The first place I ever taught was at a small private Christian school with an enrollment hovering around 90 students in grades 7 through 12. We were a small, tight-knit faculty with a dynamo for a headmaster. Going into my third year on faculty, we gathered one morning in our headmaster’s office for the first day of summer in-service. After laughing and catching up, we took our seats around the conference table and he opened the session in prayer. Raising our heads ready to be “fed and led,” we watched our headmaster falter, unable to speak as the words caught in his throat. He grimaced, trying to press ahead, then his shoulders and face fell slightly as he looked down at his folded hands. He took a deep breath, looked up at us, and said in a steady voice: “I’m struggling with feeling like I am failing in my role. Enrollment hasn’t grown and … I’ve let it impact my marriage. I’ve not been a good husband.” Unable to go on, he bowed his head without stopping the tears.
The philosophy teacher rose, walked over behind the headmaster, put his hands on his shoulders, and prayed over him. He received the prayer and our subsequent words of love and commitment with dignity and gratitude, chuckling ruefully now through his tears. “My goodness,” I thought to myself, “I’d follow this man to the gates of hell.”
What my beloved headmaster demonstrated in that moment, among other things, was vulnerability and trust. He entrusted his entire faculty with knowledge of his struggles, his fears, and his self-doubt. It wasn’t a pity party, nor an excuse, and in the end it didn’t take very long. But the impact of that moment has stuck with me to this day. Rather than diminishing our respect and confidence in him, precisely the opposite—and more than the opposite—happened. Not only did I come away with a deeper respect for this man and a stronger confidence in his heart, but I also became more invested in his success and our shared need to enroll more students.
Patrick Lencioni has shown leaders the profound practicality of cultivating a habit of vulnerability on their respective teams. As he observes in The Advantage, “When everyone on a team knows that everyone else is vulnerable enough to say and mean those things, and that no one is going to hide his or her weaknesses or mistakes, they develop a deep and uncommon sense of trust.” He refers to this as “vulnerability-based trust” and it is the foundation for building a great team. Surface-level trust is straightforward: prove yourself to be dependable and others will trust you to get similar jobs done. Vulnerability-based trust is more paradoxical: Admit your weaknesses and mistakes, sacrifice your ego for the team, and your team will be more willing and more eager to tackle the terrifying unknown with you.
The direct result of cultivating vulnerability-based trust on a team is that the team becomes healthier. Teammates admit their mistakes, ask for help, and acknowledge their weaknesses without fear of judgment. They stop playing politics. They say what needs to be said in the meeting, not in the parking lot. They argue passionately and productively for the best decision, not their own self-interest. They commit to team goals and decisions even when it is a sacrifice. They feel greater ownership, become better collaborators, and willingly hold each other accountable. In this way, healthy teams are able to access the full potential of each member, make better decisions, and achieve far greater outcomes.
No matter a school’s size, every leadership team will grapple with pressures that push them away from functioning cooperatively and productively. In large schools, the pressure for operational efficiency can push leadership team members into operational silos. Athletic directors or academic deans may become more concerned with their own fiefdoms than with the school’s needs, starting to protect their own interests instead of looking out for the good of the whole. In small schools, the pressure on administrators to wear many hats often leads to operational overlap and confusion. This lack of clarity is worsened by the fear of strife disrupting highly interconnected relationships. Imagine a head of school who attends the same church as her director of operations and is close friends with his wife, who is herself the school’s lead volunteer: it seems easier to quietly clean up his poor work than to address performance gaps directly. Easier, but more harmful in the long run. In this case, as in the case of the large school, trust is eroded, team health is sacrificed, operational effectiveness suffers, and the whole school is negatively impacted.
The good news about vulnerability-based trust is that whatever your team’s starting point, it is possible to build authentic relationships and become a healthy team. The key is to realize that no amount of dependable performance earns this type of trust. Confidence and respect, both important, are earned this way, but they are not the trust we’re looking for. The vulnerable leader builds trust within his team by modeling vulnerability, entrusting himself, warts and all, to his team.
If you want your teammates to trust each other, begin by entrusting yourself to them. Admit one of your shortcomings (hint: they already know what your shortcomings are, and they’re still with you). Admit your fault. Seek forgiveness. Ask for accountability moving forward. Commit to improving. Model the behavior you want to see in others. Are you worried that one team member would use that information against you? If so, what elephant in the room have you not addressed with them? Humility of this sort is not weakness when it is motivated by love for your team and your school. It’s strength—and the team members your school deserves will recognize it as such.