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Like a lot of men, my relationship with my father is complex. Over the years it has moved from love, to hate, to love again. When I was a boy, he was the hero of the household, leaving to conquer the world each morning, and sitting at the head of the dinner table each night. But as I moved into adolescence, and then into my young twenties, we argued a lot. The problem was, we were similar people looking at the world in different ways; he with jaded cynicism, me with rose-colored glasses. I resented him for always dousing my idealistic optimism for a better world with resigned pessimism for a worse one. He was no hero, I thought, just a bitter curmudgeon who’d let life beat him down.

As my resentments toward my father deepened, I wrote him off. Though I had moved away from home to become a high diving gypsy at 21, I often stayed in close contact with the rest of my family through cards, letters, and occasional phone calls. But I purposely left him out. He is a bad father, I told myself, so I will be a bad son.

In 1991, my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s some time earlier. My father had become, in effect, a father to his father. My grandfather had been my father’s hero, and with his death approaching, my father began to reflect on the importance of the father/son bond. He became bothered by the distance that had grown between us. At the same time, I had begun to wonder how I would feel if my father died. I honestly didn’t know if I would miss him, but I was 100% sure that I would mourn the loss of the potential of what could have been. If my father died, I didn’t want to shake my head and say, what a shame we didn’t work things out. As my grandfather’s condition worsened, I decided to fly home to say my goodbyes.

My father and I wanted more of our relationship, but neither of us knew how to ask for it. Toward the end of my visit, we decided to go for a hike not far from where my father grew up. Half way through our hike, my father made the first move, saying, “I notice that you don’t call or write me. You seem to have written me off.” His words weren’t antagonistic, as they’d often been in the past, rather they were tinged with hurt. His tone suggested that he thought I was somehow embarrassed of him. I was taken back by his openness, but also relieved. Slowly I began to open up to him about some of the resentments that I’d been carrying for a long time. I was shaking. Even at 31, I was afraid of his temper. A temper that was matched only by . . . well . . . my own.

As we hiked along, I knew that we were in the midst of a high-stakes conversation. In opening up to one another, we stood the chance of further severing, and perhaps ending, our relationship. But I also knew that we were in a different place now. My grandfather’s pending death opened up a space of mutual yearning between my father and me. After saying my peace, I startled even myself, telling him, “I want you to know that I love you, Dad, and I want us to be closer.”

Underneath our resentments lies anger, and underneath our anger lies hurt, and underneath our hurt lies love. After walking a while in silence, my father stopped in his tracks, looked me in the eyes and said, “I love you too, Billy, let’s do better.”

I can honestly say that that was one of the riskiest, and most important conversations I ever had. It dramatically altered the course of our relationship. By putting down our barriers we were able to connect in a new way. The conversation helped me stop holding my Dad up to heroic, and unattainable, expectations. It helped me begin to see my Dad as a man with flaws, like me, but as someone who worked really hard to make a better life for our family. Our conversation helped give us a new foundation on which our relationship could grow—our newly affirmed love for each other. But here is the point, none of this would have happened had we not first took the risk of revealing ourselves to each other. Since then I have committed myself to Right Risk Principle 10: Expose yourself.

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The Risk of Exposure

Risk-taking is, by definition, being exposed to harm. The predominant feeling elicited by being exposed to risk is vulnerability, and life’s most vulnerable moments are not when peering over the edge of a cliff but looking someone squarely in the eye. I am convinced that exposing our true selves to a boss, a coworker, a parent, or a loved one, takes more courage than performing a 100-foot high dive. Interpersonal risks are extremely scary because they are less controllable than risks of a more concrete nature. When performing a high dive, for example, one can predict with 100% accuracy that one will always go down. When revealing your true feelings to another human being, however, all bets are off as to how he or she will react. People, as emotional beings, are volatile. The slightest comment can set us off and trigger our emotions. At one time or another, each of us has had to tiptoe around the emotions of someone else. And at one time or another, someone has tiptoed around ours as well.

