Transformer: The ROI of Leading with Vulnerability

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Spencer Levy 
What's the secret to success as a leader in today's business world, where organizations are global and often remote? Talent has choices and the nature of relationships is evolving. How do organizational leaders need to adapt in this new age of work? On this episode, we welcome a return visit from a writer and strategic thinker who is adding a new word to the leadership lexicon. 

Jacob Morgan 
Vulnerability is not a new concept. Leadership is not a new concept. But unfortunately, we oftentimes separate those two. We’re taught about vulnerability, but we're not oftentimes taught to bring leadership to the vulnerability equation. 

Spencer Levy
That's Jacob Morgan, author and futurist. Jacob focuses on building culture and business, creating great leaders, engaged employees and future-ready organizations. We’ll turn the pages of his latest book, Leading with Vulnerability, which is informed by interviews with 100 CEOs and surveys of thousands of workers across the globe. Coming up, futurist Jacob Morgan questioning traditional thinking about leadership at all levels in business and beyond. I'm Spencer Levy, and that's right now on The Weekly Take. 

Spencer Levy
Welcome to The Weekly Take. Jacob, welcome back to the show. 

Jacob Morgan
Thank you for having me. 

Spencer Levy
Delighted to have you back. And since you are a futurist, you'll appreciate a new slide that I put in my presentation entitled “Prophecy Class Canceled due to unforeseen Circumstances.” I thought a futurist would appreciate that. 

Jacob Morgan
I love that. Yeah, that's a great one. 

Spencer Levy
So let's talk about Leading With Vulnerability. What a terrific book and what an unusual take on leadership. Tell us about Leading With Vulnerability.

Jacob Morgan 
Well, so there is a difference between being vulnerable versus leading with vulnerability. And I take a little bit of a counterintuitive approach where I actually don't encourage leaders to be vulnerable at work. And I know that might sound a little bit weird with a book title, called, Leading With Vulnerability, but again, there's a very clear difference in distinction between the two. Everybody has felt vulnerability, and in our personal lives, it's very clear what the benefit and what the value of that is. You're vulnerable with your spouse, your significant other, friends, family members. And there's a very different dynamic there. But when you apply that same concept inside of organizations, you see that the environment is different. Inside of an organization, you have a boss, you have a hierarchy, you have employees, you have customers, you have deadlines, you have the issue of money. And so I became very interested in this fact that vulnerability in our personal lives is not the same as it is inside of our organizations. And furthermore, being vulnerable for a leader is not the same as it is for everybody else. So now let me give you just a story, two different examples, of what it means to be vulnerable and what it means to lead with vulnerability. Being vulnerable. So Hollis Harris used to be the former CEO of struggling Continental Airlines, and in the early nineties, he was asked to write a memo to his entire workforce of 30,000 plus employees to basically talk about the challenges that the company was going through. And so he sends this memo out to his employees, and he acknowledges that the company is going through a tough time. He acknowledges that he doesn't see a way out, that he doesn't know what the right solution is. And he ends the memo by telling his employees that the best thing that they could do is to pray for the future of the company. Now, the very next day, Hollis Harris was fired. Now, if Hollis was a junior employee in accounting and he showed up to work talking about these things and saying the company's going down, I don't know what to do, somebody would have said, hey, man, just relax. Take a day off. Let's go grab lunch. You'll be fine. When you're the leader of a team or an organization doing that, you cause chaos. Now, contrast this to another story that I have in the book, which comes from Fleetwood Grobler. He too, CEO of a large organization called Sasol, a South African Energy Company. When he became CEO, the company was 13 billion, with a B, dollars in debt. He was also asked to address his workforce, but he gave a very different message. Now, he started off the same way that Hollis did. He talked about the challenges to the company. He talked about the fact that the business was really struggling, that he wasn't sure what the exact way forward was going to be. But then he added the leadership piece and he said, but I have a vision of where we can go. I know we have an amazing and talented group of people. I know that we can rebuild trust in our customers and in our employees. And if you follow me on this journey and if you help me figure out that path forward, I know that we can turn around this business and become successful. And that's exactly what they did. So what Hollis did was vulnerable. What Fleetwood Grobler did was lead with vulnerability. 

