Jacob, thanks for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
It is our pleasure.
So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure. So my name is Jacob Morgan, as we've established.
I am the author of five books that focus on leadership, the future of work, and employee experience.
And a lot of what I do is help create great leaders, engaged employees, and future -ready organizations.
I do that through the books, through a lot of the speeches that I give.
I give around 40 to 50 keynote talks a year.
I have a podcast, a sub stack, and I create a lot of content around those three themes.
And that's where I spend all of my time.
This is really exciting, Jacob.
And I'm excited to chat with you, especially on the topic of vulnerability, which I know is the topic of your new book.
So before we get into it, can you give us a bit of an overview on your new book?
And then we'll get into how vulnerability can play a role in negotiation.
Sure. Sure. So the theme of the book is don't be vulnerable at work.
It can actually hurt you far more than it can help you.
And I know that sounds weird for a book called Leading with Vulnerability.
But the big distinction that I make is that especially in the workplace, when you're vulnerable, really what you're doing is you're exposing the gaps that you have. Gap in intelligence, gap in experience, gap in emotion, gap in whatever it might be, competence.
But you're basically telling everybody around you, here's what I can't do or don't know, or here's the area that I'm struggling with.
Now, in your personal life, it's clear why something like that might make sense because it helps build trust and relationship and connections with friends, with family members, with your significant other.
But at work, we have a different dynamic.
You have a boss, you have customers, projects, deadlines, you're being paid a salary.
And so if you just go to your boss and say, hey, I'm so sorry I messed this up, I'm so sorry I screwed up this project, which is vulnerable, your boss at the time is not just gonna look at you and say, oh gee, thank you for telling me.
your boss is going to say, well, I appreciate you coming and telling me that you made this mistake, but look, the customer is still not happy.
The project is still not done.
The deadlines are still not met and the revenue goals have still not been achieved.
So in other words, what are you doing about it?
And that's the distinction between just being vulnerable versus leading with vulnerability.
Leading with vulnerability is not just exposing a gap that you have, but it's demonstrating what you're trying to do to close that gap.
So in the case of making a mistake.
Instead of just saying, I made a mistake, I'm sorry.
You would say, I made a mistake.
I'm sorry, but here's what I learned from that mistake that I made.
And here's what I'm going to do to make sure that that mistake will never happen again.
So you're adding the competence, the leadership piece to the vulnerability piece.
We see this in our personal lives all the time, right?
If somebody comes to you and says, hey, I want to lose weight.
I want to stop smoking.
I want to be a better negotiator.
You're not just going to say, well, great, good for you.
You're going to say, say, oh, what are you doing about it?
How are you trying to be a better negotiator?
How are you trying to lose weight?
Demonstrate what you're trying to do to close that gap.
And that is a really, really important distinction between those two.
I am so glad you wrote this book, Jacob.
This is so necessary because we can all see the value of vulnerability and it has become almost a buzzword in the employment space or just in general.
And I think the problem is that a lot of times people will say that without having a full understanding of what that really means.
And then the implications of what vulnerability done wrong could do.
And now for those people who are listening and the red flags are coming up in their mind, they're saying for the last 10, 15 years, all people have been telling me to do is be vulnerable.
Can you speak to the skeptics out here who might say, I don't know, Jacob, I'm not quite sure.
Well, yeah, don't be vulnerable.
Again, that goes back to the point, right?
I think for many years, we've used vulnerability is a way to justify poor performance.
So whenever we struggle with something, whenever we're not achieving our goals, we've been using vulnerability as a way to justify, to explain why we're not meeting our goals.
And that's not really ownership.
That's not really leadership.
That is simply making excuses.
And so broadly speaking, we can talk about why is leading with vulnerability so important.
Well, because it does two things.
Number one, it acknowledges that you can improve and get better.
And number two is it keeps you accountable for actually getting better.
When you think about it in the context of those two things, let's imagine a scenario where you work for an organization.
Can any employee or any leader say, hey, you know what?
I'm perfect the way I am.
I don't need to get better.
No. Vulnerability is relevant because everybody can get better at whatever it is that they're doing.
You can be a better dad, you can be a better leader, you can be a better engineer, a negotiator, whatever it is.
But if you don't acknowledge that you have that gap to begin with, then you're never going to work on trying to close that gap.
You're just going to stay where you are.
So the concept of leading with vulnerability is important because it keeps you growing and developing and becoming a better version of you.