A friend of mine used to tell me that a broken spirit is far worse than a broken bone. When we expose our emotional selves we stand the chance of getting hurt deeply and permanently. But the rub is, you can’t build trust, and therefore you can’t build enduring relationships, without first taking the risk of opening yourselves up to one another. Indeed, the depth of the trust between two people is often a function of the emotional high dives they’ve been willing to take together.

Committing to the principle of exposing yourself means to accept the inherent risks that accompany personal disclosure. In many respects, to apply this principle is to validate that you are fully committed to all the other principles. Exposing yourself means going beyond just committing to a given risk as a one-time event, and committing yourself to risk-taking as a way of interacting with the world. Stretching your comfort zones is not enough; you must learn to live outside of them entirely, in a way that accepts vulnerability as an essential part of the human condition.

Comfort, in the context of comfort zone, is just a euphemism for fear. When your life is encased in tightly defined zones of comfort, you are a person whose life is restricted by fear. But when you burst through your comfort zones, and allow yourself to be wonderfully exposed, you become a person with an enlarged capacity to take risks in every area of your life, even life’s more intimate parts. Being an exposed person means more than just taking physical, intellectual, or creative risks. It means applying the Right Risk principles in the areas where your risks are most consequential: your relationships. Exposing yourself means opening your arms to taking interpersonal risks.

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Avoiding the Clash

The raw feelings that come with emotional risk-taking can cause acute risk aversion, especially when the emotional risk involves interpersonal conflict. Yet by avoiding conflict, and remaining emotionally concealed, we stunt our maturity, weaken our confidence, and erode our relationships. Indeed, as related in the incident below, in extreme instances, failing to expose your true thoughts and feelings can even result in physical injury.

In 1988, I was named team captain of our diving show in Seattle, Washington. This was our first time performing at this amusement park, so I was very conscious of the need to impress the client quickly.

The first show of the season was always special, particularly in the case of an inaugural season at a new park. Like any other business, the idea was to deliver a top-notch product so that you would please the customer and thereby extend the contract. The first show was our chance to make a good first impression with the park management. Accordingly, we always aimed to launch the opening show with a “splash.” For this reason, the president of our company, Don Jewel, decided to fly up from Los Angeles and join the performance.¹ Don was a legend in the high-diving business. He founded the company with money he had received for performing a world-record high dive (168 feet) into Baltimore Harbor in 1981. Don reasoned that by coming to Seattle and promoting the opportunity to see a former world-record holder perform, he could draw more local press to the show.

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While Don’s reasoning was sound, his perception of reality was flawed. Though Don was indeed a former world-record holder, his record dive had nearly cost him his life. Don wasn’t a diver; he was a wrestler. In front of a nationally televised audience, while traveling at speeds approaching terminal velocity, Don had crashed into Baltimore Harbor hunched over like a caveman. He was barely able to get out of the water—a requisite for being awarded the record. While the crew in Seattle was curious to see Don dive again, I had serious misgivings. In the eight years since his big dive, Don had gained nearly 70 pounds! Worse still, he had done only a handful of dives since breaking the world record eight years earlier.

One of the fundamental laws of risk-taking is to soberly assess reality. The reality was, there was no way in hell that Don should be doing this dive. Recognizing the gravity of the situation, but not wanting to offend Don, I casually suggested that he let me or one of the other divers do the dive. He refused, and even though I knew that this was madness, I didn’t protest. Like his world-record debacle, this dive would be taken in a militant state of delusion.

The flailing arms and legs were the first signs that something was wrong. From 100 feet a small outward jump of only a few feet can end up carrying you 20 feet out by the time you strike the water. Don had leapt off the platform at full throttle and was traveling out far past the middle of the pool. It was clear from his wild gesticulations that he was well aware that he was in trouble. The other divers and I could see instantly that Don was off-kilter. Our cocky all-American smiles turned to expressions of utter terror. Some of us had extended our hands toward Don as if we could somehow telepathically will him back into control. Even the audience could tell there was something wrong. Don was heading for the edge of the pool rotating past vertical and kicking his legs. He looked like someone who had tipped too far back in his chair while having a seizure. As if to accentuate the absurdity of the moment, Don blurted out a fully audible “shit!” just as he crashed into the pool drenching the audience with a huge plume of water.

