The Problem with Vulnerability

On the difference between being open and being true.

“Real isn’t how you are made. It’s a thing that happens to you.
It doesn’t happen all at once. You become.

By the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.

But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

— The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams

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Since Brené Brown’s 2011 TED Talk, vulnerability has become a management-class buzzword — a corporate virtue, a performance metric, a checkbox on the leadership competency model.

But let’s be honest:
No one is actually being vulnerable at work.

The definition itself is unambiguous:
“a state of being exposed to the possibility of harm.”
Physically. Emotionally.

And that is not what’s happening in conference rooms.

What we see instead are tightly crafted narratives delivered on immaculate PowerPoint decks — curated disclosures designed to advance an agenda or soften a directive.
Aesthetic honesty. Strategic transparency.
Another glossy veneer masquerading as depth.

Nothing changes.
Everyone nods.
A new initiative is born.

If we were truly vulnerable — in the literal sense — we would admit the truth no one wants to say aloud:

We don’t know.
We’re never fully in the know.
We’re learning as we go.

We are trying, failing, fumbling.
Managing our own unrealistic expectations.
Hiding our weaknesses.
Concealing heartbreak.
Doing the best we can with the tools we have.

We’ve mistaken curated exposure for actual honesty.

But maybe the real problem isn’t that we’re unwilling to be vulnerable —
it’s that we’ve confused vulnerability with realness.
One is a performance. The other is a reckoning.
And only one of them changes anything.

Vulnerability asks you to open up.
Realness asks you to wake up.
One is performative.
The other is a return to yourself.

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Until next week’s edit, start choosing “real” over more performance.