Spencer Levy 
So let's now compare and contrast the more traditional old school way of leadership versus today. And this is in your book, by the way. So you talk about who was considered at one point to be the great leader, Jack Welch, GE. He had a very much, a command and control way of doing things. How do you compare what Mr. Welch did to what you're offering today? 


Jacob Morgan 
Well, what Jack Welch did at the time, and what a lot of people forget is, that was considered good leadership. That was expected. That was taught. That was considered okay. Fortune used to publish a series of articles about the world's toughest bosses or America's toughest bosses. And it used to be considered a badge of honor to be on the cover of that magazine. And it used to be considered a badge of honor to work with one of those types of leaders. So that's just what the business world was like back then. Things have obviously changed since then, especially post-pandemic. We've seen a big push and a big emphasis on things like employee experience, on putting people first and then moving away from where we purely just focus on tasks and projects that involve our hands, like manufacturing to focusing things that involve our heads, our hearts, bringing in our best ideas, innovating, serving clients and customers. And that requires more than just the traditional management approach of somebody just telling you what to do and you doing it. We need more things like the motivation, the inspiration, the connection in there. Those are crucial aspects of leadership, which is what Leading With Vulnerability is all about. But again, a very important distinction and I want to make sure doesn't get lost: there's no substitute for being good at your job. And the whole concept of vulnerability actually breaks down in some situations. So one of the themes that I talk about in the book, it's a concept from psychology called the pratfall effect. And this is something that Elliot Aaronson came up with. He was a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which is where I went to school. And he did some very interesting research on this. And he discovered that if you're good at your job and you're vulnerable, so, for example, you're good at your job and you admit to a mistake. You're good at your job and you ask for help. What ends up happening in that situation is that you get an added perception bump. In other words, people look at you and they say, wow, Jacob's really good at his job and he admitted to a mistake. Oh he's so likable. Oh, he's even better at his job. Like your perception of how good you are and how capable you are goes up. But that's only true if you have a high level of competence. If you are not good at your job and you are a mediocre employee and you show up to work and you're constantly vulnerable in talking about your mistakes and challenges and failures and things like that, what ends up happening is that you reinforce your mediocrity. In other words, people will look at you and they'll say, oh yeah, that makes sense why Jacob is just kind of a C player. Yeah, I get it, why he's not, you know, excelling or growing at the company. So again, the competence piece is so, so crucial. And the thing when it comes to competence is we all know what we need to do to become more competent, whether it's training or learning or putting in the time and the effort. We know what we need to do to become better. The problem is that we oftentimes use vulnerability as a way to justify poor performance, and that is not helpful for anybody. 

Spencer Levy 
Now, I would suspect, just like everything else, things are different based on different types of businesses, right? And just going to the sports context for just a moment, the stories are endless about sports coaches that are a prototypical command and control tough, say the wrong things, but many of them won championships. How do you show the shades of gray in vulnerable leadership by industry, by job function? 

Jacob Morgan
Well, I think regardless of the industry, regardless of the job function, you're still going to need those two elements. You're still going to need to be able to connect with the people that you work with. You're still going to need to demonstrate your level of competence. So, and again, from the hundred CEOs that I interviewed, from the 14,000 employees that I was able to survey, there wasn't a very clear difference or distinction across geography or across industry. I mean, it was clear that some industries, for example, were maybe not at the level of other industries. You know, we saw some differences there in terms of how comfortable some organizations are with vulnerability. Manufacturing, for example, a lot of the survey participants there said that they struggled more with vulnerability than in other industries. It doesn't mean that it's less important in that industry. It just means that it's an industry, again, where you typically have that tough, macho approach. You're working on the manufacturing floor. You don't want to talk about problems or mistakes or things of that nature. But as far as the importance, I would argue that it's just as important for any industry, any geography, any role, any function, and any seniority level, because again, the two things that we're talking about here are being able to connect with the people that you work with and being able to demonstrate that you're good at your job. And I think that's true across the board. 

Spencer Levy 
One word that I think we discussed the last time you were on the show was still my favorite word in all of organizational behavior office design, which is productivity. And leading with vulnerability and productivity, are they at odds? Was happiness and productivity the same thing? And if not, how does vulnerability get you to productivity? 

