Brave Leaders and Courage Cultures PDF

You caiit get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability. EMBRACE THE SUCK. introduction BRAVE LEADERS AND COURAGE CULTURES **Ihave one deceptively simple and somewhat selfish goal** **for this book: I desperately want to share everything** **I've learned with you. I want to take my two decades of** **research and my experiences inside hundreds of organiza** **tions to give you a practical, *no-BS,* actionable book about** **what it takes to be a daring leader.** I say "deceptively simple" because the data informing what's presented in this book are the culmination of: Interview data collected over the past twenty years New research including interviews with 150 global C-level (and sea-level) leaders on the future of leadership Program evaluation research from our Brave Leaders Inc. courage-building work Data collected during a three-year instrument develop ment study on daring leadership Coding and making sense of 400,000 pieces of data is already complex, and the more committed I am to translating the data into actionable, research-based practices, the more painstakingly precise I need to be with the data and the more testing I need to do. The selfish part of my goal stems from wanting to be a better leader myself. Over the past five years, I've transitioned from re search professor to research professor *and* founder and CEO. The first hard and humbling lesson? Regardless of the complexity of the concepts, studying leadership is way easier than leading. When I think about my personal experiences with leading over the past few years, the only endeavors that have required the same level of self-awareness and equally high-level "comms plans" are being married for twenty-four years and parenting. And that's saying something. I completely underestimated the pull on my emotional bandwidth, the sheer determination it takes to stay calm under pressure, and the weight of continuous problem solving and decision making. Oh, yeah---and the sleep less nights. My other quasi-selfish goal is this: I want to live in a world with braver, bolder leaders, and I want to be able to pass that kind of world on to my children. I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that po tential. From corporations, nonprofits, and public sector orga nizations to governments, activist groups, schools, and faith communities, we desperately need more leaders who are com mitted to courageous, wholehearted leadership and who are self- aware enough to lead from their hearts, rather than unevolved leaders who lead from hurt and fear. We've got a lot of ground to cover, and I told Steve that I wanted to write a book that would change how the reader thinks about leading, would result in at least one meaningful behavior change, and could be read cover to cover on one flight. He laughed and asked, "Houston to Singapore?" He knows that's the longest flight I've ever endured (Moscow was just halfway). I smiled and said, "No. New York to L.A. With a short delay." Brave Leaders and Courage Cultures I've always been told, "Write what you need to read." What I need as a leader, and what every leader I've worked with over the past several years has asked for, is a practical playbook for putting the lessons from *Daring Greatly* and *Rising Strong* into action. There are even a few learnings from *Braving the Wilderness* that can help us create a culture of belonging at work. If you've read these books, expect some familiar lessons with new context, sto ries, tools, and examples related to our work lives. If you haven't read these books---no problem. I'll cover everything you need to know. The language, tools, and skills described in these chapters re quire courage and serious practice. Yet they are straightforward and, I believe, accessible and actionable to everyone holding this book. The barriers and obstacles to daring leadership are real and sometimes fierce. But what I've learned from both the research and my own life is that as long as we name them, stay curious, and keep showing up, they don't have the power to stop us from being brave. We've built a *Dare to Lead* hub on brenebrown.com where you can find resources including a free downloadable workbook for anyone who wants to put this book further into action as you read. I highly recommend it. As we learned from the re search we did for *Rising Strong:* **We know that the way to** move information from your head to your heart is through your hands. There are also leadership book recommendations and role playvideos that you can watch as part of building your own cour age skills. The videos won't take the place of putting this work into practice, but they will give you some idea of what it can look like, of where it gets hard, and of how to circle back when you inevita bly make a mistake. Additionally, you'll find a downloadable glossary of the lan guage, tools, and skills that I'm discussing in the book. (Terms included in the glossary are bolded throughout the book.) WHAT STANDS IN THE WAY BECOMES THE WAY We started our interviews with senior leaders with one question: *What, if anything, about the way people are leading today needs* *to change in order for leaders to be successful in a complex, rap* *idly changing environment where we're faced with seemingly* *intractable challenges and an insatiable demand for innovation?