Companies often feel the need to present themselves as powerful through their advertising and marketing. They want consumers to view them as on a pedestal with no weaknesses. However, a recent article by Jay Feitlinger presents the idea that companies should show vulnerability to their customers. Pretending to be perfect doesn’t make you a better leader. It’s not a weakness to be human and people will respect you more as a leader if you’re honest about your flaws as well as your positive attributes. Feitlinger’s article offers three ways vulnerability can help you become a respected leader by your clients, customers and team members.
1) Don’t Be Afraid To Be Real
Just as things are bound to go wrong at various points in your personal life, so too will things inevitably go wrong in your professional life. Whether your team makes a mistake on a major project or a simple task, it’s important to admit your mistake and take ownership right away. Covering up a problem or mistake will only make things more challenging and could lead to clients or customers discovering the issue on their own, which would reflect terribly on you and your company. Be honest about your mistakes without using excuses and then work hard to fix the issue and never do it again.
2) Offer Transparency With Confidence
Transparency is important, and while you want to notify your clients or customers of potential issues that matter to their company, there are also certain problems that don’t need to be shared with the customer if they have no impact on them. For example, you may have two employees who are having an argument or disagreement with each other on a particular project. While the client or customer needs to know if the argument is preventing progress, it is common for teammates to have disagreements and it’s generally not something you need to share with a customer or client. However, if there’s a major issue or there’s a problem that arises that’s on the verge of being unethical, you absolutely need to share the information with your client. Feitlinger offers a simple criterion for transparency: if a problem arises internally that could have an impact on your client, be the first person to bring up the issue to the client and offer a solution with confidence.
3) Remember Trust Is The Goal
Trust is the foundation of a successfully relationship with your clients and customers. Mistakes will happen and they can be fixed and people will be more understanding of that if you take a proactive and honest approach when delivering bad news. Feitlinger says that you can damage your clients’ trust by lying or manipulating important facts, so the best approach to take is to be real with them and never take their trust for granted.
This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the original article, please click the link below:
Vulnerability: The Best Gift you can Give your Customers – Jay Feitlinger
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