Jacob Morgan 
Yeah, no, happiness and productivity are not the same thing. I mean, you can be happy and not productive. You can also be productive and not happy. I think anybody who's had a full time job has experienced both. As somebody who runs a team of ten people, there have certainly been lots of times where I've been happy and not productive and also times where I've been productive and also not happy at the same time. So yeah, there's a very clear difference between the two. We looked at a lot of the different areas of ROI when it comes to leading with vulnerability from the survey that we did with the employees that we looked at and the ROI ranges and varies across the board, right? I mean, we looked at anecdotal data. So there were a lot of CEOs that I interviewed who told me that they did see improved productivity. Just anecdotally, they weren't able to share, necessarily, a concrete stat or figure. But several CEOs and executives said that they saw an improvement in terms of engagement, productivity, employees who were wanting to show up to work each day. We looked at several different attributes. So one was innovation. Employees who are coming forward to contribute their best ideas. We saw a correlation there. We saw in organizations where the leaders are always leading with vulnerability when appropriate, the leaders in those organizations are perceived as high quality. We're talking about like a 30% gap. These types of organizations are also much better in terms of leading remote teams. So there's a lot of correlative stats and pieces of information there where when we look at leading with vulnerability and the impact that it has, you could say that it would probably translate to productivity. But again, to your point, productivity is measured in so many different ways. You know, traditionally in manufacturing, you would look at productivity in terms of, well, how many widgets did you make, how many car engines have you put together? But in today's workforce, it's a very different way to measure productivity because you're not putting widgets together, you're servicing clients, you're working on presentations, you're doing research, you're doing so many different things that it's much harder to quantify. And by the way, one more step that I forgot to mention. We also saw trust in organizations where leaders lead with vulnerability, often when appropriate or always when appropriate. There is over five times more likely higher levels of trust. In other words, employees trusting their managers. And as we know, trust is very, very much tied to productivity, because obviously if you don't trust your leader, you're not going to show up to do your best work. 

Spencer Levy 
Jacob, let's shift this, if we can a bit to this commercial real estate industry. And it's a big industry, and we could talk about a hundred different aspects of it from investing to managing assets. But I'm going to start with the brokerage aspect of it. And our top brokerage professionals are our advisors to our biggest clients. They build relationships with their clients over decades and they do it through not just extreme competence in their work, but personal relationships, knowing them not just as clients, but as, on a much more basic relationship, human level. So how would you apply your vulnerable leadership model to the brokerage model? 

Jacob Morgan 
Sure. So in terms of brokerage, I think this is very relevant in a lot of industries, right? Obviously, having a good relationship with your clients is crucial. That's where the vulnerability comes from. Now, again, this doesn't mean that you are going to be taking out one of your clients or prospects for lunch and talking about all of your deepest, darkest secrets. That's not what we're talking about. Vulnerability is about connection, and one of the frameworks, which we can talk about later, is this idea of the vulnerability wheel. And at the center of that sits this theme of intention. So why is it that you are doing or sharing whatever it is that you're doing or sharing with your client or with your prospect? It's not about just creating a group therapy session. So of course vulnerability is very relevant for creating that connection because as we all know, we work with people who we have that good relationship with. In fact, there was research done by Dr. Amy Cuddy, Susan Fiske many years ago, I believe in the nineties, and they looked at the two social attributes that we use when trying to create relationships and connecting with other people; warmth and competence. Warmth is about, kind of, that likability. It's the connection aspect, right? And that is the first thing that you spot in another person. So when you go to a party, for example, you meet a client or a prospect for the first time, they don't know if you're good at your job. The first thing that they know is, do I like this person? Do I get a good vibe, a good feeling from this person? Do I feel warmth from this person? That's kind of that vulnerability, the warmth aspect, the human side of it. And only then, after you are able to establish that relationship, does the competence factor come into play, of like, okay, I know this person's good at what they do, I trust them. So even in that kind of a client relationship, those two things matter a lot. Now, it's true that the context of vulnerability also matters, right? So the size of the mistake, so to speak, if you share that with a client, matters. If you've caused some sort of colossal failure or irreparable damage, you know, you have to keep in mind that it's going to be much harder for you in that situation to kind of do anything. But it doesn't mean it's impossible. But the whole point of everything that I'm saying here is that the context matters. What you say matters. So again, it's not just sharing everything and anything with everyone. 

