Introduction to Employing Differences

[00:00:03] Paul: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

[00:00:08] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:00:10] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis.

[00:00:12] Karen: Each episode we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is: what is calibrating vulnerability?

Exploring Collaborative and Relational Skills

[00:00:20] Paul: So this is yet another episode in our series about collaborative and relational skills. Over the last four weeks, we've talked about sort of four basic skills that we see deployed a lot. We've talked about listening, we've talked about speaking. And so those are things that are sort of out in the world.

[00:00:36] Paul: We then started to get into some of these more inner things. We talked about curiosity and introspection. We talked about that there are times you may choose to deploy those or not. 

Understanding Calibrating Vulnerability

[00:00:47] Paul: So today we want to talk about a skill that you'd likely use in conjunction with some of those outer skills, right? In conjunction with choosing to say something or not, choosing to ask a question or not.

[00:01:00] Paul: The calibrating vulnerability is something that requires us to do some degree of introspection and requires us to be curious about what's going out in the world. So what we're really talking about today sort of sits at the confluence of these ideas, of vulnerability, of safety, of risk, of trust.

[00:01:19] Paul: And how we decide how vulnerable we are willing to let ourselves be and how vulnerable it makes sense for us to be in particular situations.

The Role of Vulnerability in Relationships

[00:01:29] Karen: Yeah, I think the work of Brene Brown, which fortunately has been very popular and gotten out there a lot, but it's this, her work is all about this idea that vulnerability is a necessary piece for relationships. That if we're not willing to be vulnerable, we aren't gonna work well with others, we're not gonna experience a lot of connection with others because we really depend on the vulnerability of each other for connection.

[00:01:57] Karen: And I think that has landed slowly and with a lot of resistance in the culture because we've had for decades this frame of safety first. And in very real ways, safety and vulnerability are opposites. They are kind of, you can't be vulnerable and safe at the same time. Mutual exclusive. So if we're saying safety first, but then we're saying we need to be vulnerable, what does that mean?

Safety vs. Vulnerability

[00:02:25] Karen: And I've really come to not be too impressed with the idea of safety first. I think that it's a mistake to go there. 

[00:02:38] Karen: And I had an experience that kind of taught me my frame about it, which was as I was expecting my first child, and there I am in the baby store, the big bucks baby store with the, you know, dozens of car seats to choose from.

[00:02:47] Karen: And there's a perfectly fine rational car seat for, you know, a hundred dollars in change. This was a while ago. And then there's the deluxe car seat that is safer and better and fabulous in all the ways. And well, you know, keep my child safer in a particular kind of accident. And I think it probably will.

[00:03:07] Karen: I don't think it's all hype. I think it's true that there are car accidents that a child would be safe in that car seat where they might not be in the other one. And my first go-to was safety first. And this is my child and I'm their parent, and I'm supposed to protect them.

[00:03:22] Karen: And how could I not buy the more expensive car seat? Which by the way was like, we could have afforded it, but it would've been a stretch and then there would be other things we didn't have. And I looked at it and I thought, you know, for the next couple of decades I am going to be deciding how much safety to buy for this child. Because at the end of the day, there was the money.

[00:03:46] Karen: There also was the fact that that other car seat would've been bigger and cumbersome and kind of a pain to deal with. I came to the conclusion that safety always comes at a cost. Maybe there are examples where it doesn't, but we don't need to talk about those. Great do it. But most of the time, anytime we're thinking about it, safety comes at a cost of convenience, of efficiency, of relationships.

[00:04:08] Karen: In the cases of things we're talking about, time, money, all those things. And we have to decide how much safety do we need and what's it worth. And having raised this child, I bought the less expensive car seat. Fortunately, it never mattered and she grew up to be a trapeze artist. So high priority on safety clearly was not, not that the thing for her.

[00:04:31] Karen: And I just think that brings to mind this awareness of how much safety do we need, which is the other side of calibrating vulnerability. And I tell that story so that we can think about the safety side and the vulnerability side, which is the other part of the same coin.

[00:04:47] Paul: Yeah. The other thing that shows up for me in this, is again, this notion of risk. 

