The stages we watch today are filled with leaders who represent a leadership style that portrays control, signals having all the answers and rarely lets hesitations show. The assumption is that confidence sustains credibility.
In fact, vulnerability is often treated like a liability, but when used wisely, it is one of the strongest sources of strategic strength.
A McKinsey study of more than 500 global executives reveals that the most common vulnerability among leaders is not a lack of skill or insight, but the fear of appearing vulnerable at all. That fear is costly. It narrows decision-making, shuts down debate and breeds rigidity. A rigidity that becomes far more fragile than any personal vulnerability ever could be.
Here are five ways to shift and gain a strategic advantage.
1. Turn mistakes into momentum
No leader gets everything right. Yet the danger of the exposure far outweighs the mistake itself. By stepping into the vulnerable space and owning the narrative, you take control, limit others’ ability to define the verdict, and create room to set a new direction.
One of the most powerful leadership moments I’ve witnessed was a senior leader, now a CEO, who stood before his company and said, “I was wrong.” Not about a minor detail, but one that wasted thousands of hours and millions of dollars. He didn’t pad it, didn’t spin it. He owned it and asked for support in changing course. The room went silent, then shifted. Respect deepened, and responsibility became shared through his gesture of vulnerability.
How to do it: Maintain objectivity in your work so you can be fast to see when a decision fails, and have a standing invitation for trusted partners to call out how your moves could be seen. Once aware, clearly identify the mistake, clarify the lesson and establish the path forward before others. The ability to admit mistakes openly is not a crack in authority — it is the foundation of it.
2. Treat doubts as early intelligence
Vulnerability isn’t only what you reveal; it should also be what you listen for. Organizations are full of unspoken anxieties.
A customer service colleague may be worried that AI-enabled customer service would lack empathy. A supply-chain manager worries their systems can’t flex to volatility, and a senior executive may not be willing to have an open Q&A.
Too often, these are dismissed as “resistance.” In truth, doubts are early-warning signals. The customer service colleague may be highlighting that past call recordings – the very data training the AI – lack empathy. The executive may not feel that the strategy is fully thought through or that they are not personally committed. So when progress stalls, the key is often found in hidden vulnerabilities.
How to do it: To avoid hierarchies stifling openness, create cross silo forums where “worries” can be surfaced as curiosity, not complaint. Ask: What are people afraid of? What are they resisting? And encourage investigative, almost anthropological work to get to the core of these. Strong leaders don’t just tolerate vulnerabilities; they translate them into strategic foresight.
3. Trade certainty for collective intelligence
Many executives rise through the ranks by getting things right, and for most, the transition from delivering answers to asking the right questions is long behind them. However, this does not mean that all executives acknowledge the risk of appearing overconfident. Overconfidence signals that input is unwelcome, shutting down ownership across teams.
The result is that instead of striving for excellence, teams protect themselves, waiting for cues from the top. Energy diverts into proving certainty rather than creating progress in the market. In a culture of flawless answers, inertia wins.
How to do it: Choose openness. Actively. Be constantly hungry for challenging assumptions, and be quick to analyze whether input challenges core concepts or execution. Take as many chances as possible to rotate ownership of problem-solving, so teams get a chance to feel their input drives outcomes. A leader who admits they don’t hold every answer creates space for others to contribute – building collective intelligence that fuels competitiveness in the market.
4. Admit limits to build stronger partnerships
Personal vulnerability doesn’t stay personal for long. When leaders are willing to admit their own limits, they also create the conditions for a company to acknowledge its organizational blind spots, the consequences of market movements, gaps in capacity and other areas for improvement. Pretending those weaknesses don’t exist only makes them more dangerous.
The leaders who turn those exposures into advantage are the ones who treat them as invitations to collaborate:
- Microsoft and OpenAI: Microsoft recognized that, despite its resources, it couldn’t move fast enough on frontier AI. By acknowledging this, it forged a multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI, transforming a strategic weakness into a growth engine for Azure.
- Inditex (Zara, Pull & Bear, etc.): Rather than assuming they could predict fashion trends from the top, Inditex knew how quickly and locally anchored taste shifts were. By being among the first to have every salesperson in-store feed real-time data back to headquarters, it converted vulnerability into one of the fastest supply chain models in retail.
How to do it: Get used to asking not only “What do we know?” but also “What do we not know?” Be candid about where the organization is exposed and who, outside of the organization, may be better equipped to fill those gaps. By connecting personal vulnerabilities with market opportunities fast, you shift from defending past decisions to recognizing where you and the business may need others. This builds trust and provides the clarity needed to transform fragility into resilient, growth-driving ecosystems.
5. Expose weak spots without freezing
Even children learn to cover up when they wrestle or play fight. Shielding the most vulnerable spots feels safer. But it won’t get you the win. When your attention shifts to defending, you stop scanning for what could be learned; you often freeze and lose sight of the bigger picture, and things unravel.
The point is not to deny or conceal vulnerability. It will always exist — in people and in businesses. The strategic value lies in leaders recognizing things clearly and then moving forward anyway.
By showing that you understand both your own weak spots and the capabilities and exposures, yet still choose to act with conviction, you reduce fear for everyone around you. Others see that it’s possible to be more than just defensive, and that confidence becomes contagious. And turns this into a source of collective resilience.
How to do it: Take an active step to hold your stance and shift your focus from protecting yourself to understanding others’ vulnerabilities. Then risks become clearer, and you move from worrying to being able to actively address them. Stepping into the market with presence and eyes wide open creates space for others to follow. It deflates the pressure of others’ shields, turning your vulnerabilities into an accelerator of momentum rather than a rigid stance.
You can cling to invincibility, mistaking rigidity for strength. Or you can train the skill of seeing and embracing vulnerability as a lever for clarity, collaboration and growth (your vulnerabilities become business vulnerabilities).
The question, then, isn’t whether you dare to be vulnerable. It’s whether you can afford not to be.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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