{"id":45308,"date":"2019-04-23T11:30:41","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T18:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/want-to-show-that-youre-a-leader-try-being-vulnerable\/"},"modified":"2019-04-23T11:30:41","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T18:30:41","slug":"want-to-show-that-youre-a-leader-try-being-vulnerable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/want-to-show-that-youre-a-leader-try-being-vulnerable\/","title":{"rendered":"Want to Show That You\u2019re a Leader? Try Being Vulnerable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Picture this:\u00a0 in an interview you\u2019re asked a question about something that went wrong in a past job. Instead of simply explaining what happened, you find yourself shamelessly spinning a story about how you had a feeling all along that whatever \u201cit\u201d was would fail but your hand were tied. In different versions, this propensity to preserve our egos, hide our vulnerabilities and only talk about our wins shows up in many MBA applicants that we see. You want to be competitive, so you only talk about the biggest, best and highest profile projects that you\u2019ve worked on or led. Yet, you forget that those wins don\u2019t always tell the reader much about your personality, how you\u2019ve grown (or approach personal growth), how you take feedback, and how you evaluate yourself and the success of your decisions.\u00a0 You don\u2019t want to write a whole application about all of your shortcomings and development needs, but this article is meant to inspire you to look deeper (and even into your past failures or vulnerabilities) for the best leadership stories that can help you stand out from other applicants.<\/p>\n

When you read the first paragraph, you might have said to yourself \u201cyeah I\u2019d never do that\u201d. But it\u2019s more commonplace than you may initially think \u2013 for high achieving people, you have often been held to such a high standard for so long that you\u2019re afraid to fall off of your pedestal by admitting that you were wrong or that you didn\u2019t understand or didn\u2019t do something correctly. It\u2019s engrained in us to not show weakness, especially in certain high intensity careers. In fact, one of my first managers constantly recited the motto \u201cnever admit defeat\u201d (meaning never say you were wrong). But when it comes to your leadership style, and the way you portray yourself in your MBA applications, being \u201cvulnerable\u201d in the right ways can signal a level of maturity and leadership potential that far surpasses what admissions directors are used to seeing. Being vulnerable can be much more of an asset than a weakness as you seek to demonstrate your leadership potential!<\/p>\n

Zooming out, you may be saying to yourself \u201cbut I have limited space \u2013 why would I focus anything on a failure or weakness unless directly asked?\u201d After all, you want to focus your application on highlighting how awesome you are and all of the examples to prove it. But consider this \u2013 being able to show that you learned, took feedback, grew, and turned something around is actually a very powerful message that can support how awesome you are as well. If you want further proof that this matters, ask Kellogg why they have continued to ask the question \u201chow have you grown\u2026\u201d as part of their essay requirements. Kellogg asks directly but most schools are looking for and assessing this as well.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an example of how this could play out so you can see what I mean here. I had a client last year who worked at a very cool (and very large) e-commerce company that you can probably guess the name of. She had several cool leadership stories from her different roles at the company, but honestly they didn\u2019t feel all that unique compared to her peers at other, comparable firms. Then during a brainstorming session we hit a gold mine \u2013 she started telling me a story about how she\u2019d rebooted not only herself, but also her team, after a pretty epic project failure. She\u2019d been reluctant to talk about the project in her applications since the initial failure could come across as reflecting poorly on her (and she\u2019d have to admit her role in it). However, as we explored more, we realized that the risk of admitting a failure was much smaller than the amazing opportunity she had to demonstrate a deep sense of leadership, self-reflection and overall maturity.<\/p>\n

The overarching project failure wasn\u2019t entirely her fault \u2013 she was working on a small team led by someone who wasn\u2019t a great manager; but she also admits that she didn\u2019t speak-up as the ship was going down. Given how her org was setup, she probably could have done something. We started talking about all of the reasons why she hadn\u2019t acted \u2013 fear, doubt, lack of confidence, etc. Then she explained how she course-corrected. The person who had been leading the team was asked to step down. The project resources were scaled back. And my client, despite being fairly young, was asked to lead the new, even smaller team to see if they could make it work (a last ditch effort). And you guessed it \u2013 she made it happen. She got creative, created a culture of consistent feedback on her team to prevent groupthink this time around, and ultimately launched a new tool for her company\u2019s too-many-to-count number of customers.<\/p>\n

Could someone read it and say \u201cgee, I guess she\u2019s not a natural leader because she didn\u2019t speak up in the first place\u201d? Maybe. But that\u2019s not likely once they read about how she reflected upon her actions, how she wished she\u2019d acted, and what that taught her about herself and how she needed to grow and develop. Then the \u201ccome from behind\u201d win as well as the way she empowered her team was the icing on the cake demonstrating that not only was she able to personally grow, but she was able to start making an impact by learning fast and being thoughtful in her decisions.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s leadership potential friends. And that\u2019s exactly the type of personality that admissions directors are looking for. In case you\u2019re wondering, she got into her top two choices \u2013 Kellogg and Haas \u2013 even though her test scores were quite a bit below the average for those two schools. My guess is that it came down to her essays (as it often does), and she nailed it by painting a vivid picture of herself as a leader through a mix of touting accolades and being honest and vulnerable in admitting challenges and growth areas.<\/p>\n

So, as you\u2019re thinking about how to demonstrate your own leadership style and potential in your essays, here\u2019s some food for thought from author and researcher Brene Brown who has conducted extensive research on the topic of vulnerability in leadership:<\/p>\n