Spencer Levy 
What you're saying to me now, Jacob, is sounding like, your failures need to be in the context of a broader lesson that you could then make everything better going forward. Is that a good analogy? 

Jacob Morgan 
Yeah. This is why the context and the size of the mistake matters. This is why you need to have a little bit of that self-awareness in there, too. Be cognizant of what you're saying and know that sometimes you might have to rebuild and go back to square one and reestablish your competence, reestablish some sort of trust or credibility in the field. One of the CEOs that I interviewed, for example, was Lard Friese, CEO of a big company called Aegon, a Financial Insurance Company. He told me a story of how he was responsible for this big project, a big implementation that the company was trying to do. And it was a huge failure. Huge failure to the point where they wanted to fire him. They wanted to remove him completely. And so he went back to the team and he said, okay, this is my mess. I'm going to go fix it. So he actually asked to be demoted. So he was a senior leader at the team. He was demoted and he had to demonstrate that he was good at his job, that he knew what he was doing, that he was invested in fixing his mistake. And he had to reestablish that credibility, that leadership amongst his team, in order to be able to go back up and ultimately become CEO. So sometimes you do need to take a step, or five steps, back so that you can then take ten steps forward. 

Spencer Levy 
Let me delve into some issues that are real, but even hard to talk about, even hard for me to ask the question, which is, when people are perceived as vulnerable, it is different perceptions based on their gender, based upon their background. The question is, how do you address that? How should our listeners address that from different backgrounds? 

Jacob Morgan 
Yeah, there are differences for sure, right? I mean, different cultures are more comfortable with vulnerability. Different cultures are not. Obviously, if you are a man or a woman, there might be different perceptions and feelings about that, for sure. I totally get that. But I think the consistency across the board is, you should always be bringing in the leadership piece to the equation. If you're a man, if you're a woman, if you're black, if you're white. It doesn't matter where you're from, you want to always bring in both of those pieces of the equation. Competence and connection, leadership and vulnerability. So from that standpoint, you're not going to see differences across the board. Now, you might see differences in terms of how vulnerable you're willing to be, how much you want to share. Again, the context there matters, and that's where this framework I have called the vulnerability wheel comes into play. So there are nuances and there are differences there. The context there matters. But at the core, those two elements are never, ever going to change, regardless of who you are, where you come from, your gender, where you live. None of those things are going to impact it.  

Spencer Levy
Right. And I'm with you from the standpoint of the individual leader. They should have both of these attributes, of extreme confidence and vulnerability. I guess the risk factor is how they will be perceived by those that they are attempting to lead. And that's where the world becomes very unfair very quickly. So how do you respond to that? 

Jacob Morgan 
Yeah, and I have some very crazy stories in the book from some of the CEOs that I interviewed. So, from a high level, I can promise you at some point vulnerability will be used against you. Just the nature of the game, right? The important lesson is when this happens to you, it's to take a step back and to ask what you learned about yourself, about the situation, and the other person. One of the CEOs who I interviewed who actually asked to remain anonymous afterwards was the CEO of a large telecommunications company. She told me the story where, early on in her career, she was working under another female CEO. And this employee who was working under the CEO, she was very vulnerable with the CEO. She talked about how she didn't come from a traditional background. She grew up in not a very wealthy environment. She never went to college. She was very vulnerable and open about some of the challenges and struggles that she had with things like self-confidence, image and imposter syndrome. And this CEO ended up using all of these things against her. So one day this executive, not the CEO, she came into work one day after a holiday, and she noticed that her office used to be next door to the CEO all of a sudden was moved three or four offices down the hall. She noticed that a lot of her employees were being taken from her and put on the other teams without her permission. She noticed that she was given an executive coach and this executive coach was reporting everything that this leader was saying to the executive coach, to the CEO, and it just become a very toxic and hostile environment to the point where this female CEO was using every vulnerability she can to destroy the career of the lady that was working for her. And so I ask this leader the same thing. I said, you know what, why would you ever want to be vulnerable with anybody else ever again? Because this to me seemed like a disastrous experience. So are you ever going to be vulnerable with anybody again? And she said, absolutely. And that's exactly what she said. She said, I took stock of what I learned about myself and about the situation and who I was being vulnerable with, and I took those lessons with me and I apply them to every situation and every job going forward. And ultimately, it's those lessons that allowed her to become the CEO of this new telecommunications company that has tens of thousands of employees around the world. 

