232. Vulnerability Does Not Require Full Exposure

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This is the Women Emerging podcast, where you get your weekly insights on leading from women across the world.

I'm Julie Middleton, founder of Women Emerging.

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College life just doesn't prepare you for leadership.

Empathy is simply not an asset to leadership unless it comes with boundaries.

Being young is not an easy thing to bear, a burden to bear when you want to lead and people are writing you off because you're young.

And vulnerability, it's not an asset unless it also comes with boundaries.

This is the final episode of four, where four young women who are changemakers and have just completed the Changemaker Expedition.

Changemaker meaning that you're young, you're a woman, and probably since the age of 12, you've been leading people.

And you're going on the Changemaker expedition probably about 10 years later and saying, what do I know about leadership? What do I wish I'd known then? What do I know I know now? And what am I going to take into the future? These episodes have caught some really, really interesting methods, some insights, some knowledge that are just as relevant if you're young and figuring out how you're going to accelerate your journey to leadership.

Or whether you're as old as I am and you're saying, how am I going to lead people who are almost a third my age? Very, very powerful episodes.

And particularly, I want to link this episode on vulnerability with an episode two weeks ago on empathy.

Vulnerable and empathy.

Two words that so many young changemakers were using constantly at the beginning of the expedition.

And by the end of the expedition, they were still using them, but they were very nuanced.

Have a listen.