Now, again, it's not purely just the vulnerability piece because that's acknowledging that you can get better.
But the leadership and the competence piece is what are you actually doing to get better?
So it's kind of two steps.
Yes, I can get better.
And here's where, you know, I have some areas and some gaps and here's what I'm doing to close them.
And again, who would want to work for anybody inside of an organization that doesn't acknowledge or take steps on either of those two things?
It wouldn't make any sense.
And you have to remember that let's say you're comfortable with where you are and you say, you know what?
I'm good. I'm already a senior leader or mid -level leader.
I am where I want to be in my career.
I'm just going to stay where I am.
Well, that might sound like a potential option, but you have to remember that the world around you changes.
And so you are where you are and you might be content with that.
But as the world around you changes, what's going to happen is by default, you're going to start to fall behind because you're staying stagnant, but the world around you keeps changing.
And so if you stay where you are while something is changing, by default, year over year over year, you start to become a worse version of you, a less capable version of you, a less less skilled version of you.
So you have to update and upgrade yourself the same way that you do the software on your phone or on your computer.
And think about it.
Whenever you update any software, it says bug fixes and improvements.
So yeah, you too need to acknowledge that there are some bugs that you have, that there are some improvements that you can make and go out and make them and go out and fix those bugs.
But I mean, imagine if you were using software on your phone or your computer from a decade ago, from 15 years ago.
It wouldn't be functional.
It wouldn't be able to operate in the world that we're in now.
And similarly, you wouldn't be able to operate or function if you stay where you are in the world around you changes.
Jacob, what I love about this is the specificity with it, because we're recognizing that in the past, it was an incomplete understanding of vulnerability.
And now this leads us to accountability, higher performance, which puts us in a position to improve as people and as professionals, and then also puts our organization in a position where it can grow as well because the people and professionals are growing and taking accountability.
I'm smiling because the timing of this is perfect.
We have a relationship with LinkedIn.
We have like 47 courses on LinkedIn learning.
47. Yeah, 47. Damn.
Yes. We love LinkedIn and we're on their podcast network too.
And the last project we did was a LinkedIn certificate.
So it's the only certificate they have in negotiation.
And so we partnered with them.
We're excited for it.
But we realized that at the beginning of the project, we did not do a good job, just flat out.
We didn't do a good job of communicating and delivering.
And so what we did is after we completed the project and it was done and we can see thousands of people going through it, which is great.
We called a meeting with LinkedIn.
And so at the beginning of the meeting, they were saying, OK, well, we're interested to see what you want to talk about.
Well, and we said, well, what we want to do is we want to give you feedback on ourselves.
This is is what happened.
This is what was the impact it had on you.
We apologize for that.
And this is these are the changes that we made on the interior to make sure that this won't happen again in the future.
So we want to have this conversation to see if there's any other vulnerabilities that you see in us that we might not have seen.
And let's talk through that.
And they were blown away.
They were really shocked.
But again, we weren't just saying, hey, we made mistakes, please pity us.
We're saying we see the mistakes.
And we have done these things to address those mistakes.
And And so we can see how this strengthens the relationship and also improves confidence because we're taking accountability for performance and what we want to do different next time.
Yeah, you have to be able to do that.
Otherwise, what's the point?
You know, acknowledging a mistake is, you know, you want to have the psychological safety to be able to do that.
That's one thing, but how you actually go about doing it is another thing.
And again, not just talking about the mistake, but demonstrating what you are doing to fix the problem going forward is a huge piece of it.
Absolutely. And now let's talk about some of the difficult conversations that we have at work, whether it's a transactional negotiation or just the tough conversations we have with colleagues on our team.
When you think about the research and conversations that you've had with other leaders as it relates to vulnerability in the workplace, how does vulnerability or the lack of vulnerability impact negotiations?
Well, I think it plays an important role in a lot of different areas.
Actually, there was one story that the CEO of Waste Management shared with me, and it it was actually very relevant to negotiation.
And his name is Jim Fish.
And he shared this really interesting story.
I can't remember the year that this took place, but this was many, many years ago.
And he was actually in a negotiation.
And it was to sell off, I believe, a part of their business.
And he was sitting in a New York penthouse.
He's sitting with some of the world's toughest negotiators and lawyers and just people who are there to rip his head off.
They want to see blood.
They're coming for everything that that he's got.
And he told me the story of how before he went for this negotiation, his mom was actually quite sick.
She was ill. And he went to go visit her.
