{"id":41190,"date":"2025-03-13T22:21:30","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T05:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=41190"},"modified":"2025-03-13T22:21:30","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T05:21:30","slug":"vulnerability-to-lead-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/vulnerability-to-lead-well\/","title":{"rendered":"Vulnerability to Lead Well"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leadership is often defined by strength, empowerment, control, and authority. Have we wondered what leadership might look like through the lens of authenticity and vulnerability? Hello. My name is Judith, and I want a world where leadership strength is about vulnerability, transparency, self-awareness, openness, and emotional intelligence. These are wonderful tools for building trust among our colleagues, having deeper connections with our teams, and, in turn, creating healthier collaboration. In this landscape, we see leaders grow in emotional intelligence, where we offer our true selves! Walker says, \u201cLeadership is about who you are, not what you know or what skills you have. Leadership is about trust, and it is about power.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Walker argues that to lead well, leaders must first know and embrace who they are. \u00a0I was a 20-year-old executive secretary at a booming hardwood flooring company. I was a good fit for the company because I was organized and had strong interpersonal skills. \u00a0I was one of two women in the company, surrounded by some savvy businessmen. Mr. Wells was the company’s President, and I was his assistant. He built the company and was a high-profile leader among all the businessmen in the front office and the many frontline crews. All these strong leaders intimidated me, and I wondered if I had added any value to the company until Mr. Wells encouraged me to use my superpower strengths. He encouraged me to build trust among our staff, international buyers, vendors, and customers. He saw the importance for our company to be known as a friendly and trustworthy company. Walker highlights that leaders become undefended when they feel safe.[2]<\/a> I now felt safe because Mr. Wells entrusted who I was to lead part of the company culture.<\/p>\n

As you can imagine, this business was quite a testosterone-filled landscape, but now, there was a part of the business that allowed for authenticity. I was a young 20-year-old just starting out, and I was so afraid to let my guard down that I felt I needed not to be my true self and be as tough as all the men there. Mr. Wells was the first boss who encouraged me to be my true self and made me understand the value I brought through the genuine ways I connected with everyone. I became more self-aware and chose to lean in and grow in confidence with this gift I had.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo understand the root of our undefendedness, we must first understand the architecture of our ego… the ego is formed throughout childhood. Ultimately, it is that that we are defending.\u201d[3]<\/a> \u00a0I grew up in an Indonesian family. Our Asian culture was a strong honour culture, where we respected our parents, elders and those in authority. At a young age, I was trained by my parents always to honour other people. I quickly learned to serve others and be watchful as to how I could help someone in need, and these are some of the experiences I had that shaped my leadership behaviour. Character was incredibly important to my parents, and I was raised this way.\u00a0 These values stayed with me growing up, and I know my identity slowly came out in my leadership. Now that I\u2019m older, I have greater confidence to lead through who I am.<\/p>\n

Walker talks about the importance of Emotional Intelligence in leadership. Until 10 years ago, I felt my emotional intelligence was weak and did not add value to an organization. I\u2019ve always felt out of place, yet at the same time, I had such a passion for sharing this sacredness with others to provide welcome, hospitality, and encouragement of their true self in this world. I\u2019ve always felt insecure; I\u2019ve been devalued because the conventional approach to leadership focuses more on the outcomes rather than the practices of fostering stronger connections with teams, creating more effective and cohesive environments to become more authentic and inspiring in the ministry world.<\/p>\n

It takes great courage to lead in the way Simon talks about. It takes absolute intentionality to pave the way for this type of leadership. From researching Simon Walker, we see he is an ordained clergyman and an expert in leadership development. He sees how maintaining a fa\u00e7ade is hindering authentic leadership. By understanding our childhood and history, we can overcome being defensive to lead more genuinely. His background in leadership training and passion for fostering authentic leadership likely inspired him to write this book.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s a great book to help leaders understand defences and all the ways we can embrace our true selves.<\/p>\n

I want to thank Mr. Wells, who knew to raise my profile to build a more effective organization through me. I want to thank my father, who taught me to lead well by helping me to listen to others, listen well to myself and become more emotionally intelligent. \u00a0I want to thank Dr. Magnus and my husband, Colin, for allowing me to lead in spaces where emotional intelligence needed to be seen as profoundly important. Lastly, I\u2019d like to thank all those courageous leaders who allow people like me to lead in collaboration without intimidation but see this as an asset to the greater team and organizations we love and believe in. In the introduction, Simon Walker says, “We submit to it (leadership of hypocrisy and deceit) because we have come to believe in the imaginary rules. We convince ourselves that it must be right, that our senses deceive us; that there must be some hidden danger in the obviously better way. We accept the rules of the group, and we fear being exposed as the foolish, idealistic, mistaken person who stepped out from the crowd.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Let’s take the time to pause and think about the richness of \u00a0our identity, values, and emotions influence leadership<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u00a0Simon P. Walker,\u00a0The Undefended Leader,<\/em>\u00a0(Carlisle, UK: Piquant Editions, Ltd., 2010), 6.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Simon P. Walker,\u00a0The Undefended Leader,<\/em>\u00a0(Carlisle, UK: Piquant Editions, Ltd., 2010), 33.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Simon P. Walker,\u00a0The Undefended Leader,<\/em>\u00a0(Carlisle, UK: Piquant Editions, Ltd., 2010), 53.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Simon P. Walker,\u00a0The Undefended Leader,<\/em>\u00a0(Carlisle, UK: Piquant Editions, Ltd., 2010), preface.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leadership is often defined by strength, empowerment, control, and authority. Have we wondered what leadership might look like through the lens of authenticity and vulnerability? Hello. My name is Judith, and I want a world where leadership strength is about vulnerability, transparency, self-awareness, openness, and emotional intelligence. These are wonderful tools for building trust among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp04"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41191,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41190\/revisions\/41191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}