Vulnerability

THE TENSION

Vulnerability. Most new technical leaders believe that admitting uncertainty will cost them credibility. The opposite is usually true - but making that shift requires something most GIS professionals have been trained out of: the willingness to not know, out loud, in front of others.

“Pretending to have the answer closes the door on getting one.”

THE SCENARIO

Amara Nguyen has been leading the Geospatial Analysis Team at Geoscience Australia for just over four months. She is technically excellent - her colleagues know it, her manager knows it, and Amara knows it. What she hasn’t told anyone is that she has no idea how to navigate the policy dimension of this morning’s all-agency briefing.

The Deputy Secretary will be in the room. Amara has had her slides open since six-thirty. The methodology is sound, the data is clean, and she has reviewed the deck four times. What she hasn’t done is ask anyone to help her understand the policy landscape she’ll be presenting into.

Her colleague Dev puts his head around the corner. “How’s it looking?”

“Good,” she says. “All across it.”

She is not across it. She has a technically unimpeachable story and a political context she hasn’t touched. An hour later she walks into the briefing and delivers a flawless technical presentation - and misses three questions from the Deputy Secretary about implications she hadn’t prepared for. The room stays professional. But something shifts in the way people look at her on the way out.

Dev catches up with her afterwards. “Hard room,” he says. Amara nods. She knows exactly what she could have said this morning that might have changed things. She just couldn’t bring herself to say it.

WHAT’S DRIVING IT

Amara’s reluctance to admit uncertainty is not a character flaw - it is a rational response to years of being rewarded for expertise. In technical roles, not knowing something is a risk. In leadership, pretending to know when you don’t is a far larger one.

Vulnerability impacts how you relate to the concerns you have about how you are being perceived. When it is absent, the instinct is to close the gap with performance rather than honesty. Amara chose performance. What she lost in doing so was the chance to prepare properly, to draw on Dev’s knowledge, and to walk into that room actually ready.

The credibility she was trying to protect by saying ‘I’m across it’ was the very thing she surrendered the moment the Deputy Secretary’s questions landed without a useful answer.

A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP WITH VULNERABILITY

A healthy relationship with vulnerability means you can say ‘I don’t know’ in a high-stakes room without it feeling like confession. You share your genuine thinking - including the gaps - because you understand that doing so invites others to contribute rather than holding the load alone. You are open to feedback, comfortable with imperfection, and willing to reveal your authentic self even when circumstances feel threatening.

Rather than performing competence, you build the kind of credibility that comes from being real with people. You leverage vulnerability as a leadership tool: the willingness to be seen as human is precisely what creates the safety for your team to bring their best thinking. Others experience you as approachable, trustworthy, and genuinely present.

REFLECTION PROMPTS

• When something is outside your knowledge, what’s your first response - to ask, or to manage the impression that you already know?

• Who on your team sees the real version of your uncertainty - and who only ever sees the performance?

• What might your team do differently if they knew it was safe to say ‘I don’t know’ in front of you?

• What would it have cost Amara to say ‘I’m not across the policy dimension - can you help me prepare’ before that briefing? And what might it have given her?

If this resonated - if you recognise the performance and the cost of it - the Being Profile is designed to show you exactly where vulnerability sits in your own way of being as a leader, and what becomes possible when you relate to it differently.

Get in touch at hello@mappingbeing.com.au

While the organisations referenced exist, the team lead, other people and the team name have been used for demonstration purposes only. Any resemblance to real-life people, teams, organisations or situations is purely coincidental.

Reference: Tashvir, A. (2021). BEING (p. 233). Engenesis Publications.

[Published 04 May 2026]