Spencer Levy 
You mentioned the vulnerability wheel. There's also this concept in your book called the vulnerability mountain. Please explain. 

Jacob Morgan 
Yes. So the vulnerability mountain, and this is a visual on the cover of the book, so hopefully people will grab the book. But if, and when, they do, you'll see that on the cover of the book, there's this character that's looking up at this mountain, getting ready to go on this journey. And the visual and the symbolism of the mountain is very purposeful and intentional because I very much equate leading with vulnerability to climbing a mountain. What that means is that when you first start off at base camp, it's relatively easy to take your first few steps. But the higher up the mountain you go, the harder it becomes. You might stumble, you might fall, you might have to take a couple of steps back to find another path going forward. But eventually you keep climbing, and the higher up the mountain you go, the more beautiful the vistas become, the more clarity you get, the farther out you can see, the more people you meet on your journey. And to me, leading with vulnerability is very much the same thing. Now, the whole framework of the vulnerability mountain is very simple. It’s to identify what's at your peak and to identify what's at base camp for you. So in other words, if you wanted to go on this leading with vulnerability journey, what's something that you could do tomorrow? Something very small, it doesn't need to be a big thing. And what's the scary thing that's at the peak of that mountain for you? And once you identify what's a base camp and once you identify what's at that peak, then you can start to take steps gradually, every day, every week, every month, to slowly climb that vulnerability mountain. I can tell you it's a journey that I've been on for a while, and I think it's an important journey for every leader to go on themselves. 

Spencer Levy
I'm going to take this in a direction that I think applies to everyone. Just like every one of us is in sales, every one of us is a leader in our own way. Not everyone's leading the corporation. In fact, most of us are not leading the company. What do you say to everybody else who maybe doesn't aspire to be the CEO? How do they become great, vulnerable leaders in their own way? 

Jacob Morgan 
Oh, you don't need to be the CEO. I think this is for anybody who aspires to be a leader in any capacity. Even if you're an individual contributor and you want to make more of an impact on those around you. So this is not just exclusively for CEOs or top executives inside of organizations. This is for anybody who wants to make an impact. Anybody who wants to grow. Anybody who wants to excel. Anybody who has dreams and aspirations of doing more for themselves, for their teams or their companies. Even if you are an entrepreneur looking to build something yourself and you're trying to create a team for yourself. For me, this is the greatest superpower that anybody can have. And so it basically comes down to these things. If you're trying to lead through change, if you want to create trust, if you want to drive business performance, if you want to be able to unlock the potential of those you work with, leading with vulnerability is the way to do it. And pretty much everybody I know in any capacity, in any role is at least trying to do one, if not all four, of those things. And that's again, why leading with vulnerability is so important. 

Spencer Levy 
Tactically, what are some steps that any professional, starting with a new professional in a field, can take, to transform themselves into a effective vulnerable. What are some tactics? 