For a moment we were all stunned. Then Don hoisted himself out of the pool, mustered a sheepish wave to the audience, and scurried backstage. When the rest of us joined him, Don was lying on the ground in the fetal position. All he could say was “Get an ambulance.”

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Don had indeed made a splash. He was wheeled out of the park on a stretcher, in full view of everyone. He would spend the next three days cloistered at a Seattle hospital recuperating from a broken back. Don had fractured three vertebrae in his lower lumbar region. This time there was no world record to show for his spectacle. He did, however, get to wear a girdle for a couple of months.

This story illustrates the dangers that can arise when we conceal our true feelings to protect the feelings of others. It also shows what happens when overconfidence collides with underconfidence. Don’s headstrong ego had poisoned his judgment and he had become oblivious to the dangers of his risk. He was defiantly “disrespecting the ladder” and provoking the risk gods. But Don’s fearlessness was offset by my fearfulness. I was so afraid of confronting Don, so afraid of pissing him off, and so afraid of hurting his feelings that I let him walk into a life-threatening situation. While Don was guilty of arrogance, I was guilty of avoidance. My lack of assertion in confronting Don made me feel culpable for his fractured back. My fear of injuring his feelings had resulted in his physically injuring his body. Instead of exposing my true misgivings in an assertive way, I allowed Don’s conviction to trump my courage. Not only did I have a responsibility to confront him as a friend, but I had a responsibility to do so as the team captain as well. Instead, personally and professionally, I failed him.

Staying Under Cover

Committing to the principle of exposing yourself means carrying the other Right Risk principles into every area of your life. Perhaps the riskiest place to apply this principle is in our worklives. When it comes to exposing our true selves at work, most of us prefer to remain under cover. Of course our organizations largely promote this behavior. For example, while most organizations have mechanisms for downward feedback in the form of performance appraisals and reviews, upward feedback is mostly a frozen pipeline. With a straight face, one executive was so bold as to tell me that upward feedback (such as 360-degree feedback) is dangerous because it promotes “leadership insecurity” and undermines corporate discipline. In a sense, he was saying that to remain bastions of social control, the last thing we want is for the troops to let the emperors know when they’re naked. This exec can take solace in the fact that upward feedback is as rare as secure leadership. Ask yourself, when was the last time you exposed yourself by giving your boss a performance review?

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It is odd that behavior we would not tolerate outside of work often goes unaddressed inside of work, particularly in the upper echelons. The designation “boss,” and the power derived from the title, seems to entitle the boss to a higher degree of behavioral latitude. Higher-ups are allowed to get away with behavior that is not tolerated at lower levels. The higher the hierarchical altitude, the more impatience, turfism, moodiness, pettiness, and abrasiveness. Social dominance is a function of ego, and the game of organizational leapfrog often equates to survival of the scariest. When everyone is afraid of you, you don’t have to deal with them . . . they have to deal with you. Those brave souls who expose themselves by questioning the behavior or decisions of scary executives do so at their own peril. Yet nowhere is unfiltered feedback more needed than at the upper echelons. Without it, executives become in danger of rendering decisions that may satisfy the interest of their egos but undermine the interests of their businesses.

Expecting people to expose their true opinions to a lousy boss may seem unrealistic. The reality is that people get fired for exposing themselves at work. Besides, tolerating a bad boss keeps the paychecks rolling in and puts food on the table. All of this is true, of course. But without these realities to contend with, exposing yourself wouldn’t be a risk. The fact that there is a possibility of reprisal is what makes it risk.

There are two problems with failing to take the risk of exposing your opinions to a bad boss—one affects the boss, and the other affects the employee. First, we allow their cor- rosive behavior to continue or worsen, undermining employee morale. Second, we compromise our principles, weakening both our resolve and our stature within the company. Remaining under cover is, essentially, a sin of omission— failing to do what we ought to do. Over time, we may get a reputation as being a pushover or a lackey, the death knell for any aspiring career.

