Editor’s Note:  Grace Ueng, performance coach and founder of Savvy Growth, is the author of The Work of Happiness, she teaches audiences 12 keys to experiencing more happiness to perform better @ work and in life. In this week’s column, she shares what stayed with her after her 35th reunion—and the leadership lesson she didn't expect to learn.

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I've attended all seven of my Harvard Business School reunions since graduating in 1991.

This one stayed with me longer than any of the others.

Maybe it's because I realized I may have more reunions behind me than ahead of me. Maybe it's because I finally had the opportunity to teach in an HBS classroom — something I never could have imagined as a nervous 23-year-old first-year student scared to even speak in class. Or maybe it's because some of the things I've helped build over the past few years, including a women's community within our class and HappinessWorks, are beginning to take on a life of their own.

Whatever the reason, I came home thinking not about accomplishments and more about connection.

Revealing: My new favorite professor

One of the highlights of the weekend was hearing my new favorite HBS Professor Leslie John discuss her new book, Revealing. As a behavioral scientist, she studies something that fascinates me as both a coach and a student of happiness: why we often hold back parts of ourselves that could actually help us connect more deeply with others.

Her research challenges the assumption that vulnerability is risky. In study after study, she found that appropriately sharing personal experiences builds trust, strengthens relationships, and often creates better outcomes than carefully guarding every thought and feeling.

As I listened, I found myself thinking about my coaching clients.

Many of the executives I work with are brilliant, accomplished, and deeply committed leaders. They're also perfectionists. They often believe that showing vulnerability will diminish their credibility. One CEO I coached told me directly that he didn't want to be vulnerable because he worried it would undermine his authority.

Yet again and again, I have observed the opposite.

When leaders share appropriately — not oversharing, but revealing something real—they become more relatable, more trusted, and often more effective.

What struck me wasn't just the research itself. It was finally having a name—and evidence—for something I had been observing for years in my coaching practice: that appropriately sharing something real often strengthens leadership rather than diminishing it.

The next day, I found myself testing her ideas in real time.

I was one of several classmates invited to lead a reunion session.  My topic: The Work of Happiness: What High Achievers Often Get Backwards.

Four years ago, when I facilitated a leadership retreat, my happiness teacher Tal Ben-Shahar gave me a piece of advice that has stayed with me ever since:

Anchor the conversation

His point was simple. If you want people to talk about something meaningful, go first. Share something real. Give others permission to do the same.

So that's what I did.

I shared the story of a sectionmate we had recently lost after a long struggle with depression.

Just last year, he had planned to attend a pilot session of HappinessWorks. Work got in the way. He told me he was simply too busy with his startup and would come to a future session.

There wasn't a future session for him.

His story stayed with me.

So did my own experience with depression several years ago and a promise I made to myself during our 30th virtual reunion.

At the time, I was in a very dark place.

I remember listening to Arthur Brooks and feeling one of the first glimmers of hope I had experienced in weeks. I made a vow that if I found my way back, I would dedicate part of my life to helping others not get to that dark place.

That promise eventually led to my WRAL column and the human performance work I do today, corporately and in my 1-on-1 coaching.

After sharing those stories, something shifted in the room. People began sharing their own stories. Not because I was the expert. Because I had gone first.

My wise sectionmates: Engage

After my session, sectionmate Toni Sacconaghi sent me a note.

He wrote that it was powerful that I had "shared my journey" and that doing so created "great engagement from our classmates."

His comment reminded me of another conversation from the reunion.

My sectionmate Paul Salem gave a talk that captured our attention for an entire thirty minutes—using no slides or notes. A couple weeks later, I emailed him to ask how he had prepared.

His response arrived almost immediately:

"I always want to engage the audience. People like to talk more than listen. Make it interactive!"

That simple reply captured something I had been learning myself.

The goal isn't to give the perfect presentation. The goal is to create the conditions for a meaningful conversation.

From my two sectionmates came different words, but in essence, the same lesson. Connection isn't created by having all the answers. It's created by creating space for others to participate.

My own evolution

That realization also made me reflect on my own evolution since business school.

When I was at HBS, marketing was my favorite subject. If I were returning today, I suspect I'd spend much more time studying organizational behavior, behavioral science, and performance psychology—the fields that explore why people think, feel, and act the way they do.

Perhaps that's because of my coaching work.

Perhaps it's because of my own experiences.

Or perhaps it's simply because, over time, I've become less interested in what organizations do and more interested in what helps people in the companies perform at their best, and in turn, inspire their people to do the same.

That was another reason Leslie's talk resonated so deeply.

She spoke about the healing power of sharing. Her book references research by psychologist James Pennebaker showing that writing about difficult experiences can improve both mental and physical well-being. Other studies show that appropriately revealing personal experiences deepens friendships, strengthens trust, and helps people feel less alone.

In other words, the things many of us instinctively avoid are often the very things that bring us closer together.

As I looked around the reunion, I realized that some of the most meaningful conversations I had were not with my closest friends. They were with classmates I barely knew thirty-five years ago.

The conversations were deeper. More honest. Less performative. More human.

Preparing

I’ve spent much of my life overpreparing. I still have a ways to go.

Years ago, I would have written every word, rehearsed repeatedly, and worried about getting it exactly right. For my TEDx talk, I practiced over and over because I was terrified of forgetting a line or missing an important point. Which is why I carried note cards on stage with me––something I now tell my clients NEVER to do!

This time was different.

The format of the session kept changing. At various points I thought I might have two hours, then a full workshop, and eventually just twenty minutes. Instead of building slides and scripting every word, I decided to try something different. I prepared differently than I normally would. I didn’t. At least compared to the thorough way I usually do.

A couple hours beforehand, I sat in a quiet alcove in Aldrich Hall and reviewed notes I had quickly typed a few days earlier as a rough outline. Knowledge I'd accumulated over the years from studying and teaching happiness, leadership, and well-being. Personal experiences. Stories. Lessons from coaching others. Things I already knew well and had shared many times.

Then I walked into the classroom and trusted the conversation.

I showed up with ideas instead of a script.

And when the session started, something happened.

What I discovered was that once the conversation started, the notes mattered far less than I thought they would.

What people seemed to remember weren't the frameworks, the research, or the carefully prepared points.

They remembered the stories. The human parts. The parts that weren't perfectly scripted.

Thirty-five years after arriving at Harvard Business School as a nervous twenty-three-year-old, that may be the most important lesson I brought home.

We spend so much time worrying about TMI—Too Much Information.

Maybe the greater risk, in leadership and in life, is TLI.

Too Little Information. Too little honesty. Too little humanity. Too little of ourselves.

Continuing the conversation

The best conversations don't end when the article does.

A few times each year, I share thoughtful reflections on happiness, leadership, and living well — along with stories and lessons I don't always share publicly.

Shared only when I have something worth saying. And I’d love to hear your thoughts too. Please join me.