And, you know, she's like, yeah, go for your negotiation.
I'll be fine. I'll be here when you get back.
And so he's sitting in the middle of this negotiation with these people that want to rip his head off.
And all of a sudden he gets a phone call from his sister and he doesn't pick up.
And then she calls again.
And he knows that when family calls you two, three times, it's time to go pick up.
So he excuses himself.
He steps outside of the meeting and his sister tells him that his mom passed away.
And so, you know, obviously he has to come back into the negotiation where people were, you know, trying to come at him and take him for everything he had, take his business for everything he had.
And he just found out that his mom passed away.
So he goes back into this negotiation and everybody could tell that he's very upset.
You know, his eyes are watery, he's teary and they're like, what happened?
And he tells them what happened and they offer to, pause the negotiations and reconvene at a later time.
And he says, no, it's okay.
Let's go ahead with it.
And for the next 15, 20 minutes, everybody in that room spent time talking about their families, their parents, what they mean to them, what they learned from them.
And a lot of people were offering their condolences, their empathy, and their sympathy for Jim Fish.
And he told me this story because shortly after the negotiations completed, the chair, the person who was responsible for these negotiations called up Jim and he said, you know, the fact that you were were vulnerable, not in the sense that you were just sharing what happened, but the fact that you allowed other people to give you that sympathy, the fact that you absorbed it and acknowledged it and didn't push it off like you were kind of some stoic robot, the fact that you allowed people to give you their condolences and to connect with you on a human way, he said really helped us get through
these negotiations.
And it's not to say that it turned the tables completely, but he said said that there were some very small sticking points that they had a very hard time getting through.
And the vulnerability really helped them get through that.
It helped them realize that there's more to life than just money and dollars and cents.
It helped them realize that there are some important aspects of the negotiation.
And there's some little things that everybody could let go because it's not worth going back and forward over it.
And so that was a very interesting story of vulnerability and the role that it played in negotiation there as well.
But as far as having having difficult conversations, we have difficult conversations all the time at work during negotiations.
I mean, as somebody who speaks and who writes books and creates content, I'm constantly in negotiations, right?
Somebody wants me to speak and I have to get on the phone and we have to have a conversation about speaking and go back and forth.
And talking about money can be very, very uncomfortable.
It can be a very, very vulnerable thing.
So even in negotiation, regardless of what you're involved in, it's okay to show vulnerability, but to add a little bit of leadership to the top, right?
So for example, you're negotiating and somebody asks you a question and maybe you don't know the answer to that question.
It's one thing to just sit there and say, that's a good question.
I have no idea, right?
And now really what you're showing is that maybe you shouldn't be a part of this negotiation because you clearly don't know the answer to the questions that you're being asked.
However, instead of just saying, I don't know, you could say, you know what?
That's a good question.
Let me do a little bit of research on this.
I have a couple of people that I can talk to.
I have a couple ideas.
Let me get back to you on that.
That's very different than just saying, oh, I don't know.
Good question. Thank you for asking me.
So regardless of what you're talking about, whether it's negotiating a salary, whether it's negotiating selling a product or service or part of the business, you always need to ask yourself, how can you sprinkle in that little bit of leadership, that competence to the vulnerability?
And similarly, if you're only focusing on the competence, it's important to have that little bit of vulnerability.
So the two aspects here are competence and connection, demonstrating that you're good at what it is that you do and being able to connect with people.
And this is relevant, I think, in all aspects of our lives, in all jobs, in all roles, in all seniority levels.
You got to be able to connect with people and demonstrate that you're good at whatever it is that you're doing.
This is so good. And Jacob, now you have me thinking philosophically.
We're thinking about the power of words.
And this is just riffing.
If I am completely off on this, feel free to let me know.
And I'm wondering if it's the semantics that give people so many problems with the word vulnerability.
Because when we think about vulnerability in other aspects.
We can say, like in war, there's a vulnerability.
That's the thing that the opposition wants to exploit in order to destroy you.
And when we think about putting ourselves in vulnerable positions, we recognize that another person could potentially attack and then put us in a bad position.
But what I'm hearing, though, is that there's no problem with being transparent and sharing information, but being mindful of doing so in a way that doesn't put us in a poor position or make it seem as though our competence is in question tell me if i'm kind of getting to where we're going here hello my friends before we get back to today's episode i want to ask you a question have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better difficult conversations at the american negotiation institute we offer transformative keynotes and workshops
tailored to empower professionals with top -tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands -on training for your team we've got you covered don't just negotiate master the art with the american negotiation institute click the link in the description to find out more elevate negotiate and succeed yeah i mean we surveyed 14 000 and employees.
