A Call To Grace For The Workplace

Let’s make more space for grace in the workplace.

I have an uncommon opinion about a popular leadership trend that I want to share with you. Leadership development in recent years has focused much on vulnerability and brave leadership, concepts popularized by Brené Brown in her bestselling books Dare To Lead, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, and many more. I’m a fan of Brown’s work, and her research has greatly influenced my own leadership style. However, I also have this radical thought:

Vulnerability is the enemy of grace.

Hear me out. Practicing vulnerability is virtuous, beautiful, and necessary to create more authentic connections with the people around us.

I’ve noticed, though, that with the rise in workplace conversations about vulnerability, we’re conversely talking less about grace.

While vulnerability asks individuals to be exposed to emotional risk or uncertainty, grace can be individually or corporately extended through demonstrating kindness, compassion, and forgiveness. Someone doesn’t have to be vulnerable for me to extend grace.

So I wonder — do we need more vulnerability from everyone at work?

Or could we cultivate grace-filled workplaces that create safety for all employees without asking them to be vulnerable?

What is grace, exactly?

Grace is a virtue that has long been associated with spirituality and religion but also has a place in secular ideology. A quick Google search offers definitions of grace, such as ‘courteous goodwill’ and ‘undeserved favor.’

In the workplace, grace can be expressed in ideas like giving others the ‘benefit of the doubt’ and ‘assuming best intent’ when our colleagues act in a way that is inconsistent with our expectations or desires.

However we define grace, we all can recognize that it is lacking in our workplaces today. Undeserved favor, courteous goodwill, and the benefit of the doubt are concepts so far removed from our current idolization of capitalism, productivity, and hustle culture that the chasm would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.

Vulnerability is not the antidote for toxic leadership and workplaces.

In recent years, leadership development has focused on coaching individuals to embrace vulnerability, authenticity, and courage in developing their leadership style.

However, addressing the individual is to address only one-third of the challenge. Workplace cultures comprise people, processes, and systems, and we must address all three components to shift culture. We can practice vulnerability in our relationships, but codifying vulnerability into non-human processes and systems is difficult.

When we’re aware of the limitations of vulnerability to shift culture, it becomes no surprise that our collective workplace experiences remain mostly unchanged. Corporate workplaces still mostly feel emotionally unsafe for people living in marginalized identities, women with children are still under-resourced, and everyone is living with some degree of uncertainty that the next round of layoffs might jeopardize their ability to provide for basic needs or cause more workload and less agency over non-work time.

Leading with vulnerability has yet to change our workplace culture meaningfully. Could grace be the antidote we’ve been looking for?

Grace can shift people, processes, and systems.

While vulnerability is activated through human behavior, grace can be freely extended through behavior, processes, and systems.

We can practice grace as an individual response. When our colleague delivers work that falls short of our expectations, we can separate the work from the person and focus our feedback to elevate the work without dehumanizing the person.

We can cultivate workplace cultures that center grace as a core value. We can write it into our company mission, teach it in corporate learning and development, and reward it in employee performance.

Every employee in our workplace can have the opportunity to receive grace when they need it if we stop relying on individual vulnerability to evoke graceful responses and instead codify graceful practices into the ways we work, collaborate, and achieve together.

While women can lead the invitation for more grace, everyone has a part to contribute to creating grace-filled workplaces.

If there is one idea I hope you walk away with, it is that grace is an act that can produce a decisive change in your workplace. Here are three steps you can take today to cultivate more grace for yourself and others at work:

1. Cultivate a leadership style that focuses on outcomes over outputs.
   When we focus on outcomes, we can extend grace through flexibility, allowing employees to achieve business results in a way that optimizes for their individual talents, creativity, and work-life integration.

2. Lead by example and ask for the grace you need without explaining.
   When we start explaining, we also start rationalizing. Practice asking for what you want without explanation, especially when setting boundaries for your work-life integration.

3. Avoid substituting vulnerability for grace.
   Do a health check on your motives before practicing vulnerability. Are you opening up to create a deeper connection and collaboration with a colleague? Or are you sharing to gain influence via empathy? If it’s the former, great, but if it’s the latter, practice simply asking for what you need instead.