Most of us understand that we must experience failure in order to define our subsequent success, but not all who fail can grow. (Photo: Shutterstock)

During a recent podcast interview, I was asked about the most difficult lesson I've learned up until this point. While taking stock of the last few years, I really tried to think of all the mistakes I had made over time and pinpoint something I'd learned. Not surprisingly, I was unable to narrow my mistakes down to just one—there have been many; perhaps more than I ever cared to admit, until recently.

Although my setbacks have been plentiful, so have my comebacks. While reflecting on the past few years, I've realized that every step backward I've taken has somehow allowed me to take two steps forward.

They say that an arrow cannot move forward unless it is first pulled back, and the same is true for progress. Most of us understand that we must experience failure in order to define our subsequent success but, not all who fail can grow. At least not unless we're willing to embrace the one key element that sits between the fall and the climb: vulnerability.

Join Emma for her BenefitsPRO Broker Expo virtual session, "Professional and Personal Resilience and the Path to Success" on Tuesday, August 18 at 12:15 PM.  

And that's where I discovered my answer.

What has been the hardest lesson to learn over the course of my career? Learning how to be vulnerable. Learning how to embrace the discomfort that comes with missing the mark and owning the humility required to push myself back up from that feeling of being knocked down.

Last year, I founded Empowered Leadership, an organization dedicated to elevating minority leaders. And, as you might suspect, the organization is made up of a lot of women. Not just women in our industry, but remarkable women in business who have demonstrated the courage to share the ugly side of female leadership in the workplace. For every woman who talks about her struggles, there's another who has already been through the same and has a word of encouragement to share. The entire community and our contribution to each other is based on vulnerability. It has become the most powerful and relatable way in which we connect with one.

It is well documented in history that most, if not all, prominent figures have faced a hardship that appeared to painfully impact the course of life and/or career. I can point to every period of weakness in my history and credit it directly to one of my strengths now. For every time I've felt rejection, I have then experienced acceptance; perhaps not in the way I intended to achieve it at first, but always in the way it should have occurred.

A pattern of ebb and flow emerged that I couldn't quite define or sketch out in my brain until one of my closest friends shared with me the theory of a lifeline. This is the way in which you experience a low followed by a high. And maybe your low stays underground for a while, and maybe sometimes the high that follows feels too short-lived. But as your days forge on, so do your ups and downs. It's what we do in those downs that allows us the fortitude to reach again. It's sitting in the discomfort, and, as a fellow woman leader, Naama Pozniak, would say, "it's about holding your space."

We are all so afraid of the potential for failure that we often don't make an attempt at success. But we must fall down, and we must feel the crushing disappointment of loss to find the fire to get up, brush off, and do it all again with a little more resolve. Isn't this how resilience is born and bred within us? Isn't this how we all get through life?

When I speak about empowerment and leadership, I don't speak about being inherently strong; I talk about being vulnerable. I ask people to share with me one of their most painful experiences; to tell me how they made their way through to the other side and what they took, and used, from the fray. I implore people to not accept the façade of putting on a brave face because this isn't relatable to… well, anyone, and especially not to women in leadership who contend with a misplaced ideal of who or what they need to be every day.

So, let's work on generating some acceptance around vulnerability in the industry. Because we all feel it, but we're all led to believe we can't express it without risking our credibility as strong, professional people. But the truth is that it's in our moments of authenticity that we build rapport, trust, and relatability with each other and with our clients and prospects.