This week, I collaborated with two graphic designers on a presentation. The junior designer—let’s call her Kate—was my primary partner on the project. She was excellent at creating beautiful Google Slides to illustrate complex ideas in a simple way.
Sometimes, Kate would ask the senior designer—let’s call her Olivia—for suggestions. One interaction between them struck me.
“I can’t get this graphic to work! It’s awkward. I’m stuck. :’( Can you help?” Kate left a note for Olivia on a slide.
Olivia replied a while later with a new design on a second slide:
“No problem! I created another version. Watcha think? Does it work?”
This interaction reminded me of a workshop I attended a few months ago. The workshop—curiously named The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team—explored why some teams thrive and some don’t. Here’s a model the facilitator used (with slight simplification):
The point of this model is that trust must be in the foundation before teams can function. If people don’t feel safe with each other, they can’t resolve conflicts, demonstrate commitment, and keep each other accountable. Results will suffer.
While it’s easy to say, “We should trust each other!” reality is not so simple. The workshop facilitator argues that trust needs vulnerability, which means being authentic about what we think and how we feel. That requires us sometimes to say, “I don’t have the answer,” or “I can’t do something.” Other times, it means “Things happened, and I am sad,” or “There’s too much. I am overwhelmed.”
But being vulnerable is risky. If we are open about our thoughts and feelings but others don’t respond thoughtfully—or worse, they ignore or ridicule us—we can feel hurt, betrayed, or taken advantage of. We will be discouraged from sharing in the future. A vicious cycle follows: people stop communicating, issues arise, and problems fester until they explode.
The interaction between Kate and Olivia was the opposite. When Kate felt stuck, she told her partner and asked for help. Olivia responded with respect, kindness, and helpful suggestions. Interactions like this start a virtuous cycle: They will likely lean on each other if one of them needs help in the future. The outcome will improve.
Trust isn’t core only to work relationships; personal relationships require it just as much. While chatting with a long-time friend last week, I hesitated whether to share a difficult experience. After some thought, I decided to do so. My friend listened attentively, thanked me for being candid, and shared a similarly challenging experience. That conversation was meaningful to me: It allowed me to appreciate my friend’s hidden journey. I walked away feeling less alone, and it gave me another lens to make sense of my story. While the content of the conversation wasn’t exactly enjoyable, the catharsis it brought reminded me how wonderful it is to share a relationship in trust.
Trust takes a long time to build through repeated trials, but it takes only seconds to destroy. Yet, since trust is the foundation of every human relationship, vulnerability is also a risk we must learn to take wisely.