My great Australian speechwriter pal Lucinda Holdforth made a big stir around here last summer when she came out against vulnerability, in her new book. Wrote she, in 21st-Century Virtues: How They Are Failing Our Democracy:
Yes, I suppose that Empathy, Humility and Vulnerability are nice. They are seemingly inoffensive. The unkind might say they are insipid, as in fact I do. Is this the very best the 21st-century elite … can offer by way of moral guidance to themselves and others? These modern virtues have something in common: They are self-referential. There’s a relentless circling back to the individual’s subjective state of being. Imagine an exercise in moral self-interrogation: Am I authentically me? Am I looking after moi sufficiently well? Even though I’m so great, am I also not relatably humble?
A lotta people thought ole Lucinda was holding forth a little harshly there. Whatever part of me that agreed fades away a little every time I read something like I did yesterday: someone publicly announcing the opening of her own corporate communications agency by saying she is feeling “imposter syndrome.”
Ummm?
On the morning of your announcement, not a single one of the world’s 8.1 billion human beings was musing over a morning repast thinking, consciously or unconsciously, that everything would be better if one more out-of-work or burned-out or restless communication professional opened their own communication agency. (I don’t have statistics on the number of people who harbored the opposite lament.)
Of the agency that didn’t exist yesterday but that exists today, the first things your potential clients need to know are: Can it do things that we need done? Can it do them efficiently, agreeably and most of all affordably? And can it do them better than the other thousands of agencies out in the world—including the one we already use?
“But is the agency owner willing to be vulnerable?!” That question is way, way down the list. In fact, the very last thing we want to hear from anyone just starting out in any business is that they’re not sure they are up to this.
And how could someone who wants me to pay them to help me with my business communication not know that?
Me, harsh? I haven’t even started!
It’s always dangerous to claim imposter syndrome, hoping to be contradicted. People might well just nod in agreement with the imposter label.
Maybe it’s only because I just watched his Commencement address at Duke but…did you go full-Seinfeld on us there for a minute, David!?
Love it. Could your next post be about the (apparent?) rise of the “Fractional Executive Leader” phenomenon that is taking over LinkedIn? These are apparently part-time professionals who have a problem with using the phrase “part-time.”