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If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
Hello leaders!
Imagine you are meeting with your team and in that meeting you have to come forward with a mistake that you made on an important client project. How would that make you feel?
Now imagine that someone else on your team was in your position, and they were the ones admitting they made a mistake. How do you perceive them?
Anna Bruk, Sabine G. Scholl, and Herbert Bless of the University of Mannheim in Germany published a study in 2018 called “Beautiful mess effect: Self–other differences in evaluation of showing vulnerability” which explores this idea. In fact, Dr. Bruk, is one of the many psychologists and researchers that I interviewed for my latest book, Leading With Vulnerability.
Researchers asked participants to imagine themselves in a variety of vulnerable situations including admitting to making a crucial mistake at work or being the first to apologize to a romantic partner after a big fight. The fascinating thing is that when people imagined themselves in these situations they perceived themselves as being rather weak or inadequate, which is the #1 reason that keeps people from being vulnerable at work according to the almost 14,000 employees I surveyed with DDI.
However, when participants imagined other people being vulnerable in these situations, they perceived them as being relatively “strong” and “courageous.”
Why?
In today’s post I’ll explore the why and in part two for next week I’ll explore what to do about it so that you won’t see your vulnerability as a weakness.
So…why do we think of other people as being strong and courageous when they are vulnerable and think of ourselves as being weak and inadequate when we are vulnerable?
The answer is a theory in psychology that we don’t spend enough time talking about, especially at work, and for leaders.
Learn more about this in my new book, Leading With Vulnerability which is now on sale on Amazon for a whopping 30% off while supplies last.
Why do our perceptions of vulnerability change depending on if we are thinking about ourselves or others?
This phenomenon can be explained by a theory in social psychology called construal level theory, which describes how psychological distance determines if we think about something in an abstract or concrete way. For instance, if you look at a tree close up, you’ll see all the details—the branches, the leaves, and the trunk. But from a mile away, you’ll only see a general silhouette.
Distance can take several forms such as temporal (the distance between now and a decade later) or social (the distance between oneself and another person). In the context of vulnerability the social distance is crucial to understand and can influence our perceptions.
When you think about yourself, the social distance is small and the things you think about are concrete since you know yourself well. When you think about someone else, the social distance is much greater and therefore the things you think about are more abstract, again, the idea is you won’t know someone else as well as you know yourself.
The fascinating thing is that when we have low levels of distance such as when we are thinking about ourselves, we tend to think about things which are more negative and practical but when we have high levels of distance, such as when we think about someone else, we think about things that are more positive and desirable.
According to Dr. Bruk, when we imagine someone else being vulnerable we are socially distant so we tend to think of more abstract and favorable things, such as “that person was brave for sharing that,” or “asking for help is a sign of strength” but when we think of ourselves in vulnerable situations we are not socially distant and therefore think in more concrete ways and we imagine every flaw that people will see and every possible way that the interaction can go wrong so instead, we tend to say things to ourselves like “people will perceive me as being incompetent if I ask for help,” or “I will be rejected if I share anything personal about myself.”
As a result, we avoid vulnerability, especially in a workplace setting.
Ironically, when we observe a physical object up close we get more clarity, depth, and information around it. But when we emotionally observe ourselves up close the picture is fuzzy, shallow, and the information is inaccurate as we exaggerate the negative things while ignoring the positive ones.
How do we get a clearer picture and deal with stress and negative emotions that might arise from self examination and exploration?
As Dr. Bruk mentioned when we have distance our perception tends to be more favorable so the answer is, you create distance.
Next week I’ll explore strategies you can use to create that distance.
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If you’re a Chief Human Resources or Chief People Officer, then you can request to join a brand new community I put together called Future Of Work Leaders which focuses on the future of work and employee experience. Join leaders from Tractor Supply, Johnson & Johnson, Lego, Dow, Northrop Grumman and many others. We come together virtually each month and once a year in-person to tackle big themes that go beyond traditional HR.
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