* There was one answer across the interviews: We need braver leaders and more courageous cultures. When we followed up to understand the specific "why" behind the call for braver leadership, the research took a critical turn. There wasn't just one answer. There were close to fifty answers, and many of them weren't intuitively connected to courage. Lead ers talked about everything from critical thinking and the ability to synthesize and analyze information to building trust, rethink ing educational systems, inspiring innovation, finding common political ground amid growing polarization, making tough deci sions, and the importance of empathy and relationship-building in the context of machine learning and artificial intelligence. We kept peeling the metaphorical onion by asking: *Can you* *break down the specific skills that you believe underpin brave* *leadership?* I was surprised by how much the research participants strug gled to answer this question. Just under half of the leaders we in terviewed initially talked about courage as a personality trait, not a skill. They typically approached the question about specific skills with a "Well, you either have it or you don't" answer. We stayed curious and kept pushing for observable behaviors: *What* *does it look like if you have it?* Just over 80 percent of the leaders, including those who be lieved that courage is behavioral, couldn't identify the specific skills; however, they could immediately and passionately talk about problematic behaviors and cultural norms that corrode trust and courage. Luckily, the idea of "starting where people are" is a tenet of both grounded theory research and social work, and it's exactly what I do. As much time as I spend trying to under stand *the way,* I spend ten times as much researching *what gets* *in the way.* For example, I didn't set out to study shame; I wanted to un derstand connection and empathy. But if you don't understand how shame can unravel connection in a split second, you don't really get connection. I didn't set out to study vulnerability; it just happens to be the big barrier to almost everything we want from our lives, especially courage. As Marcus Aurelius taught us, "What stands in the way becomes the way." Here are the ten behaviors and cultural issues that leaders identified as getting in our way in organizations across the world: 1. We avoid tough conversations, including giving honest, productive feedback. Some leaders attributed this to a lack of courage, others to a lack of skills, and, shockingly, more than half talked about a cultural norm of "nice and polite" that's leveraged as an excuse to avoid tough conversations. Whatever the reason, there was saturation across the data that the consequence is a lack of clar ity, diminishing trust and engagement, and an increase in problematic behavior, including passive-aggressive behavior, talking behind people's backs, pervasive back- channel communication (or "the meeting after the meet ing"), gossip, and the "dirty yes" (when I say yes to your face and then no behind your back). 2. Rather than spending a reasonable amount of time pro actively acknowledging and addressing the fears and feel ings that show up during change and upheaval, we spend an unreasonable amount of time managing problematic behaviors. 3. Diminishing trust caused by a lack of connection and empathy. 4. Not enough people are taking smart risks or creating and sharing bold ideas to meet changing demands and the insatiable need for innovation. When people are afraid of being put down or ridiculed for trying some thing and failing, or even for putting forward a radi cal new idea, the best you can expect is status quo and groupthink. 5. We get stuck and defined by setbacks, disappointments, and failures, so instead of spending resources on clean up to ensure that consumers, stakeholders, or internal processes are made whole, we are spending too much time and energy reassuring team members who are ques tioning their contribution and value. 6. Too much shame and blame, not enough accountability and learning. 7. People are opting out of vital conversations about di versity and inclusivity because they fear looking wrong, saying something wrong, or being wrong. Choosing our own comfort over hard conversations is the epitome of privilege, and it corrodes trust and moves us away from meaningful and lasting change. 8. When something goes wrong, individuals and teams are rushing into ineffective or unsustainable solutions rather than staying with problem identification and solving. When we fix the wrong thing for the wrong rea son, the same problems continue to surface. It's costly and demoralizing. 9. Organizational values are gauzy and assessed in terms of aspirations rather than actual behaviors that can be taught, measured, and evaluated. 