Well, I interviewed 100 CEOs and I surveyed 14 ,000 employees with a big leadership firm called DDI.
It's interesting because we asked 14 ,000 employees around the world, what's the number one thing that keeps you from being vulnerable at work?
And the number one response that everybody came back to us with is, I don't want to be perceived as being weak or incompetent.
And because you don't want to be perceived as being weak or incompetent, that is what keeps you from being vulnerable.
But the way to solve that is actually in the question itself.
you add competence to the vulnerability and so again let's say you're a first -time leader right this is another very classic example that we see your first -time leader you just got promoted and you're supposed to go talk do a little bit of an all -hands meeting to your new team and one of the things that first -time leaders usually do is they say oh thanks i'm so excited to be a first -time leader here i've never done this before i'm a little bit nervous but i'm so excited to be leading this team and we're going to make an awesome impact and then blah blah blah you know know, go team.
Down the surface, it doesn't sound like a terrible message.
However, what would turn that into a situation of leading with vulnerability would be you start off similarly, hey, you know, I'm a first -time leader.
I'm a little nervous.
I know I've never done this before, but here's what I'm going to do to make sure that I'm the best leader that you've ever had.
Jill on our marketing team is going to be meeting with me once a month, and she's going to be coaching and mentoring me to help make sure that I'm, you know, doing things I need to be doing.
Here are three leadership books that I just picked up that I'm going to be rereading, I encourage you to follow along.
I have an executive coach who's going to be meeting with me once a week to make sure that I'm doing the things that I need to be doing.
They'll probably speak with some of you as well.
My door's always open to any feedback and suggestions that you have. Now, there too, I'm vulnerable.
I'm acknowledging that I'm nervous that I've never done this, but I'm also being very clear in demonstrating to you as a new leader what I'm trying to do to become a great leader.
That's a very different message that you give.
Now, there's a concept in psychology called the pratfall effect, which basically states that there's this very interesting relationship between competence and vulnerability.
And what that means is that if you've demonstrated competence, you've demonstrated that you are good at your job, whatever that job might be, you've demonstrated that you're a great negotiator, right?
Imagine you're in a negotiating situation, but people already know you're a great negotiator.
You have a reputation for being a great negotiator.
And now in that kind of a situation, you demonstrate a little bit of vulnerability, as Jim did.
Then what happens is people view you as being human.
They view you as being more likable, more talented, more capable.
You get a little bit of a one plus one equals three effect because you've already demonstrated that you're good at your job.
And now you're also demonstrating that you're human and people can connect with you.
And so you get a boost. But the flip side of that is also true.
If you're not good at your job.
So let's say you have a reputation as being a bad negotiator.
People just walk all over you.
They get whatever they want from you.
and now you're vulnerable, all that does is it reinforces your mediocrity.
And people will look at you and they're gonna say, yeah, I get why you're not good at negotiating.
I get why you're a bad marketing or an HR person.
So there's a very strong relationship between competence and vulnerability.
And you need to be able to have those because if you don't have the competence, it really just crystallizes that negative perception that people have of you.
Incredible. Yeah, this answers so many questions because this is something that I hear from negotiators all the time.
They say, if they ask me a question that I don't know the answer to, I'm afraid to let them know.
If I need a break, if I'm getting a little bit too heated, how do I ask for a break?
I'm afraid of looking weak.
That was the thing.
It was in negotiations.
It's not just the fear of looking or feeling incompetent.
It's also the fear of looking weak.
And with this, what you've done is you've given us a formula that allows us to really operationalize this this transparency in a powerful way so we can create connections with the other person while still being transparent and holding ourselves accountable for higher performance.
Because when you see really confident negotiators, they're not afraid to share information, but they have done their research to understand what they can share and what they can't share.
And if they share it, how to couple it with other information so it doesn't come out as a vulnerability that could be exploited by the other side.
Yeah, but here's the thing.
Vulnerability will be used against you, right?
There's nothing you can do about that.
So here's what I can promise you.
Vulnerability will be used against you at some point in your career, but not nearly as often as you think.
And it's similarly like, you know, at some point you're going to ask somebody out on a date and you'll be turned no, told no. At some point you're going to ask for a promotion and you'll be told no. At some point you're going to ask for a raise and you'll be told no. At some point, you know, insert whatever here, you will be told no, or you can't, or you you shouldn't or you're not good enough or you're not capable enough.
