ABSTRACT
Effective leaders are strategic in their thinking about when it is best to be vulnerable and when they must be circumspect. While vulnerability is important to building trusting relationships, maintaining boundaries around it are also important. Organizational cultures also have features related to each. This colours the relationship of people to one another and either promotes curiosity, learning, and innovation or inhibits it. The issues with inappropriate relationships at work are legion. When leaders make decisions that are misaligned with what they proclaim, the company is deprived of leadership that has the courage to maintain good boundaries. Some leaders encourage hanging on to what was formerly effective, in the interest of stability. Companies that choose stability set themselves up for extinction. Great leaders make experimentation possible, though they insist that learning be an outcome. They understand that dynamics are not just in movement, but in the potential for movement.