10. Perfectionism and fear are keeping people from learning and growing. I think most of us can look at this list and quickly recognize not only the challenges in our organizations, but our own internal struggles to show up and lead through discomfort. These may be work behaviors and organizational culture concerns, but what underlies all of them are deeply human issues. After finding the roadblocks, our job was to identify the specific courage-building skill sets that people need to address these prob lems. We conducted more interviews, developed instruments, and tested them with MBA and EMBA students enrolled at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. We worked until we found the answers. Then we tested it, improved it, and tested it again. Let's unpack what we learned. The Heart of Daring Leadership 1. You can't get to courage without rumbling with vulner ability. Embrace the suck. At the heart of daring leadership is a deeply human truth that is rarely acknowledged, especially at work: Courage and fear are not mutually exclusive. Most of us feel brave and afraid at the exact same time. We feel vulnerable. Sometimes all day long. During those "in the arena" moments that Roosevelt described, when we're pulled between our fear and our call to courage, we need shared language, skills, tools, and daily practices that can support us through the rumble. The word rumble has become more than just a weird *West* *Side Story* way to say, "Let's have a real conversation, even if it's tough." It's become a serious intention and a behavioral cue or re minder. A rumble is a discussion, conversation, or meeting de fined by a commitment to lean into vulnerability, to stay cu rious and generous, to stick with the messy middle of problem identification and solving, to take a break and circle back when necessary, to be fearless in owning our parts, and, as psychologist Harriet Lerner teaches, to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard. More than anything else, when someone says, "Let's rumble," it cues me to show up with an open heart and mind so we can serve the work and each other, not our egos. Our research led to a very clear, very hopeful finding: Courage is a collection of four skill sets that can be taught, observed, and measured. The four skill sets are: Rumbling with Vulnerability Living into Our Values Braving Trust Learning to Rise The foundational skill of courage-building is the willingness and ability to rumble with vulnerability. Without this core skill, the other three skill sets are impossible to put into practice. Con sider this carefully: Our ability to be daring leaders will never be greater than our capacity for vulnerability. Once we start to build vulnerability skills, we can start to develop the other skill sets. The goal of this book is to give you language and specifics on the tools, practices, and behaviors that are critical for building the muscle memory for living these concepts. We've now tested this approach in more than fifty organiza tions and with approximately ten thousand individuals who are learning these skills on their own or in teams. From the Gates Foundation to Shell, from small family-owned businesses to For tune 50 companies, to multiple branches of the U.S. military, we have found this process to have significant positive impact, not just on the way leaders show up with their teams, but also on how their teams perform. 2. Self-awareness and self-love matter. Who we are is how we lead. So often we think of courage as an inherent trait; however, it is less about *who* people are, and more about *how* they behave and show up in difficult situations. Fear is the emotion at the center of that list of problematic behaviors and culture issues---it's precisely what you'd expect to find as the underlying barrier to courage. However, all of the daring leaders we interviewed talked about experiencing many types of fear on a regular basis, which means that*feeling fear* is not the barrier. The true underlying obstacle to brave leadership is *how we* *respond* to our fear. The real barrier to daring leadership is our armor---the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that we use to pro tect ourselves when we aren't willing and able to rumble with vul nerability. While we'll learn tools and build skills in the following chapters, we'll also assess what gets in the way of building cour age, especially because we can expect our armor to show up and pose resistance to new ways of doing things and new ways of being. Practicing self-compassion and having patience with our selves are essential in this process. 