Psychological Safety and Group Dynamics

[00:04:52] Paul: So I've been, a big fan not only of Brene Brown's work, but also of Dr. Amy Edmondson's work in psychological safety over the last 10 plus years that I've been following it. And she talks about, you know, psychological safety is the belief within a group.

[00:05:09] Paul: That it is safe for interpersonal risk taking and by safe, like what we mean around that is that we will not be unduly punished for speaking up, for asking questions that it's not to say that we can just say whatever we want and there will be no consequences, but that there are certain types of risks that we might take in our relationship.

[00:05:33] Paul: Where that won't be used against us. So it's again, not the notion that our safety there is absolute, but it is inviting us to be vulnerable, right? To say things like, I made a mistake here. That's a piece of vulnerability and it can feel very, very uncomfortable and it can feel very unsafe.

[00:05:50] Paul: And oftentimes we're not gonna do that unless we have the belief in the group that it is possible for us to do that. And this is where, as Dr. Edmondson's work goes, this is where group learning comes from because when we're actually able to talk about how things have gone wrong, things have gone not that we wanted them to, that we can ask questions, we can propose ideas, that when we do that, we actually get better results and we're able to learn and grow and things like that.

[00:06:16] Paul: And so there's a piece where, and then of course that's been picked up. Just like this notion of safety was picked up to sort of market at us in various ways. It's been picked up to then turn, you know, people start saying things like, well, is there such a thing as too much psychological safety, which kind of misunderstands this whole concept, which points to how complicated and messy this space really is.

[00:06:39] Paul: When you and I first started talking about this, I was just like, I don't know where we're necessarily gonna go with it. Because, and when you first proposed it a few weeks back, I was like, what does calibrating vulnerability even mean?

[00:06:51] Paul: And as we've explored a little bit more, I've come to sort of understand that what we're really talking about here is this idea that it's the skill of sensing where it is appropriate for us to do something maybe without a net. Right? To say, okay, there is a risk here, like something could happen. But I'm willing to do it because I think it's worth the payoff.

Finding the Right Balance

[00:07:17] Karen: Yeah, and I do a lot of this kind of work with groups, and I think that a lot of what we're talking about here is figuring out kinda where your boundaries are. Because I think that we can go too far on the safety road. We can also go too far on the vulnerability road. We can just say, well, if I want relationships, then I don't protect myself, and I show up and I share whatever, and I say what needs to be said.

[00:07:41] Karen: Or you know, whatever your versions of feeling vulnerable are. And we just sort of turn off the safety warning signals in our brain. I don't propose that either. That's the calibrating part, right? We need more vulnerability than we generally have. I think that's one of the things that really gets in the way of relationships and good collaboration. But not so much that none of us feel safe, right?

[00:08:05] Karen: Like we can't work and function and feel good in a constant state of terror. So we've gotta find that spot. Where we're doing enough of the vulnerability to get the relationship payoff that we want, but not so much that either they're overwhelmed with it or that we're overwhelmed with it, or that we actually are less safe than we need to be.

[00:08:32] Karen: And so I really encourage groups to let go of the idea of being absolutely safe first. And certainly not to swing all the way to the idea of everybody is vulnerable, and now we're gonna sit in a circle and everybody's gonna share a deep, dark secret so we can feel connected to each other. Yeah, don't do that.

[00:08:49] Karen: But that we are, what I say, safe enough to be vulnerable, which of course is ironic. We're being safe, we're not being vulnerable. But I do think what we're looking for in our groups is how do we set a space that has enough safety through structures, through relationships, through trust building, through various ways has enough safety that people will stretch into that uncomfortable place where there's a part of their brain going, uh oh, uh oh, uh oh. But there's another part of their brain going, it's okay. It's okay. Like I am safe enough.

[00:09:28] Karen: And that discomfort space, that space that's saying, I don't know about this. This is not comfortable, like way outside comfort zone. That we learn to recognize a certain kind of feeling with that as this is a place where powerful things might happen as opposed to this is a place I should run away from.

[00:09:48] Paul: Yeah. 

