It is increasingly common for leaders to show vulnerability. These days, rather than feeling compelled to put up an impenetrable, flawless façade, many leaders are actively encouraged to share their worries, hopes, fears, setbacks, and challenges with their teams. The benefits of vulnerability include creating psychological safety within the team, increasing the team’s potential, building strong interpersonal connections, and encouraging innovation and risk-taking.

And yet, many leaders still wrestle with the idea (and practice) of vulnerability. In my work as an executive coach, I see leaders who work in industries where vulnerability is something they’ve been trained to guard against (such as financial services, insurance, and law) struggle to separate personal vulnerability from business vulnerability.

As my client Gemma, an investment banker, put it: “My whole job is to protect my clients from vulnerability.” She went on to say, “I can’t wrap my head around ‘embracing vulnerability’ when my career depends on avoiding it.”

Of course, this instinct is completely understandable. The implication is that that vulnerability can mean “exposed,” “weak,” or “liable,” and so many leaders build both mental models and business models aimed at preventing those outcomes.

For them, showing vulnerability comes with reputational taxes at best, and professional failure at most. And yet, by ruling out vulnerability as a way to show up personally and interpersonally, many leaders loose out on its benefits.

My simple work-around for those leaders who recognize that they’re being asked to show up in a way that feels unnatural for them: Stop calling it “vulnerability.”

Considering the word’s strong association for them with exposure and failure, it makes sense to change the language. As a managing partner in a global law firm asked me, “What can I do that’s less vulnerable than ‘being vulnerable’?”

If this sounds like you (or like someone on your team), try these five approaches that reframe vulnerability and help accomplish the goals of vulnerability, without creating the same sense of insecurity.

1. Be relatable

Share information about your life outside of work. Let people know what you wrestle with, as well as what you celebrate, personally and professionally. This could be anything from the fact that your teenager has started thinking about colleges to the fact that you had hoped your program budget would be approved but it wasn’t. You don’t have to overshare information that’s deeply personal or private. But letting your colleagues know that, in some ways, you’re just like them, will help them see you as a whole person—not just a leader. 

2. Be a learner

Let your colleagues know that you don’t know everything and, therefore, you don’t expect them to know everything, either. When you are stumped by a question or stymied by a problem, admit it. Tell your colleagues about skills, domain expertise, or even life lessons you’ve learned recently so they know that you, too, are a work in progress. Be curious about your colleagues personally and professionally. And even better, invite your colleagues at all levels to teach you something you think you can learn from them.

3. Ask for help

When we are young, we start to associate asking for help with reputational costs. “If I admit I can’t do something or don’t know something . . . then people will think I am weak, lazy, or stupid,” one client told me. If you’re a leader in your 30s, 40s, 50s, or older, then you have decades of listening to that inner voice, which makes the behavior hard to change. Start by reframing how you think about help. 

In our book, Go to Help: 31 Ways to Offer, Ask for, and Accept Help, Sophie Riegel and I share several mindsets that help help-resistant people change their ways. These include “people have been wanting and waiting to help me,” “if I don’t ask my colleagues for help, then my colleagues won’t know they can ask me for help,” “humans are prosocial creatures; it is in our DNA to help each other,” and “asking for help is how I can show someone I trust them and value their input.” 

4. Invite other perspectives

As a leader, you should recognize that once you share your point of view, others are likely to see it as final, binding, or immutable. If you want others to experience you as open to new ideas, then you should actively invite them into the conversations. Say something like, “Here’s how I see it, and I’m open to seeing it differently.” Or share your point of view with an invitation to “please push back” or “tell me what I may be missing here.” Or describe your opinion as a “soft opinion.” I call these phrases “red carpet language,” because they aim to make the other person feel important and welcome them into the conversation. And once someone has shared their view with you, thank them, and follow up to let them know how you used their input (or if you didn’t, why not). 

5. Take feedback seriously

If you’re leading other people, you’re hopefully giving them feedback to help them learn, grow, and succeed in their jobs. In order for them to hear the feedback and accept it, your colleagues can’t be guarded. You can and should let down your guard in a similar way. And since getting useful peer or upward feedback can be a challenge, you might start by sharing what you know you need to work on. You might share, “I know that I sometimes have blinders on about how many projects I am committing this team to” or, “I know that I’m inconsistent in having our 1:1 meetings” or, “I’ve gotten feedback that I need to improve my ability to delegate.” And then ask, “how do you see it?” or, “how has that impacted you”? And then, really listen.

You don’t have to lose out on the benefits of vulnerability just because the word “vulnerable” doesn’t resonate with you. Being open to and actively inviting new ideas, conversations, feedback, perspectives, and self-awareness are similarly effective ways to improve your working relationships. And you can call it whatever you want.