Jacob Morgan
The simplest thing that you can do is to practice what I call the vulnerable leader equation, and that is leadership plus vulnerability equals leading with vulnerability. So, very simple thing that you can do is just look at the various interactions that you're having on a regular basis and think about all the different times where vulnerability comes into play. And whenever it does come into play, try to ask yourself, what can I do to sprinkle a little bit of leadership on there? So a very common thing that we see is, for example, with first time leaders, right? The first time somebody gets promoted, they've been a great individual contributor. They are now leading a team for the first time. And, you know, we frequently say, hey, you know, you're the leader of a new team for the first time. Why don't you say a couple of words so people can get to know you and you know things of that nature. And I can't tell you how many times I see these first time leaders go in front of their employees and they'll say something like, hey, I'm so excited to be leading this team. I've never done this before, but I'm sure, together, we're going to be able to figure things out. And I'm just really, really excited to be here and, you know, go team. It's a vulnerable message, but by the time you're done with that message, the people who are going to be working for you are not exactly going to be looking to you as a beacon of inspiration or a beacon of leadership. They're probably going to look at you and they're going to say, wait a minute, I feel like I know more than this person. Why is this person leading the team? So again, in that situation, you would say, okay, I have to address my team for the first time. What can I do to sprinkle a little bit of leadership in there? And so maybe your message will be a little bit different and you'll say something like, hey, I know it's my first time leading this team. I haven't done this before. I'm really excited to be leading this team and here's what I'm going to do to make sure that I'm going to be the best leader that you've ever had. I'm actually going to be getting coached and mentored by one of the top leaders at this organization that I reached out to. And they're going to be overseeing some of the things that I'm going to be doing to make sure that I'm doing the best I can. I'm also going to be reaching out to an executive coach to be getting some training and sessions after work time. And here are a couple of really interesting leadership books that I'm going to be reading. You can read along with me if you want, so that you can see how I'm going to be implementing some of the things that I'm going to be learning. That's a very different approach. That not only creates more confidence amongst your team, but they will trust you, they will do these things themselves to try to close that gap, and you're going to feel more confident about your leadership abilities and the things that you're doing, as well. 


Spencer Levy 
In your book, you recount a conversation with your own father, and these are quotes, a conversation with your dad I'm sure you have a wonderful relationship with. It is “Don't ever show your emotions…The world is a jungle.” And my own father told me, so, since I brought your dad into it, I'm bringing my dad right into this, too. My dad said, don't ever show that you're mad, because if you ever show it, even once, you've lost that conversation. So how do you respond to your dad? How do you respond to mine? 

Jacob Morgan
Oh, man. My dad was a special character. So to give people a little bit of context, my family came from the former USSR, the Republic of Georgia. They didn't, my parents didn't know each other when they lived in the Republic of Georgia. They actually met in Italy, married in Australia, which is where I was born and came to the United States. They came here completely poor, didn't speak any English, had no money, no possessions. My dad lived in a low income housing in New Jersey in a basement, tiny, tiny apartment with roaches. It was filthy. And he learned to speak English by watching the Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin shows with an English to Russian translation dictionary. Now, growing up, my mom tried to model more of that emotional openness and vulnerability, but my dad was the exact opposite. He was, nobody cares about your problems. Nobody cares about your emotions, your feelings, nothing. Everything is on you. And that's how he was raised. That's how he grew up. And that's what he always taught me. And that's how I lived pretty much my entire adult life. I mean, even to this day, I put up a video on LinkedIn. Whenever I go visit my parents, they live 15 minutes away from me here now in Los Angeles. Almost every time I go over there, my dad has some sort of a physical challenge for me. They'll say, hey, Jacob, why don’t you come into the backyard and show me any push ups you can do? Or hey, how many dips can you do? And I literally put this video up. I've done a few of these videos. One was, I think two weeks ago, where there's a video of my dad, you know, shirtless, doing as many dips as he can. And literally, I was at his house recently and he's like, come over here. Let me see how many of these you can do. And he goes on to pull up bar and he does as many toe to bar touches as he can. It’s where you’re literally hanging as if you're doing a pull up and you raise your toes to touch the bar. This is how it is every time I go there. So that gives you some context and perspective on the type of dad that I have and how I was raised. Now, the interesting thing is, I said that that's how I lived pretty much my entire adult life. But, one of the things that we didn't talk about is the fact that I had a panic attack a couple of years ago, a series of panic attacks that came about because I had committed to writing a book about vulnerability, which is something that I didn't believe in, something I didn't practice, something that I thought was just a bunch of B.S. And I realized this because I actually went to a few therapy sessions. I had to go talk to a therapist for a while because if anybody's ever had a panic attack, you know, that's terrifying. You feel like you're going to die. I had no idea what was going on with me. So I went to a doctor, and the doctor was like, you're totally fine. I mean, I eat healthy, I exercise all the time. And so the doctor is like, you're totally fine. Nothing wrong with you. You should probably go see a therapist. So the therapist is basically like, Tell me what's going on in your life and this and that. And I told her about the book and she's like, interesting. And then she's like, tell me about your dad. And then I told her about my dad and she's like, Aha! And she helped me realize that I never believed in or practiced any of these concepts, yet now I'm committing to diving deep into these concepts. And so that was a kind of a very pivotal moment for me. And so my dad is my dad, right? As you know, it's hard to change somebody in their seventies, but we do have more conversations now. He shares a little bit more stories here and there. He's very excited to read the book. He has no idea that he's a central and main character in the book. He has no idea the stories that I have about him in there. So hopefully after reading that, he'll soften up a little bit. But it's hard because there's a lot I don't know about my dad. I mean, I don't know about your dad, but my dad does not like to talk about his past. So there's a lot that I don't know in terms of like, where he came from, his parents, what he did when he was younger, did he have any friends, did he ever get beat up? Like, I don't know any of that stuff about my dad. So, I think it's not a good way to build close relationships, whether it's with your friends or with your family members. So I'm constantly encouraging him to be a little bit more vulnerable, share a little bit more, especially with his grandkids. 

