Your Frailties Make You Beautiful
We’re all drawn toward skillful competent individuals. Maybe they’ll teach us? Hopefully, they’ll rub off. But competency without frailty is uncomfortable, unapproachable, and unattractive.
The things that make competencies beautiful are the frailties that surround them. I was thinking of this during lunch with Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell’s Soup. He has competencies built on frailties.
He’s a self-proclaimed introvert. He knows how to put his head down and get the job done; that’s not a frailty. Years ago, however, he lost his job and spent a year searching for a new position. It was then that he realized he was a pathetic networker.
Frailties helped an introverted; head’s down, get-the-job-done type of guy realized the need to connect, to network.
There are many reasons Doug Conant earned the CEO position at Campbell’s. One of them is networking. You can’t rise to positions of influence in isolation.
Yesterday, I received one of the thank-you notes that Doug is famous for. Over the last 10 years he’s written over 30,000.
Doug’s story is beautiful because of frailty. Without frailty the story lacks luster. With frailty, it’s an invitation.
Leaders spend too much time hiding frailties and parading strengths.
Finding the beauty:
All frailties with no competencies make us pathetic. Competencies without frailties, however, are uninteresting and unattractive. You’re beautiful when your strengths are sprinkled with frailties.
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How can leaders maintain credibility and share frailties at the same time?
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Personal note: I’m attending the World Business Forum today and tomorrow. I may post a couple extra posts over the next couple days. I love being here but I miss my wife. Love you babe!
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If your armor is perfect, there’s no way to see, much less appreciate or admire, the person inside (if there even IS a person inside).
I wish my current “leader” understood just about ANYTHING this ‘blog talks about.
Hi David,
Thanks for bringing the human term to the discussion. I wish I used it in the post. Great word.
Cheers,
Dan
Perfect armor is an illusion or at most, a short term perception that leaves poor long term outcomes.
Many business leaders take pride in they being to hide their frailties and consider others imcompetent to lead if they are not been able to do.
It maybe also due to general human nature or perspective problem – highlighting others frailties and ingoring/not realizing those in himself/herself.
I think you have brought out an important point. Thanks for the post.
Awesome! Awesome! Awesome post! Dan your frailties makes you beautiful.
There’s a lot to ponder here. A very normal reaction to our frailties is to become defensive about them, to over-react whenever they come up. Like my wife, a very beautiful woman who is self-conscious about a crooked tooth, we get hung up. And then we try to compensate. From a leadership perspective, defensiveness, obsessing, and compensating are all dangerous.
Your post here could be very freeing, in that it lets us live in our own skin, with that frailty just another characteristic like the color of our hair. For that to happen we identify how frailties impact the team. Once we’re honest in acknowledging them, especially if we can also point to how we’re working through them, I think we’d be surprised at how naturally the team comes around us.
My own example: My grade school shy kid is still inside me, and as a result I tend to keep interpersonal interaction alll business. I’ve learned that people admire my competence; I still don’t believe in my heart that they will like me as a person. The outcomes of that are that I seem to be distant and aloof. Once my staff caught on, they started saying things like, “Coming from you, that’s like a kiss from anyone else.” The relationships normalized instead of being strained.
Spot on Dan! I wrote a similar post recently for managers (Want to Sky Rocket Your Management Confidence – Then Stop rying to be Perfect!) with the key message that managers can (and should) be ‘both flawed and fabulous!’
Best wishes
Joan
A Leaders credibility is gained through living their frailties facing them, struggling, failing & overcoming them publically.
In that process the character is transformed as a living example to the people they lead, hence understand & believe why he is their leader. Simply because they lived the process with the leader, even if credibility was lost initially the character if a leader will gain it by how they reacts to frailties
This is a refreshing way to look at the ways I struggle in Networking for my Network Marketing business. Thank you!
Our frailties is the chemistry that makes us interesting and keeps on giving. We are bombarded every day by media types that only care to find a frailty sound bite of the interviewee as opposed to actually conveying something newsworthy.
I only wish my frailties had been pointed out to me sooner in my career. Of course, this is the essence of living. Having the strength to admit you have a frailty when it steps up and hits you in the face or some other attention getting body part builds character.
Fall has arrived in the desert. First morning my window is open. The reason I live in Arizona. Ahhhh….
Your post has a great response to your question Dan. The ‘thank you’ note. People need to be recognized for their good work. Sure you can internalize it and pat yourself on the back–ahh the Puritan work ethic. When someone else writes down and recognizes your good work…that takes it to a whole new level.
As I type, I am looking at one I received, thanking me for helping out with a ‘world cafe’ event. It is a great little reminder…from April 18th. I also have a few other handwritten appreciations (and emails-thanks Dan) that I have filed away.
The ‘thank you’ note takes time and thought (commitment and accountability if you will), yet only needs to be 2-3 specific sentences and from the heart. There is an exponential ROI on a handwritten thank you note. It is one of the bricks in the foundation of a healthy, learning, thriving culture.
There are a few ways that a ‘thank you’ note shows fraility. Other than professional calligraphers, do too many of us have excellent handwriting? Probably not. Yet another fraility. More importantly though, it shows connection and reflection on being part of a moment with another person. That is priceless.
(BTW: Quint Studer’s Hardwiring Excellence has some great tips and insights around thank you notes.)
Dear Dan,
Without frailty is the state of perfection and it is not possible for human beings. So, frailty reflects reliability. Leaders should admit and accept their weaknesses, it creates credibility. It also signifies the sign of power and courage. Leaders who hide their frailties create space between them and their followers. In the process they can create short term impression but actually lose their credibility in long run. Trust creation is essential part of leadership and it takes time to create. So, leaders can create trust by accepting the realities than masking it.
If we recall the social leaders on the earth, we can easily point out their frailties. It is possible because they could not hide their weaknesses. Manipulators believe in creating opaqueness in the system and with the people. That is why they are not open and transparent with others. Between leaders and Manipulators, former accept and later reject their frailties.
How can leaders maintain credibility and share frailties at the same time?
So much truth in this post and concurrently so many “red flags.” Being the capital, our town has more than its share of politics. I have seen people pounce upon other people’s real or perceived frailties and use them very detrimentally. I guess you could argue that politicians and policymakers aren’t “making” a product with a direct ROI. I think possibly in a “direct ROI” type of business someone could possibly be a bit more open about their frailties as long as the balance sheet was still showing a healthy “income” side. But when the commodity is power, it becomes much more difficult to prove yourself. I would think someone in politics may need to be more guarded than others about sharing their frailties. (Or change professions.)
This is wonderful. Exposing our humanity makes us more attractive not less. I believe the best leaders are the ones who are not afraid to be emotional when appropriate, tell the truth about their mistakes, and let down the walls of perfection to teach others that they too are real human beings and not robots or perfect idols to be worshiped.
Hi Dan,
I enjoyed this post. I think it is very important letting the real world see who you are because that is when you really connect with people and add the human touch!
Thank you
Gavin.