The Discomfort Zone

[00:09:49] Paul: I think that really is kind of that fundamental skill is recognizing that there's those kind of three different zones, right?

[00:09:54] Paul: There's your comfort zone. Where you don't have to be vulnerable, like it feels perfectly comfortable and you're fine. There is the danger zone of the panic zone. Where you're so anxious about what's about to happen and things like that, right?

[00:10:08] Paul: And you are in some cases, in some real danger, you wanna stay out of both of those in a lot of ways to really get the impact. The work that we're talking about. Though, you skill is about finding that useful discomfort zone between them, because that is where these breakthroughs really come.

[00:10:25] Paul: One of the things, when I did a lot of improv theater, one of the things we talked about, from one of the founders of our tradition was this idea of going towards the danger. And the idea here was that people go to the theater to see things that they themselves are afraid to do. And so it makes good drama, right?

[00:10:42] Paul: When the actors on stage do things that members of the audience are afraid of doing. That's not necessarily what I'm recommending here, but what I really did take away from that work, and I think what you are kind of pointing at is the idea that discomfort is a compass, right?

[00:10:57] Paul: That it points the way towards where are we likely to expand our relational skill, our collaboration skill. You know, it points to where a risk that is useful to take might be. So it's telling us hmm, because likely what's going on is if we're not taking those risks, then we're probably not getting as a group or in a relationship, some result we actually want.

[00:11:25] Paul: Like our point here is not that we should live in that place of discomfort all the time. 'Cause that would be exhausting. Right. Our point is about recognizing, and this maybe is the secondary part of this skill, is recognizing when is our degree of invulnerability, right? When is our degree to which we are not being vulnerable, getting in the way of some result we actually want.

[00:11:49] Paul: That the group is trying to get to. This is where I think one of the first places the vulnerability really came into the mainstream discourse was from Patrick Lencioni's five Dysfunctions of a team, where he talks about vulnerability based trust, about the ability of people in a group to sort of set aside that feeling of perfect safety to admit that they're human, that they have flaws, and to build trust as a group by doing those kinds of disclosures.

[00:12:14] Paul: Now, I think that has then gotten, like all of these other concepts that we've talked about, kind of people have run too far with that and missed the initial point. Which is that if we keep being and holding ourselves as safe as we are, as non vulnerable as we are, we're gonna keep getting the same results in our collaboration spaces that we're getting right now.

[00:12:37] Paul: And so recognizing when, hey, I wanna improve the way that we're working together, either professionally or personally or in community. That's a time when I need to be able to step into that space of discomfort and maybe say the thing that I've not been wanting to say or ask the question I've not been wanting to ask.

[00:12:57] Karen: And I do wanna be careful with your point about we don't suggest staying in the discomfort all the time. There absolutely are situations where I am completely comfortable and completely happy, and I'm not feeling particularly vulnerable and I'm in a fabulous spot in a relationship and just loving life.

[00:13:13] Karen: And there's nothing wrong with that. We're not saying there's a problem there. But if that's all the time, probably in any relationship and certainly in groups and team and community environments like we talk about on the show, I'm gonna be getting curious about what is missing. Because I think a lot of times when things look like they're just flying along, somebody's feeling dismissed or run over or not heard.

[00:13:41] Karen: Or somebody's unhappy and shoving their thing under the carpet because they're not stretching toward speaking up or whatever, and you're getting this accumulation of muck that eventually you trip over and you know, call one of us. And it's a lot harder to get there. And so I think that if you're asking yourself, gee, you know, is there enough vulnerability?

[00:14:04] Karen: Is this the thing I wanna work on? I promise you there is a place in your life where it would be a good idea for you to be more vulnerable than you are. I think that's just really reliably true. It's true for me, certainly. And wondering where that is and when is the right time for that and the capacity thing that we've talked about with some of the others, like when do I have the capacity to do vulnerability?

[00:14:26] Karen: And where I could get hurt a little and be okay, you know, you don't wanna do this when you know your, your cat has just died and you're stressed out and your house burned down and you're on the very last edge of what you can function with. Or maybe it's just a major project has been burning the candle at both ends or whatever, but you're just down at, to the drakes, that's not your vulnerable day.