Spencer Levy 
First of all, I commend you for even telling us that story, not only in the book, but here on the show. Saying you had to see a therapist, had a panic attack, that shows vulnerability. And that's the kind of vulnerability a lot of people will not do, particularly in the workplace. It takes courage, number one. But number two, it shouldn't take courage, because I think so many of these issues that we're dealing with, not just in the workplace, but elsewhere, is, people keeping it bottled up. And there needs to be an ability to express it in a way to be vulnerable, but not to be just self-destructive. 

Jacob Morgan 
And it needs to be done with purpose, right? I mean, the vulnerability wheel which we’ve alluded to earlier is, you know, there's five rings to it. And at the center of the ring is intention. And if you don't have intention, it basically turns your organization into a big therapy session. You have to know why you're sharing things. I mean, I share this with you in terms of the panic attack, and I shared it with the people who are reading the book because it provides a very important level of context around my journey with vulnerability so that I can connect with the readers and the people who are going to be consuming the content. I'm not sharing it just for the sake of sharing it. I shared because it allows me to connect with the readers and for people to understand that I too have struggled with this and I understand why other people struggle with this. So inside of your organization, if there's something that you're doing or sharing, understand why it is that you're doing it. Am I doing it to create that connection? Am I doing it because it's going to help me become better or help somebody else become better? The intention is important because if that lacks, you're kind of like a leaf blowing in the wind where you're sharing anything and everything with anybody, and then that becomes a very difficult relationship to manage with you. 

Spencer Levy 
On behalf of The Weekly Take, I want to thank Jacob Morgan, author of several books, including the most recent one Leading With Vulnerability, for appearing here on The Weekly Take, and his terrific work on exploring leadership and how we can make it a better skill for all. Thank you, Jacob. 

Jacob Morgan 
Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate the opportunity. And am I allowed to mention one thing, really quick? 

Spencer Levy 
You sure can. Hit it. 

Jacob Morgan 
Okay, so we created a special URL for it: Leadwithvulnerability.com. And if people order it and email me at the email [email protected], I mean, all the instructions are on that page, then I will email you five of the CEO interviews that I did. It's with Jeff Immelt. It's with Doug Parker, the CEO of American Airlines. Penny Pennington, the CEO of Edward Jones. And then we had two others on there from WW and VB. 

Spencer Levy 
Thank you, Jacob. 

Jacob Morgan 
Thank you. 

Spencer Levy 
We'll be back in the weeks to come with more episodes to inform and challenge your thinking. We'll cover data centers, sit down with a serial entrepreneur whose latest vision is to disrupt the restaurant business and hear from an adventure traveler whose daring journeys led to some interesting lessons for business and more. Meanwhile, please visit our website, CBRE.com/TheWeeklyTake and use the Talk to Us button to let us know what you thought of this show. And if you enjoyed it, please don't forget to subscribe, rate and review us wherever you listen. For now, thanks for joining us. I'm Spencer Levy. Be smart. Be safe. Be well.