Abstract
This paper explores an alternative view of vulnerability in leadership, representing a shift from traditional, androcentric models to one that prioritises relationality and care. When it is viewed through the lens of relational care ethics and feminist reflexive collaboration, we argue that vulnerability can function as an empowering catalyst that challenges power and hierarchical structures. We conceptualise vulnerability as a dynamic process of self-reflection, empathy and embodiment, wherein leaders adopt an ethical, other-directed stance. By utilising retrospective data, we illustrate how vulnerability redefines leadership by fostering shared embodied experiences, expanding empathetic imagination and generating embodied knowledge. Our contributions are twofold: first, we theorise vulnerability as a relational, emotional experience that facilitates a deeper understanding of others’ emotions and expands notions of moral responsibility to nurture caring relationships with a minimal focus on hierarchical power, and second, we argue that embracing vulnerability along with feminist reflexivity, in this context, not only challenges the power structures of masculine norms and hierarchies but also provides to redefine powerlessness in leadership viewed as ethically engaged and caring activity.