3. Courage is contagious. To scale daring leadership and build courage in teams and organizations, we have to cul tivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations, and whole hearts are the expectation, and armor is not necessary or rewarded. If we want people to fully show up, to bring their whole selves in cluding their unarmored, whole hearts---so that we can innovate, solve problems, and serve people---we have to be vigilant about creating a culture in which people feel safe, seen, heard, and re spected. Daring leaders must care for and be connected to the people they lead. The data made clear that care and connection are irreducible requirements for wholehearted, productive relationships between leaders and team members. This means that if we do not have a sense of caring toward someone we lead and/or we don't feel connected to that person, we have two options: Develop the caring and connection or find a leader who's a better fit. There's no shame in this---we've all experienced the kind of disconnection that doesn't get better despite our strongest efforts. Understanding that commitment to care and connection is the minimum thresh old, we need real courage to recognize when we can't fully serve the people we lead. Given the reality of the world we live in today, that means leaders---you and I---must create and hold spaces that rise to a higher standard of behavior than what we experience in the news, on TV, and in the streets. And for many, the culture at work may even need to be better than what they experience in their own home. Sometimes leadership strategies make us better partners and parents. As I often tell teachers---some of our most important lead ers---we can't always ask our students to take off the armor at home, or even on their way to school, because their emotional and physical safety may require self-protection. But what we can do, and what we are ethically called to do, is create a space in our schools and classrooms where all students can walk in and, for that day or hour, take off the crushing weight of their armor, hang it on a rack, and open their heart to truly being seen. We must be guardians of a space that allows students to breathe and be curious and explore the world and be who they are without suffocation. They deserve one place where they can rum ble with vulnerability and their hearts can exhale. And what I know from the research is that we should never underestimate the benefit to a child of having a place to belong---even one---where they can take off their armor. It can and often does change the trajectory of their life. If the culture in our school, organization, place of worship, or even family requires armor because of issues like racism, class- ism, sexism, or any manifestation of fear-based leadership, we can't expect wholehearted engagement. Likewise, when our orga nization rewards armoring behaviors like blaming, shaming, cyn icism, perfectionism, and emotional stoicism, we can't expect innovative work. You can't fully grow and contribute behind armor. It takes a massive amount of energy just to carry it around---sometimes it takes *all* of our energy. The most powerful part of this process for us was seeing a list of behaviors emerge that are not "hardwired." Everything above is teachable, observable, and measurable, whether you're fourteen or forty. For the research participants who were initially con vinced that courage is determined by genetic destiny, the inter view process alone proved to be a catalyst for change. One leader told me, "I'm in my late fifties and it wasn't until today that I realized I was taught every single one of these behav iors growing up---by either my parents or my coaches. When I get down to the nitty-gritty, I can almost remember each lesson---how and when I learned it. We could and should be teaching this to everyone." This conversation was an important reminder to me that time can wear down our memories of tough lessons until what was once a difficult learning fades into "This is just who I am as a person." The skill sets that make up courage are not new; they've been aspirational leadership skills for as long as there have been lead ers. Yet we haven't made great progress in developing these skills in leaders, because we don't dig into the humanity of this work--- it's too messy. It's much easier to talk about what we want and need than it is to talk about the fears, feelings, and scarcity (the belief that there's not enough) that get in the way of achieving all of it. Basically, and perhaps ironically, we don't have the courage for real talk about courage. But it's time. And if you want to call these "soft skills" after you've tried putting them into practice---go for it. *I dare you.* Until then, find a home for your armor, and I'll see you in the arena. RUMBLING WITH VULNERABILITY Courage is contagious. section the moment the universe put the Roosevelt quote in front of me, three lessons came into sharp focus. The first one is what I call "the physics of vulnerability." It's pretty simple: If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall. Daring is not saying "I'm willing to risk failure." Daring is saying "I know I will eventually fail, and I'm still ***all in."