Vulnerability: The leadership edge no one talks about

Someone once told me that the hardest thing about building a business is not the competition, or the capital, or even the decisions. It is the silence around the hard questions. The ones you cannot ask your team, your partners, or even the people closest to you. The questions that sit with you quietly at the end of a long day, when there is no one left to perform for.

In building ASCENT, we have tried to address that silence. It is my father-in-law Harsh Mariwala’s vision, and I see myself simply as a custodian of it. He has always believed that entrepreneurs grow best in the company of other entrepreneurs, and I feel fortunate to carry that vision forward. The more time I spend with founders, the more convinced I become that when they break that silence with the right people, in the right room, they don’t just find answers. They gain perspective, confidence and the reassurance that they don’t have to build alone.

The Weight We Do Not Talk About

The number one issue entrepreneurs face is loneliness. It comes from everything we ask of them – to have answers, to project confidence, to make decisions quickly and to stand behind them. We celebrate the ones who seem to do all of this effortlessly, and we rarely talk about what that costs.

The truth is that most founders carry more self-doubt and uncertainty than they let on. Not because they are unprepared or under-skilled, but because that is simply what building something looks like from the inside. There are no clean answers. There are only judgement calls, sometimes made without all the facts, and the quiet weight of wondering whether they got it right – if they moved too fast or too slow, if the person they trusted with a critical role was the right choice, if the direction they committed to publicly is still the one they believe in privately. With so much to resolve single-handedly, where do they go to be seen? Where do they find the time to reflect?

I have felt this myself. My own experience of being part of a peer forum gave me a firsthand sense of what it means to be in a room where you can be honest, and how much that changes the way you think, lead and grow.

A Room Where Honesty Is the Norm

The first gift of vulnerability in a peer setting is simple: it dissolves the isolation that comes from thinking you are the only one struggling with something. ASCENT Trust Groups exist to give founders exactly that – a room where they can be honest, feel seen and supported, without judgement. A small, consistent group of 8-10 peers who meet every month and have agreed, collectively, to hold what is shared within the group in confidence and to show up without any pretence.

What we have seen, over and over, is that when that kind of safety exists, people use it. They bring the problems they have not been able to articulate elsewhere. They ask the questions they thought they should already know the answers to. They surface the worries they have been managing alone for longer than they should have. And in doing so, they almost always find that someone else at the table has been sitting with something similar, sometimes the very same thing, framed differently.

Once that isolation lifts, the room sharpens. It becomes less about managing impressions and more about finding clarity.

Honesty Is Not a Risk, It Is a Resource

In the context of leadership, vulnerability has long carried a negative connotation – treated as a weakness to be managed rather than a strength to be drawn on. Being open about what you do not know, or where you are finding things hard, does not mean you are incapable. It is a sign that you are paying attention to the right things. In my observation, founders who are honest in a peer setting are often the ones who grow holistically. Not because vulnerability is magic, but because honesty is the precondition for good perspective, sharp thinking and better decisions.

When you tell a peer group the real version of a problem, you get responses that are relevant. When you share the polished version, you get polished responses that do not quite fit. The quality of the help you receive is directly shaped by the quality of the honesty you bring. That is true of any good conversation, but it is especially true in a setting built around trust, where the people across the table have earned the right to hear the unvarnished version.

What Happens When Founders Feel Safe

I have had the privilege of seeing what happens when founders find a room where they feel safe. I have watched people walk in carrying something heavy and leave a little lighter because it was shared and held by people who understood. Businesses change direction most decisively when someone finally says what they have been thinking for months. Multiplied across thousands of founders, these are the decisions that quietly add up to India’s Viksit Bharat story. Leaders grow into themselves when a peer group holds up a mirror, with the kind of honesty that comes from having no agenda beyond telling each other the truth.

None of that happens without vulnerability. And none of that vulnerability happens without trust. That is what ASCENT’s Trust Groups are, at their core. A place where trust is built slowly, meeting by meeting, conversation by conversation. Where vulnerability is not just welcomed but understood to be the thing that makes everything else possible. Where the silence around the hard questions finally has somewhere to go.

If you are an entrepreneur who has been looking for that kind of room, I hope you find it. And if you have not found it yet, I hope you will consider looking here.

Explore ASCENT membership at: https://ascentfoundation.in/apply-now/

By Priyanjali Mariwala, Lead Director – ASCENT

Note to Readers: This opinion piece is part of a Mint series which is in partnership with the ASCENT Foundation.