Strong enough to feel?
With 66.3m viewers in the UK and across the world, the hit Netflix show ‘Adolescence’ where a boy is arrested for the murder of a teenage girl, has ignited a debate about the influence of big tech, the manosphere, violence and isolation.
It’s hard to think of a more timely conversation. And the vigour with which it is now being taken up is a stark contrast to what amounts to a shameful collective failure to grasp the nettle and deal with these issues seriously until now.
Can we make progress? Only if we recognise the critical role vulnerability plays in shaping the lives of young boys and the impact that has on all of us.
In what seems like a parallel universe to this series, the workplace, leaders and teams who have embraced the concept of psychological safety (simply described as a culture of rewarded vulnerability) have seen its transformational impact on individuals’ well-being, belonging, and engagement.
In high-pressure and dangerous working environments, from healthcare to aviation, vulnerability has not just changed lives—it has saved them.
Nowhere is this more evident than in NPR’s account of Shell’s Ursa oil rig, where workers—so accustomed to witnessing death and injury that they simply didn’t talk about it—were invited to vulnerability workshops at Shell’s headquarters. These sessions helped them to acknowledge the risks they faced, the fear they suppressed, and the toll it took.
What followed was extraordinary: a culture shift towards emotional openness, where men who had once kept silent about their struggles began sharing not only their workplace concerns but also their personal lives.
This led to a staggering 84% reduction in accidents on one of the riskiest rigs, proving that psychological safety isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a matter of life and death.
An environment where people can ask for help, admit uncertainty, and speak up without fear of repercussion is one where they thrive. Where that is absent, burnout rises, teams fracture, and lives are lost.
An environment where you can ask for help, admit you are stuck, be honest and be heard without jeopardy is one where people thrive. Where it is absent, people burn out, they don’t work for each other and lives are lost.
These are not ideas from the fringe, they are advocated by the likes of McKinsey and have underpinned leadership development for a quarter of a century.
One of the many things that makes ‘Adolescence’ so jarring is the portrayal of a boy bereft of emotional education and awareness at the time when he needs it most: as a teenage boy with a fragile, malleable mind.
But what looks like a teenage boy problem is a role model problem.
The product of which is, to paraphrase Sir Gareth Southgate’s recent BBC Dimbleby lecture, a generation of boys, increasingly adrift, disconnected from healthy models of masculinity and finding their values elsewhere.
It's an issue we can't ignore because it doesn't just pose a danger through the violence and degradation of women today. It infects thinking and therefore their participation in every part of life.
The young men struggling now are the police, teachers, nurses, leaders, managers and colleagues of the future. The impact is therefore not theoretical or transient but one affects the way we all live and work today and in the future.
If we accept that we need to confront this challenge then Southgate’s call to action - that “one of the most impactful things we can do for women is to focus on improving young men” – is one we must take to heart. We know what works.
In organisations, we’ve spent decades learning how to build cultures where people can speak up, stumble, grow, and belong. The only question is whether we’re willing to recognise that this is the environment we must create for our young men.
If we can train leaders to listen, we can help fathers show up. And if we want better workplaces for women, we need better worlds for men.
Vulnerability is not weakness. It’s the foundation of strength. And whether it is around the boardroom table or kitchen table we have to talk about it.
