Balance & Beyond Podcast

When control stops working, what actually builds credibility?

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We open the door to a different kind of authority: the capacity to stay present, honest, and steady when the ground is moving. Instead of chasing the illusion of certainty, we show how vulnerability becomes a practical leadership skill that strengthens trust, speeds learning, and sets a clear path through chaos.

We unpack the old model of leadership built on control, polish, and having all the answers, and why it’s faltering in a world defined by complexity and rapid change. Then we offer the alternative: being human on purpose. That means dropping the masks that drain your energy, acknowledging what you don’t yet know, and pairing that honesty with a simple plan for testing, measuring, and iterating. You’ll hear concrete language you can use with your team, ways to set boundaries without apology, and how to admit mistakes without slipping into defence or self-critique.

The heart of this approach is your nervous system. We explore how to stay calm in the mess, decouple identity from outcomes, and avoid the traps of oversharing or performative toughness. Expect practical strategies to reduce over-functioning, move from perfection theatre to real influence, and model a culture where learning happens faster because truth is safe. In a world where AI can mimic polish, your imperfect, present, accountable leadership is the advantage.

If the old playbook feels heavy and you’re ready to lead with clarity and courage, this conversation is your next step. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s levelling up their leadership, and leave a review to tell us the one mask you’re ready to drop.

Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for women who've outgrown the old model of success. The ones who look fine on the outside but know the way they've been living no longer fits. If you're standing in the space between who you were and who you're becoming, this is for you. I honour the space you've created today. Let's dive in!

Jo Stone (Host)

There's a leadership pattern I'm seeing right now. Some women feel more influential than ever, while others are working harder and feeling less effective. It comes down to a fundamental shift in how leaders need to show up, and not everyone has got the memo. There's an old model of authority that we've all become very used to in our careers.

This was a model built on control and certainty, having all the answers, holding it all together, not anything leak least of all your eyes. This type of leadership is how the corporate world was born, and it was very much rewarded in stable systems where things followed a path, things went in cycles, they went up and down.

And no surprise, this is a very masculine way of operating. It's logic first, reason, risk mitigation. It's really seeing humans as human doings, output, effort, striving. But that model we are seeing unravel very quickly. And this is because that model doesn't hold up as well in times of uncertainty. And hello, pace of change, uncertainty, financial, political, economic, you name all the things.

We're going into a time now where control doesn't signal competence anymore because there is so many moving parts that you can't possibly control everything. There is so much complexity now that we don't have clear answers. And that certainty that we've looked to leaders for no longer equals credibility.

Instead, what we are seeing is this new era where the women who aren't effective are doubling down on what used to work, particularly the word control. And we'll come back to this later. Now, I'm not proposing that we flip into complete softness, that we all start coming to work and singing kumbaya and talking about our feelings and get less focused on output because I'm a very big realist.

But what I'm seeing emerge as a core leadership trend is one of the most overused words out there. Authenticity. But I prefer the words being human. Now I'm not going to talk about this. You've read a bajillion and one articles on it, but I want to talk about how we do that.

This is the missing piece for women to access that is harder than you'd believe. This is embracing vulnerability as a leadership capacity, not a personality trait. Many women think that being vulnerable involves crying, talking about your emotions, oversharing about your weekend, sharing everything, including your flaws, being a complete open book.

And usually it comes with heightened emotional exposure. But instead, I love Brene Brown's definition of vulnerability, which is the core emotion experienced during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Could we have more uncertainty?

The stakes feel very high right now, and the world is teetering on the edge of all kinds of emotions. This is the only way that we're able to find courage, to be seen in our vulnerability, being visible in our mess. Usually, when I say those words, being visible in your mess, women go, "Are you kidding me?" I have spent a lifetime wearing masks, being expected to be perfect at home, school, life.

Part of my identity is don't ask for help, don't be seen to struggle, fit in everywhere, be a chameleon, hold it all together. But my friend, if you've had that reaction, then you're not controlling everything. You're trying really hard. You're actually just wearing armor. And people can increasingly feel that. It's no longer a competitive advantage to just be stoic and perfect and pretend we have all the answers.

This identity piece is key because it's okay for someone else to be vulnerable, for your team members to be vulnerable, for you to support your friends, but it's not okay for you. This is what wearing masks does to us. It's exhausting. It makes it okay for everyone else and not ourselves.

The amount of energy it takes to prove or pretend that you have it all together when you don't, because you're a human, is taxing your system so much more than you realize. Being on top of everything, having all the answers, or doing your research, or preparing or staying on top of everything so that you think you have all the answers, holding everything and everyone, their emotions, their uncertainty.

What if instead of white knuckling and trying to control all these uncontrollables, dropping the mask and actually accepting your humanity, which is flawed, messy, makes mistakes, is what's actually going to get you ahead in the future. I know. Confronting, right? Absolutely confronting. Why does this matter more now?

Well, we are going into a time of massive uncertainty. You cannot possibly know everything. Mistakes are gonna happen, failures are becoming more encouraged. To pretend otherwise completely erodes trust from your leaders, from your colleagues, from those that look up to you.

And when we continually try to control all the bits and pieces or say, I'll have uncertainty, but just over here. And I want it to look this way, and I'm going to white knuckle and plan my way out of the uncertainty. Doesn't work. AI is now more polished than you. So now being human, showing your ums in some ways, your ahs, your mistakes, your imperfectness actually distinguishes you from this artificial world that is increasingly encroaching on how we show up and operate.