*** I've never met a brave person who hasn't known dis appointment, failure, even heartbreak. Second, the Roosevelt quote captures everything I've learned about vulnerability. The definition of vulnerability as the emo tion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure first emerged in my work two decades ago, and has been validated by every study I've done since, includ ing this research on leadership. Vulnerability is not winning or losing. It's having the courage to show up when you can't control the outcome. We've asked thousands of people to describe vulnerability to us over the years, and these are a few of the answers that directly pierce the emotion: the first date after my divorce, talking about race with my team, trying to get pregnant after my second mis carriage, starting my own business, watching my child leave for college, apologizing to a colleague about how I spoke to him in a meeting, sending my son to orchestra practice knowing how badly he wants to make first chair and knowing there's a really good chance he will not make the orchestra at all, waiting for the doctor to call back, giving feedback, getting feedback, getting fired, firing someone. Across all of our data there's not a shred of empirical evidence that vulnerability is weakness. Are vulnerable experiences easy? No. Can they make us feel anxious and uncertain? Yes. Do they make us want to self-protect? Always. Does showing up for these experiences with a whole heart and no armor require courage? Absolutely. The third thing I learned has turned into a mandate by which I live: If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I'm not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their lives but who will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgment at those who dare greatly. Their only contributions are criticism, cynicism, and fearmongering. If you're criticizing from a place where you're not also putting your self on the line, I'm not interested in what you have to say. We have to avoid the cheap-seats feedback *and* stay armor- free. The research participants who do both of those well have one hack in common: Get clear on whose opinions of you matter. We need to seek feedback from *those* people. And even if it's really hard to hear, we must bring it in and hold it until we learn from it. This is what the research taught me: Don't grab hurtful comments and pull them close to you by rereading them and ruminating on them. Don't play with them by rehearsing your badass comeback. And whatever you do, don't pull hatefulness close to your heart. Let what's unproductive and hurtful drop at the feet of your unarmored self. And no matter how much your self doubt wants to scoop up the criticism and snuggle with the negativity so it can confirm its worst fears, or how eager the shame gremlins are to use the hurt to fortify your armor, take a deep breath and find the strength to leave what's mean-spirited on the ground. You don't even need to stomp it or kick it away. Cruelty is cheap, easy, and chickenshit. It doesn't deserve your energy or engagement. Just step over the comments and keep daring, always remembering that armor is too heavy a price to pay to engage with cheap-seat feedback. Again, if we shield ourselves from all feedback, we stop grow ing. If we engage with all feedback, regardless of the quality and intention, it hurts too much, and we will ultimately armor up by pretending it doesn't hurt, or, worse yet, we'll disconnect from vulnerability and emotion so fully that we stop feeling hurt. When we get to the place that the armor is so thick that we no longer feel anything, we experience a real death. We've paid for self protection by sealing off our heart from everyone, and from everything---not just hurt, but love. No one captures the consequences of choosing that level of self-protection over love better than C. S. Lewis: To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entangle ments; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfish ness. But in that casket---safe, dark, motionless, airless---it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreak able, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. Rumble Tool: The Square Squad When we define ourselves by what everyone thinks, it's hard to be brave. When we stop caring about what anyone thinks, we're too armored for authentic connection. So how do we get clear on whose opinions of us matter? Here's the solution we shared in *Daring Greatly:* Get a one- inch by one-inch piece of paper and write down the names of the people whose opinions of you matter. It needs to be small because it forces you to edit. Fold it and put it in your wallet. Then take ten minutes to reach out to those people---your square squad---and share a little gratitude. You can keep it simple: *I'm getting clear* *on whose opinions matter to me. Thank you for being one of* *those people. I'm grateful that you care enough to be honest and* *real with me.