Authentic vulnerability in crisis communication: A configurational framework for crisis leadership

Crisis communication research shows that leaders' emotional expressions can reduce stakeholder anger and rebuild credibility, yet the same expressions can backfire when audiences read them as exaggerated or inconsistent with the leader's identity. This article develops a configurational framework that makes visible the two communicative dimensions leaders calibrate in a crisis – authenticity (the perceived self-consistency between the leader's stated identity, prior public conduct, and crisis message) and vulnerability (the visible emotional engagement with the crisis) – and the four communication configurations their choices produce: controlled messaging, managed vulnerability, grounded transparency , and authentic vulnerability . Drawing on twelve leader-centered crisis cases across organizational scales and cultural contexts, we show that each configuration names a leadership communication approach whose reception depends on distinct conditions of fit, including responsibility attribution, cultural and normative expectations, audience fragmentation , and leader reputational capital . Moving from one configuration to another requires asymmetric mechanisms (i.e., emotion addition for grounded transparency, authenticity repair for managed vulnerability, and multi-episode capital-building for controlled messaging). Authentic vulnerability is often the configuration whose conditions of fit are most frequently met in the contemporary crisis environment, but it is a resource that requires preparation rather than representing a goal leaders aim to reach under pressure. The framework offers practicing crisis leaders a diagnostic instrument for assessing their current configuration and a prescriptive mechanism for recalibrating authenticity and vulnerability toward a better fit.