direction-setting where you want to go; but how you’re going to get there is where you have to remain vulnerable in order to find in the moments, the most and the best possible creative ways of getting there.

When you show up vulnerable, you’re taking courage to be who you truly are and specifically, then when you are taking on something without knowing the actual outcome. So, I certainly believe that to move ourselves into a better world, we all need to as leaders – embrace being vulnerable and showing up as a full human being.
Vulnerability are for me things like you don’t have control over a situation and you certainly just admit that you don’t know what the actual answer is going to be: you are with your team members open about maybe your feelings around a certain situation, or you are open to sharing your own experiences and what that not only did with you but how you felt in those moments. Being able, therefore, to assimilate with the other. So, it has two qualities: one is when you’re thinking about vulnerability in terms of taking yourself into a certain direction, but also, just in terms of how you’re sharing and being with team members.
If you think about the term vulnerability, then often were not wanting to be vulnerable because we’re either hurt, or we feel betrayed in something, or we’re wounded in something. And we like to cover it up, which then deserves the opportunity of being vulnerable. So, to start in being vulnerable; I think we have to start with ourselves and take a stronger look at, you know, what are those pains? What are the fears? What are some of the limiting beliefs that we really have and be honest with ourselves, in order to uncover that, and to find out that these elements are not as bad as we may have programmed into our mind that they are. And from there, we can then start to share our experiences, share what has maybe potentially hurt us in the past, but recognize that actually we’re still able to continue our lives in a very positive way, and that these hurts aren’t necessarily a backstop to us moving forward.