* If you need a rubric for choosing the people, here's the best I have: The people on your list should be the people who love you not *despite* your vulnerability and imperfections, but *because* of them. The people on your list should *not* be "yes" people. This is not the suck-up squad. They should be people who respect you enough to rumble with the vulnerability of saying "I think you were out of your integrity in that situation, and you need to clean it up and apologize. I'll be here to support you through that." Or "Yes, that was a huge setback, but you were brave and I'll dust you off and cheer you on when you go back into the arena." The ~~Four~~ Six Myths of Vulnerability In *Daring Greatly,* I wrote about four myths surrounding vulner ability, but since I've brought the courage-building work into or ganizations and have been doing it with leaders, the data have spoken, and there are clearly *six* misguided myths that persist across wide variables including gender, age, race, country, ability, and culture. Myth \#1: Vulnerability is weakness. It used to take me a long time to dispel the myths that surround vulnerability, especially the myth that vulnerability is weakness. But in 2014, standing across from several hundred military spe cial forces soldiers on a base in the Midwest, I decided to stop evangelizing, and I nailed my argument with a single question. I looked at these brave soldiers and said, "Vulnerability is the emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Can you give me a single example of courage that you've witnessed in another soldier or experienced in your own life that did not require experiencing vulnerability?" Complete silence. Crickets. Finally, a young man spoke up. He said, "No, ma'am. Three tours. I can't think of a single act of courage that doesn't require managing massive vulnerability." I've asked that question now a couple of hundred times in meeting rooms across the globe. I've asked fighter pilots and soft ware engineers, teachers and accountants, CIA agents and CEOs, clergy and professional athletes, artists and activists, and not one person has been able to give me an example of courage without vulnerability. The weakness myth simply crumbles under the weight of the data and people's lived experiences of courage. Myth \#2:1 don't do vulnerability. Our daily lives are defined by experiences of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. There is no opting out, but there are two options: You can do vulnerability, or it can do you. Choosing to own our vulnerability and *do it* consciously means learning how to rumble with this emotion and understand how it drives our thinking and behavior so we can stay aligned with our values and live in our integrity. Pretending that we *don't do vulnerability* means letting fear drive our thinking and behavior without our input or even awareness, which almost always leads to acting out or shutting down. If you don't believe the data, ask someone from your square squad this question: *How do I act when I'm feeling vulnerable?* If you're rumbling with vulnerability from a place of awareness, you won't hear anything you don't know and that you aren't actively addressing. If you subscribe to the idea of terminal uniqueness (everyone in the world *but you),* you will probably be on the re ceiving end of some tough feedback. And as much as we'd like to believe that wisdom and experi ence can replace the need to "do" vulnerability, they don't. If any thing, wisdom and experience validate the importance of rumbling with vulnerability. I love this quote by Madeleine L'Engle: "When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability." Myth \#3:1 can go it alone. The third myth surrounding vulnerability is "I can go it alone." One line of defense that I encounter is "I don't need to be vulner able because I don't need anyone." I'm with you. Some days I wish it were true. The problem, however, is that *needing no one* pushes against everything we know about human neurobiology. We are hardwired for connection. From our mirror neurons to language, we are a social species. In the absence of authentic connection, we suffer. And by *authentic* I mean the kind of connection that doesn't require hustling for acceptance and changing who we are to fit in. I dug deep into the work of the neuroscience researcher John Cacioppo when I was writing *Braving the Wilderness.* He dedi cated his career to understanding loneliness, belonging, and con nection, and he makes the argument that we don't derive strength from our rugged individualism, but rather from our collective ability to plan, communicate, and work together. Our neural, hor monal, and genetic makeup support interdependence over inde pendence. He explained, "To grow to adulthood as a social species, including humans, is not to become autonomous and solitary, it's to become the one on whom others can depend. Whether we know it or not, our brain and biology have been shaped to favor this outcome." No matter how much we love Whitesnake---and, as many of you know, I do---we really weren't born to walk alone. Myth \#4: You can engineer the uncertainty and discomfort out of vulnerability. I love working with tech companies and engineers. There is al most always a moment when someone suggests that we should make vulnerability easier by engineering the uncertainty and emotion right out of it. I've had people recommend everything from a texting app for hard conversations to an algorithm to pre dict when it's safe to be vulnerable with someone. As