What's key here is we talk about vulnerability, being seen in your mess. But the key distinction that women have not learned to master is keeping your nervous system calm in the mess. This is the missing ingredient when we talk about vulnerability being a capacity skill that you need to develop. How you make your nervous system stay calm is you stop making the mess mean anything about you.

If you've failed, it's not like your time in third grade when you couldn't sharpen your pencil properly and the whole class laughed at you. And so you decided in that moment that you will always know how to sharpen your pencil.

It sounds like a stupid example, but I have heard far more outlandish ways that these beliefs, these kernels that we have decided, being messy, not knowing how to do something, not having the answer, lent us to ridicule.

It made us feel terrible about ourselves, and we will stop at nothing to avoid that feeling happening again, even though that feeling happened to a six-year-old sitting on the floor of their kindergarten classroom.

Ironically, keeping your nervous system calm, making the mess not mean anything about you, is the fastest way to get through the mess. Everyone else around you is too busy trying to control the mess, polish themselves in the mess, decide just how much messy is okay.

"Well, she's this messy." "I'm gonna be this messy." "That's all right." When you fight the mess, when you fight the uncertainty, it ends up clinging on to you more. This great saying, what we resist persists. The leaders of tomorrow are the ones who aren't afraid to say, I don't know. But let's make a plan together.

Or yes, I acknowledge the current situation is unsettling, but here's where we can find some certainty. I'm not suggesting you throw your hands up and go, oh, it's all uncertain. I have no idea what I'm doing. That's a little more damsel in distress. Come and rescue me, knight in shining armor vibe, than I want anybody listening to this to have.

Instead, I want you to work out what is the appropriate way for you to share your vulnerability with your audience. It might not be appropriate to walk into a board meeting and burst into tears and say you're completely afraid and you have no idea what you're doing and everything that you're trying is failing.

That may not instill their confidence, but there's other ways for you to share that vulnerability, for you to say, we're stepping into an unknown time. Here are the things that we've put in place, but we don't know how they're gonna work. However, here's how we're gonna measure if they are.

So it's not pretending that everything's fine. It's not pretending to be Pollyanna or to be the damsel in distress. It's finding that balance, that nuance of saying, we don't know, we're gonna experiment. So the uncertainty and the vulnerability does not have to lend itself to paralysis. It doesn't have to lend itself to over control or hustling or white knuckling.

You can say, I don't know, without an apology. You can hold a boundary without justifying it. And for so many women, one that you're going to need to learn to do as you get more vulnerable is to not get defensive when you've made a mistake or when you need to change your mind.

And that defensive can be with others, to not say, well, I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and this, and you can feel your whole body tighten and your shoulders go up and your face goes red. What if instead you can also hold your ground, hold your karmic knowledge? You know what? That probably wasn't the best decision in hindsight.

But hindsight's also 20-20. And you can give yourself grace at the same time. As women start stepping into this space of being vulnerable, it's really scary. Being seen, being visible in your mess feels very, very unsafe.

And what we see is this pattern of women doing it and then retracting, or being vulnerable and then lying awake all night long, going, oh my God, oh my God, I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have said that. So-and-so is going to think this about me.

This is why vulnerability is so hard for us. Emotions in theory, stereotypically, can come easier for women, whether it's to access, to share, to understand what's going on, particularly emotional intelligence in others.

But we are so socialized and conditioned to be liked and to, because of that, manage our perception of ourselves to be liked, that we can fuse vulnerability usually with oversharing and with weakness.

Because we've seen people break down and lose their reputation in the moment. Being branded the emotional one, particularly in a male-dominated environment, can in some places, unfortunately, be a career-limiting move.

So it's how do you do this in a way that stays true to who you are, that showcases and leverages your humanity without being the crying, screaming banshee that we're all doomed on the other side. Control has been your protective mechanism. Whether this is over-functioning, over-responsibility, overthinking, these are all patterns that have kept you safe.

And being vulnerable is going to require you to dismantle some of those, to be okay, to not overthink things. This is what vulnerability is going to require of us. It's this new way of influencing. It's the new leadership capacity that women need to get ahead in the era of what's coming.

Staying with discomfort without armoring up. Big, big distinction. Vulnerability is going to require you to also build and cultivate internal safety in your nervous system and value that over external approval. Those two things require much work for many women.

Discomfort of disappointing someone, discomfort of watching someone else have an emotional reaction to your emotional reaction. Someone else making meaning of the fact that you've said something that they may not like.

That decoupling is going to be one of the most important places that you can invest your time, your energy, your emotions, because this is what's going to get you ahead in the future. Vulnerability as leadership is just one of these new rules I'm working with women on right now.

I want to clarify: this isn't about working harder. This isn't about being louder. And it's not about being the pick me, look at me go. This is about learning to stay steady, to hold influence, and embrace their human even when the ground is moving.

This is exactly the kind of a leadership capacity I'm working on with women inside of Leverage, a brand new four-week program for leaders who can feel that the old ways of operating are no longer enough. It's not about working harder or being louder or being that pick me girl.

It's about learning how to stay steady, clear, and influential when the ground is moving and you don't have all the answers. If this episode resonated, you can check out the link in the show notes or head to balanceinstitute.com forward slash leverage. And I'll leave you with this.

Vulnerability isn't exposure. Vulnerability isn't exposure. It's the capacity to stay present without armoring up. And in the leadership landscape we're moving into, that capacity matters more than most women have been led to believe.