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Founders hide their self-doubt to protect credibility, but the opposite works. When leaders admit uncertainty, teams feel more connected and committed. Vulnerability builds trust, not erodes it.
Founders hide their self-doubt to protect credibility, but the opposite works. When leaders admit uncertainty, teams feel more connected and committed. Vulnerability builds trust, not erodes it.
Many of the founders that I meet have bouts of self-doubt. Am I good enough for the job? Am I doing what I'm supposed to? Am I doing what I can? And they have a reluctancy to show this vulnerability to people around them, because if they show to their team that they're not quite sure of what they're doing or if they're doing a good enough job, they kind of expect their team to lose faith in them or perhaps start questioning their own sort of belonging in the company and whether or not they should follow their leader if he or she is uncertain about certain topics. And similarly, if they expose themselves to the board saying, you know what, I'm actually not quite sure what to do here, they're afraid that they would put them in a bad light. But the reality is that the more you show that vulnerability, the more that you show that self-doubt, the more your people will actually follow you.