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A Diver Exposed

I rely upon my own experience in drawing these conclusions about the merits of exposing yourself at work. As a young, insecure leader, I once received some hard-hitting feedback from one of my divers. In 1986, after only two years of performing, I was asked to lead our team at WaterCountry USA in Williamsburg, Virginia. I had learned from my previous team captains that it is important to spend a lot of time critiquing the diver’s performance early on in the season, so I rode the team hard in the weeks leading up to the first day of shows. Being only 23 and not wanting to seem weak in front of the older divers, after each show I would stride backstage like General Patton and grill the team. One day after coming down hard on the team for a sloppy performance, I dismissed them in utter disgust. One diver, however, lingered behind. Steve Willard was one of our most talented performers. When the other divers were out of earshot, Steve stood in front of me and said, “Listen, Treasurer, who do you think you are? Where do you get off talking to us like that? Do you think that by berating us and being rude, that you will earn our respect? All you do is harp on our mistakes. What are you trying to do, make us afraid of you? If you talk to us like that again, I’ll walk.”

At first, Steve’s words ticked me off. How dare he talk back to me like that! I’m his boss! I’ll fire his ass! I thought. But the more I internalized it, the more I knew he had taken a risk, and that he was right. I wasn’t being a leader, I was being a jerk. The phrase that caught my attention the most was “Who do you think you are?” Clearly, I was not being myself. Instead, I had constructed a bastardized leadership style based on all the bosses who had ever led me. I was me being them. I was a phony.

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To his credit, Steve had exposed his true feelings to me and in the process did, in fact, cause me to become more insecure—temporarily. Steve’s feedback set off a chain of events that would ultimately change my life. His words prompted me to become intensely interested in learning about leadership, influence, and motivation. I started reading books on team dynamics. Eventually, this interest would carry me to graduate school where I would write my masters thesis on motivational leadership. Unwittingly, Steve had awakened a calling in me. Even today, as the head of a company that helps people take risks, I benefit from the risk that Steve took by exposing himself to me.

Exposing the Truth

The principle of exposing ourselves is fundamentally about honesty. As much as we all know the virtues of honesty, we seem to have a hard time putting it into practice, opting instead for socially appropriate lying. Lying comes easier than the truth for two reasons. First, it keeps us from hurting each other’s feelings. Second, it helps us avoid conflict. So, when a wife asks a husband, “Do I look fat?” and a husband asks a wife, “Is my bald spot getting bigger?” both reply, “Of course not, dear!” . . . even if it is not the truth.

To expose yourself often requires confronting others with your truth, not to admonish or inflict pain, but to foster growth. For example, early in my career, my mentor told me that I was a brownnoser. He didn’t try to sugarcoat it or protect my feelings; he just looked me square in the eye and stated it. Afterwards, he just sat there and let me deal with my own emotions. He was responsible for the feedback, I was responsible for the feelings. The moment was very awkward but very necessary. It forced me to consider the need to change. By the time I left his office, I was actually in a good mood. He had closed a blind spot by offering me a few specific examples and then providing me with sound advice for future growth.

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Personal growth would be next to impossible without the type of unvarnished feedback that my mentor gave me. Think about your own growth. Hasn’t it come to you mostly as a result of someone exposing their truth about your blind spot?

Leaving the Harbor of Resentments

One of the major benefits of exposing ourselves is that it prevents resentments from growing. Resentments are the number one reason for poor relationships between people. We get resentful about lots of things, such as favoritism, unfairness, not being appreciated, not getting our way, other people’s success, etc. But most commonly we get resentful when someone says something hurtful to us and instead of addressing it straight away, we swallow it.

Unaddressed resentments are like lead ornaments that hang inside us weighing us down. Because we are the ones holding the grudge, the person we are resenting may have no idea that anything is wrong and thus can’t remedy the situation. Or they know something is wrong because we transmit it to them through our moody or curt behavior, but because we don’t actually tell them, they are left to guess what is the matter. Even in this case, we carry the burden of resentment, at them and at ourselves for not telling them.