That's just the nature of life.
Does that mean you're never going to do those things again?
No. And I have lots of stories in the book of CEOs who had vulnerability used against them in some capacity where maybe they were let go from a role or somebody backstabbed them or somebody tried to demean them or make fun of them or put them in uncomfortable situations.
And at that point, all these leaders have to decide like, because I was vulnerable and I had this bad experience, does that mean I'm never going to be vulnerable again or does that mean that I'm going to learn from the situation from the experience am I going to learn about myself and about the other person and get better so that going forward I will be more adept and more skilled at how I approach vulnerability in the right way so yeah there's no way to in fact I did a poll on LinkedIn I don't know this was a couple of months ago and I think around a thousand or so people responded and over Over
80 % of them said that vulnerability was used against them at some point during their careers.
So it'll happen, but that's okay.
It won't happen nearly as often as you think.
I think that's a powerful message because a lot of times what ends up happening is somebody has one bad experience doing something, and then that looms large in their head.
And because of negativity bias, they focus on that, and then they forget all of the other bright spots that have occurred throughout their life.
So I think that's a really important message to hammer home.
home, listen, this vulnerability will be leveraged against you, but not as frequently as you think, just because of that negativity bias.
Totally. Yeah, that's exactly the case.
And you have a choice, like I said.
When it doesn't go the right way, you have a choice.
Are you going to use this as a reason for why you should never do it again?
Or are you going to turn it into a learning moment and the most successful CEOs turn it into learning moments?
Absolutely. And let's end with this one question here.
Because when you think about vulnerability, we usually think about it from from our own perspective, me being vulnerable for other people.
I've recognized that a lot of times people struggle with receiving the vulnerability of others.
And in this show, we focus on it from the negotiation perspective.
We might be negotiating a deal, but also we think about everyday negotiators, leaders, colleagues, working things out.
So maybe we could approach it from both sides.
If you are a negotiator and somebody is vulnerable with you in that negotiation, depreciation, how should we handle that vulnerability?
I think there are a couple things that you can do.
When somebody is vulnerable with you, you have a lot of power, right?
If somebody comes to you and shares something that exposes the gap they have, you have a lot of power for what you do with that information.
You could destroy them with it, right?
You could say, ha, I can't believe it, blah, blah, blah.
You could do some really terrible things with that information.
Or you could do some very positive things with that information.
So for example, you know, when you're vulnerable with somebody, you get a lot of very negative physiological responses.
All right. And this was very consistent with all the leaders that I interviewed. When you're in a position of vulnerability, you feel weird, feel like you have butterflies in your stomach, your heart starts beating, your palms might get sweaty.
One CEO told me that his voice starts to shake because he's so uncomfortable with it.
Another CEO shared that he used to get panic attacks and moments of vulnerability.
So it's you feel very very uncomfortable.
So when you're vulnerable with somebody else, that other person has the opportunity to either tap into those negative feelings and just kind of like twist the knife and make you feel worse and worse and worse, or that other person has the opportunity to quickly turn those negative feelings around and turn them into something positive.
So for example, you, if we're in a negotiating, you know, in a serious negotiation and you share something with me that is vulnerable, I could then come back to you and say, Hey, you know what?
It's all good, good, man.
That's happened to me as well.
I know exactly how you feel.
Don't worry about it.
Or I could say, wow, I cannot believe you shared that with me.
I'm going to destroy you now with that information, right?
So if I tell you, hey, it's all good.
You got this. Don't worry about it.
It's not a big deal.
All those negative feelings that you had now quickly turned into positive because you were dreading this moment and now you're kind of like, oh, it's all good, right?
I mean, I don't feel bad about it.
Even somebody was sharing a moment where one CEO was giving a a talk on a stage.
And the CEO was freaking out because a lot of his mentors, other CEOs from other companies were sitting in the front row.
And these were like tech executives and billionaires.
And he had to give this speech to a big room of people.
And he was freaking out about it.
And he looked to the front row.
And in the front row, he saw a lot of his mentors in there.
They were like, you got this.
Like they were just mouthing it.
They were like smiling at him.
They're like clapping, you know, like really trying to pump him up.
