There’s a scene in the movie Oppenheimer when, as a professor at Berkeley, he leads a discussion on the collapse of a giant star. One of his students, Harland Snyder, begins to grasp the compounding effects of all that matter caving in on itself. Density increases, which increases gravity, which increases density…

“It’s a viscous cycle until…” Snyder starts, then checks his notes. “What’s the limit here?”

“I don’t know,” Oppenheimer replies. “See where the math takes us. I guarantee it’s somewhere no one’s been before.”

“Me?” Snyder asks incredulously.

“Yes, you. Your math is better than mine.”

This 30-second scene, nestled within a 3-hour long Academy Award winning picture, holds the key to Oppenheimer’s success as the director of The Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory.

Collecting and corralling the greatest available scientific minds in the world and getting them to work together was no easy task. It wasn’t Oppenheimer’s scientific brilliance that accomplished that feat. It was his ability to foster trust among experts.

Admitting matter-of-factly that a student’s math skills were better than his is indicative of how Oppenheimer saw himself and others. In it we can see the elements of trustworthiness:

• Authenticity: Oppenheimer is not trying to be something he’s not. He trusts the unique value he brings and has no need to pretend to better than he is.
• Benevolence: Oppenheimer recognizes Snyder’s potential and calls it out of him. Snyder needs this opportunity to discover his own potential
• Competence: By admitting what he doesn’t know or isn’t good at, it makes others all the more prone to trust Oppenheimer when he says he does know something or is good at something.
• Dependability: It wouldn’t work if this interaction was an outlier. On the contrary, Oppenheimer consistently created egoless environments others could thrive in.

Oppenheimer and Snyder collaborated on a model that shocked the scientific world and laid the foundation for our understanding of black holes. He then applied the same egalitarian approach to the team at Los Alamos who successfully created the first atomic bomb.

So don’t be afraid of admitting your limitations and praising the strengths of others. Confident vulnerability will always cultivate more trust than a fragile ego.

For Reflection: Where could you be more vulnerable in your relationships?