I Was Vulnerable At Work And It Backfired! What Should I Do?

Vulnerability, especially at work, doesn't always go according to plan. In fact I can PROMISE that vulnerability will be used against you at some point in your career, how should you respond?

Hello Leaders!

I hope your 2024 is off to a great start. It should be an exciting year and even though I expect it will be filled with turbulence, I’m hopeful and optimistic that it will be a year of growth and opportunity. My team and I have some exciting things we are working on which I will share later.

My wife and I spent NYE with some friends at a Russian restaurant in Los Angeles which was a lot of fun. We were with our kids until around 9:30 pm and when they went to sleep, we went out :) Here’s a pic from our friends house right before we went out.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about a CEO who was vulnerable at work and had it backfire, you can check out that post here:

Over 73% Of People Were Vulnerable At Work And Had It Backfire. Here's What Happened To One CEO And What He Learned

Today, I want to go over what you should do if when you are vulnerable at work and it backfires…because it will happen. It’s happened to many of the CEOs I interviewed in my book, Leading With Vulnerability, and it has happened to most of the people I surveyed in both formal and informal polls.

Remember, vulnerability is about doing or saying something at work that can potentially be used against you. It’s essentially exposing a gap that you have.

Let’s say you confide in someone who uses the information to insult you, make you feel small, or use it as a way to hurt you or your career. At this point you have a choice.

You can either use this as a reason to justify why you should never be vulnerable with anyone at work ever again, this is called a fixed moment (not a good approach, especially for leaders), or, you can do something else, which I’ll explore below.