And in that moment, his negative feelings turned into positive feelings because he saw that he had that support of his mentors and of his coaches so when somebody's vulnerable with you again it depends on the context of the person obviously you don't want to be vulnerable with somebody who doesn't have your best interest in mind so there are probably times during a negotiation where there are some people you do not want to be vulnerable with because they do not have your best interest in mind they do want to see you fail they do want to bring you down and so in that situation situation vulnerability
is probably not the best approach that you should be taking.
But then there are other times like I've negotiated, you know, we negotiate things all the time, whether you have somebody come into your house, like a handyman, whether it's a project, whatever it is.
And sometimes you can tell that people genuinely like, they want to work with you, they want to take care of you.
But they also have costs that they need to cover.
Right? I mean, we had somebody come out and do some like sound speakers set up for us.
And I was negotiating this guy for like two hours.
And And I was trying to just bring this person down to like everything I can.
I'm going to pay you cash and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And we sat out there for like two hours.
And finally, I got this person down to like this ridiculously low price.
But I wasn't satisfied.
I wanted to go more and more and more.
And I was just clobbering this person over the head with everything I could.
And finally, I could tell that like I have reached the bottom of where this is going to go.
But I could also tell, you know, he was a good person.
He wanted the job. He didn't want to screw me over.
He was sincere. He was authentic with it.
And he was kind of vulnerable and said, Look, Jacob, I really want this project.
I know you're talking to a lot of other people.
You're talking to some big companies.
I'm not a big company.
I really want this business.
I'm doing the absolute best that I can.
I'm going to do an amazing job for you.
But this is as low as I can go.
I respect if you got lower offers than me, but just know that I really want this work.
And I'm going to try hard to make it good for you.
And I said, project is yours.
Right? So, you know, in that situation, this person was vulnerable with me.
But it was sincere and authentic and genuine.
And it came across in a way where I like I actually wanted to work with this person.
So context of the vulnerability does matter.
And you have a choice of what you do with somebody else's vulnerability, you can break them with it, or you can transform them and make them a better version of themselves, you can help them get through that awkwardness and uncomfortable feeling.
Jacob, this is powerful, because again, this is something that so many people struggle with.
And I think looking at it from the other side is really instructive as well.
Because when somebody is vulnerable with you, they're giving you a lot of power.
And we have to use that power wisely.
With great power comes great responsibility.
And it's really interesting to think about it.
Because for me, yes, I'm the CEO of ANI, so I negotiate these business deals.
But for me, I was a lawyer first. And so there are certain times where I can't be vulnerable.
Hey, that's liability.
You better not ever tell them what what you just told me, right?
And you have to understand what those lines are.
And again, that litmus test of, does this person have my best interest in mind, is a great way to make this determination and understand when we could use vulnerability strategically in that situation.
And then if we are on the side that's receiving the vulnerability, thinking about what kind of relationship you want going forward. Because I know in these negotiations, if I take that vulnerability and break that trust and take advantage of it, I put myself in a position where they're not going to be vulnerable again.
And I make all subsequent interactions and negotiations with this person so much more difficult.
But if I can receive that vulnerability and be fair while still advocating for my own needs at the same time, I put myself in a position for them to be more amenable to me in the future, because now we can work together.
We're going to feel more comfortable sharing information and we could work together to fix these situations collaboratively.
So I really love that range.
And yeah, and everything in life is a negotiation, right?
I mean, I have two kids, a soon -to -be four -year -old and an eight -year -old.
I'm negotiating with them all the time.
I'm constantly negotiating with my wife.
And when you don't have any vulnerability in some, not all, right?
Again, in some situations, it's not relevant.
But if you don't have vulnerability in negotiations where vulnerability is relevant, it makes it very hard. But if you can bring in vulnerability in some negotiations, again, when it's relevant, you find that it makes the process easier and everybody's able to get to the outcome that they want to get to.
Love it. Jacob, thank you so much for joining us today.
And thank you for all of the incredible books that you've written.
But before you go, I just want you to remind the listeners about the most recent book and how they can get in touch. Sure.
The most recent book is called Leading with Vulnerability.
And we put up a simple URL for that, which is leadwithvulnerability .com.
And then I share some of the research on my substack, which is greatleadership .substack .com.
And then my email is jacobatthefutureorganization .com if anybody has any questions or wants to reach out about anything.
Jacob, phenomenal job.
Really appreciate you joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
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The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations.
Keep learning, keep practicing, and keep getting better.
Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out of these crucial conversations.
Again, thank you for joining the team.
We're excited to have you, and I will see you in the next episode.
I'll catch you later.
Thank you.
