Vulnerable, but not too much!

It's all very well to show vulnerability (admitting your limitations or even failings). But is it possible to show too much, and if so, how much is too much?

Whilst we want our leaders to be human and to make it alright for us to be imperfect and even make mistakes from time to time (the fastest way to learn and grow), we do not want them to be so vulnerable that we lose our faith in them.

Nelson Mandela, one of the greatest world leaders of the last 20 years, understood this to a 'tee'.

In one of my favourite Mandela stories the great man is on a tiny plane during the 1994 Presidential election campaign. Twenty minutes from its destination one of the two 'prop' engines stops. Passengers begin to panic. The only thing that calms them is Mandela, who quietly continues to read his newspaper "as if he were a commuter on his morning train". The plane makes a successful landing, and in the back of his armour plated BMW several minutes later the soon-to-be president turns to his journalist companion and admits "Man, I was terrified up there!"

Mandela intuitively understood that, whilst he experienced as much fear as the next person, it was not always helpful to show it. "I can't pretend that I'm brave and that I can beat the whole world" he said. "But as a leader, you cannot let people know you're afraid. You must put up a front."

The message for me is this: whilst it is extraordinarily powerful to show your vulnerability at the right time, it can be catastrophic to show it at the wrong time. The skill of leadership, therefore, is not only knowing what to do and how. But also, and most critically, when.