[00:14:45] Karen: But looking for those times when you can stretch into less comfortable things, which for some people is being quiet and listening more. For some people, the less comfortable thing is speaking up. For some people, the less comfortable thing is saying a negative thing. For some people it's giving an opinion of what we think we should do. But learning to know yourself and to recognize that feeling, that is the, this is wildly uncomfortable, but not actually intolerably dangerous.

[00:15:18] Karen: And my guide for people on this is if you're feeling squirmy and uncomfortable, you're probably in a really good spot. If you wanna run screaming from the room, then probably this is not a thing you should be doing.

[00:15:30] Paul: Yeah. 

Vulnerability and Power Dynamics

[00:15:30] Paul: I think it's also important to recognize how vulnerability and safety and risk taking and such, also intersects with power which we've talked, you know, some about on the show before. Because oftentimes, and unfortunately this is a thing as this has shown up in the zeitgeist, right?

[00:15:47] Paul: It's become sort of deur to say, well, we're gonna start this offsite with an icebreaker where everyone is gonna be vulnerable, right? And they're gonna share something. And usually the person who starts that process, the thing that they're sharing that isn't actually that much of a vulnerability move for them, right?

[00:16:06] Paul: That they're not actually all that uncomfortable sharing the thing that, you know, it seems like a big deal, right? They share something that seems like, oh yeah, this is, you know, they're, they're being very vulnerable about this, but in a lot of ways, like their power and their status in the group may insulate them from that, right?

[00:16:22] Paul: So it's not really a risk in some ways. So I think it's important to recognize that those things also intersect. That what is vulnerable for one person to do in one situation, in one environment is not the same for everybody else and for anyone else in that situation that there are a lot of external factors that play into it as well.

[00:16:40] Paul: And that when we try to force people to be vulnerable because we think that that's going to be useful for the group in some way that that is very likely to backfire.

[00:16:50] Karen: Absolutely. 

The Messiness of Vulnerability

[00:16:51] Karen: So I think where we're traveling around here today is it's the very messiness that is vulnerability. And we talked some about the sort of extremes of you can go safety first and be all about safety and kind of ignore the fact that safety comes at a cost and what that cost might be.

[00:17:09] Karen: We don't think that's a good idea. And you can go the other way where you just say, I'm all vulnerability all the time. I just say whatever, do whatever. Don't worry about safety. Don't think that's a good idea either, and that's why this calibration comes into play. That what we're looking for is that space where we are safe enough to be vulnerable and to be vulnerable then knowing that some of the time we will get hurt.

[00:17:37] Karen: So when is the right day for me to do that? When is the right context for me to do that? And a lot of the psychological safety stuff comes into play here. There's been a lot of work on that and that's getting enough safety is a lot in that psychological safety stuff.

[00:17:52] Karen: But we don't also wanna always depend on that. We want to take some risks. We want to engage in some of the risky stuff that makes us more available for connection because it is that risky, vulnerable space that facilitates or makes possible the kinds of relationships where we feel connection, where we collaborate really well, where we work well together.

[00:18:13] Karen: And so there are moments in life where we don't need to do this, where it's all going along fine. Everything's working, we're getting what we want. There are reliably moments in life where if we wanna get the very best that we can out of the teamwork, out of the connection, out of the workspace, we need to embrace that feeling of discomfort that is the vulnerable space and say, oh, this is a compass that's pointing me toward the really meaningful thing.

[00:18:40] Karen: Might be there, might not, but leaning in to, I'm gonna head into that uncomfortable space and I'm gonna do the thing that's less comfortable for me. Because maybe something really lovely can happen there. Something very connecting, very productive, very useful. So it's about finding where those kind of boundaries are, where the edges of that is so that we're not living all the time in our comfort zone, which by the way, makes other people less comfortable and less safe usually.

[00:19:09] Karen: And we're not jumping off the deep end into a space where we're not safe. And actually the people around us don't feel safe. And it's just way out of context. But we are safe enough and vulnerable enough to meet our goals. 

[00:19:24] Paul: Well, that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

[00:19:28] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.