Vulnerability

The tension

Vulnerability. Every technical leader knows they’re supposed to have the answers. That’s how they got the role — precision, expertise, a track record of being the person who knew. So what happens when the question lands and the answer doesn’t come? For most, the gap is filled immediately — not with honesty, but with something that sounds like an answer. And the room moves on, and no one says anything, and something quietly breaks.

The scenario

Marcus has spent seven years as a GIS analyst — the kind of person colleagues come to when a spatial query is behaving strangely or a projection is off by just enough to matter. He knows data. He knows how to build something rigorous from incomplete inputs, how to make uncertainty legible through a well-constructed map. Six months ago, he was promoted to team lead.

This morning’s project meeting is a joint session with the client — a state government agency reviewing a land use suitability model the team has been building for several months. Halfway through the session, a senior planner raises a question about the classification methodology: whether the weighting schema still holds given some updated zoning data released by the department last week.

Marcus has seen the update. He hasn’t worked through what it means for the model yet — that’s on his list for this afternoon. But the question is live, the room is watching, and the silence is only a second long before he starts talking.

He explains that the team has reviewed the updated dataset and that the methodology remains sound. He uses the right words — spatial integrity, sensitivity analysis, iterative validation — and the planner nods and moves on. The meeting ends well. The client seems satisfied.

Back at his desk, Marcus pulls up the new zoning data. Within twenty minutes, he can see the weighting schema does need to be revisited. Not dramatically — but enough. He opens the meeting notes and sees his words already documented: “team has reviewed, methodology confirmed.” He closes the tab.

What unsettles him isn’t the technical error — that’s fixable. It’s the memory of watching himself construct the answer in real time, knowing it wasn’t quite true, and doing it anyway. That’s not a data problem.

What’s driving it

An unhealthy relationship with vulnerability rarely looks like weakness from the inside. It looks like competence — like holding the room together, like protecting the client relationship, like what a lead is supposed to do. The discomfort with not knowing isn’t vanity. It’s structural: a professional identity built on analytical precision, now in a role where the most important questions aren’t always answerable at the table.

When a leader says “I don’t know,” they’re not just making a statement about a fact. They’re temporarily releasing control of how they’re perceived. For someone whose value has always lived in the rigour of their outputs — in maps that are accurate, in models that hold up — that release can feel genuinely dangerous. Even when the actual risk is small. Even when the cost of pretending is higher.

What a healthy relationship with vulnerability looks like

A healthy relationship with vulnerability would have looked different in that meeting room — and would have left Marcus feeling different on the drive back.

It might have sounded like: “We’ve seen the updated zoning release. I haven’t finished working through the implications for the weighting schema yet — I want to give you an accurate answer rather than a fast one. Can I come back to you by end of week?”

That’s not weakness. That’s the kind of response that builds genuine trust with clients — because it signals that when Marcus does say the methodology is sound, he means it. A leader who is open about the edges of their current knowledge is one whose certainty, when it comes, actually lands. The room doesn’t lose confidence. Often, it gains it.

This is what the Being Framework means when it describes a healthy relationship with vulnerability: being willing to reveal your authentic self regardless of what others may think, and leveraging that openness to generate trust rather than performing a competence you don’t yet have.

Reflection

Sit with these questions - and if you're feeling courageous have a conversation about it with colleagues or your supervisor:

1. When you don’t have an answer in a high-stakes moment, what do you do — and how much of that is a choice?

2. Think of a time you gave an answer that wasn’t quite honest. What were you protecting?

3. What would it actually cost you to say “I don’t know, but I’ll find out” — and what might it give you?

4. How do the people closest to you at work experience your relationship with not-knowing? Do you know?