Though emotional volatility makes disclosing resentments risky, the risks of unaddressed resentments are greater. I have seen resentments fester to the point where they have caused people to quit jobs, break off friendships, boycott family reunions, and end marriages. I know a brother and sister who didn’t talk for eight years because of resentments they held toward each other.

What surprises me is the sheer amount of time spent carrying the resentment when the act of disclosing them is often very brief. We may spend weeks imagining arguments with the other person, anguishing over what we’d like to tell them. But when we actually muster up the courage to confront the issue, resolution, one way or the other, occurs very quickly. Knowing this, my advice to coachees who are harboring resentments is to expose them swiftly in order to strengthen their chances of keeping their relationships healthy and vibrant.

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Don’t Get So Close to Me

One of the main reasons we avoid exposing ourselves is fear of intimacy. When we reveal ourselves to someone else, we stand a very real chance of deepening our relationship, and, therefore, becoming more intimate with each other. According to Thomas Moore, the author of Soul Mates, the word intimacy means “profound interior.”² It comes from the Latin inter meaning “within” and can also be translated as “most within” or “within-est.” In taking emotional risks with each other, we reveal those portions of ourselves that normally remain ensconced within our psychological interior.

As emotional risk, intimacy is a double-edged sword. First, in revealing our emotions, we unmask a truer, more authentic version of ourselves. Disrobed of image and pretense, we stand emotionally naked. The danger of being revealed this way is that we are vulnerable to being rejected, and as a rejection of our truest self, this is a rejection of the worst kind. For some, however, the second danger is more threatening: In exposing our true selves we might be accepted to the point of obligation. In revealing ourselves we run a very real risk of building closer connections with people. The more we bond, the more likely it is that we will take an interest in them and become more sensitive to their needs. Eventually we may even grow to care about them and will no longer be able to dismiss or ignore them. The more intimate our relationship becomes, the more difficult it is to extricate ourselves from the obligations of friendship and to preserve our independence. Fears of intimacy are fears of dependence, responsibility, confinement, and obligation.

Exposing yourself takes real courage because it means becoming more emotionally available and engaged. When we are emotionally present, we listen with greater intensity, we are less reluctant to expose our vulnerabilities, we are more attuned to the needs of others, and we are more willing to work through relationship-straining confrontations. To be emotionally engaged means living in a more openhearted, sincere, and exposed way. Yes, living this way means we will suffer through rejections. And, yes, it also means that we will occasionally feel smothered under the obligation of friendship. As Moore says, “The courage required to open one’s soul to express itself or receive another is infinitely more demanding than the efforts we put into avoidance of intimacy.”³ Over time, though, the emotionally engaged person learns to accommodate both the need to preserve one’s independence and the need to form deeper, and ultimately more durable relationships.

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Overexposure

There is always the danger, of course, in being overexposed. All of us know people who seem to have lost all sense of privacy or diplomacy. But the principle of exposure is not about having no emotional or interpersonal boundaries. Instead it is about recognizing that all risk involves exposure, and therefore vulnerability. In the same way we expose our money, bodies, and brains to take financial, physical, and intellectual risks, we must expose our feelings to take emotional risks. Exposing yourself means having no hidden agendas, and living in an open, nonmanipulative way. Not in a way that betrays our privacy, but in a way that affirms our character.

Putting Principle 10 into Practice

• Think of a time when you took the risk of exposing your true feelings to someone else. What was the issue that you were confronting? What was the outcome? Did exposing yourself make things better or worse?
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• In what ways do you avoid exposing your true thoughts, feelings, and opinions? In these instances, why is remaining under cover easier than exposing yourself?
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• What interpersonal risk have you been avoiding? Why? What would it take for you to confront the issue? How might exposing yourself benefit the relationship?
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• On a piece of paper, draw a picture of the “lead weight” resentments that you may be carrying around. Use circles to illustrate their size. How many lead weights are you carrying? How are they getting in the way of your relationships? How can you remove them?
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• Are you comfortable taking emotional risks or do they scare you? Why? What would it take for you to become more emotionally revealed?
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