I mentioned in the introduction, what sometimes under pins this urge is how we think about vulnerability and the way we use the word. Many people walk into work every day with one clear task: Engineer the vulnerability and uncertainty out of sys tems and/or mitigate risk. This is true of everyone from lawyers, who often equate vulnerability with loopholes and liabilities, to engineers and other people who work in operations, security, and technology, who think of vulnerabilities as potential systems fail ures, to combat soldiers and surgeons, who may literally equate vulnerabilities with death. When I start talking about engaging with vulnerability and even embracing it, there can be real resistance until I clarify that I'm talking about relational vulnerability, not systemic vul nerability. Several years ago, I was working with a group of rocket scientists (actual ones). During a break an engineer walked up to me and said, "I don't do vulnerability. I can't. And that's a good thing. If I get all vulnerable, shit might fall from the sky. Literally." I smiled and said, "Tell me about the toughest part of your job. Is it keeping shit from falling from the sky?" He said, "No. We've created sophisticated systems that con trol for human error. It's hard work, but not the part I hate the most." *Wait for it.* He thought for a minute and said, "It's leading the team and all the people stuff. I've got a guy who is just not a good fit. His deliverables have been off for a year. I've tried everything. I got really tough this last time, but he almost started crying, so I wrapped up the meeting. It just didn't feel right. But now it's like I'm going to get in trouble because I'm not even turning in his performance sheets." I said, "Yeah. That sounds hard. How does it feel?" His response: "Got it. I'll sit down now." Those fields in which systemic vulnerability is equated with failure (or worse) are often the ones in which I see people strug gling the most for daring leadership skills and, interestingly, the ones in which people, once they understand, are willing to really dig deep and rumble hard. Can you imagine how hard it can be to wrap your brain around the critical role vulnerability plays in leadership when you're rewarded for eliminating vulnerability every day? Another example of this comes from Canary Wharf---London's financial district---where I spent an afternoon with some very proper bankers who wondered what I was doing there and weren't afraid to ask me directly. They explained that banking is com pletely compliance driven and there's no place for vulnerability. Neither the frustrated bankers nor the wonderful and forward thinking learning and development team who invited me ex pected my answer. I was honest: "Tomorrow is my last day in London, and I really want to visit James Smith & Sons"---the famous umbrella shop that's been around since the early 1800s---"so let's try to fig ure out why I'm here, and if we can't, I'm out." They seemed a little miffed but interested in the deal. So I asked one question: "What's the biggest issue you're facing here and in your industry?" There was a pause filled with some back-and-forth between people before the self-elected spokesperson shouted out "Ethical decision making." *Bloody hell. I'm not going anywhere.* *I* took a deep breath and asked, "Has anyone here ever stood up to a team or group of people and said, 'This is outside our val ues' or 'This is not in line with our ethics'?" Most people in the room raised a hand. "And how does that feel?" The room got quiet. I answered for them. "There's probably not a single act at work that requires more vulnerability than holding people responsible for ethics and values, especially when you're alone in it or there's a lot of money, power, or influence at stake. People will put you down, question your intentions, hate you, and sometimes try to discredit you in the process of protect ing themselves. So if you don't 'do' vulnerability, and/or you have a culture that thinks vulnerability is weakness, then it's no won der that ethical decision making is a problem." There was nothing but the sound of people getting out pens and journals to take notes and settling into their seats until a woman in the front said, "Sorry about the umbrella shop. You'll have to come back. London is lovely in the spring." Regardless of how we approach systemic vulnerability, once we try to strip uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure from the relational experience, we bankrupt courage by definition. Again, we know that courage is four skill sets with vulnerability at the center. So the bad news is that there's no app for it, and regardless of what you do and where you work, you're called to be brave in vulnerability even if your job is engineering the vulnerability out of systems. The good news is that if we can successfully develop the four courage-building skills, starting with how to rumble with vulner ability, we will have the capacity for something deeply human, invaluable to leadership, and unattainable by machines. Myth \#5: Trust comes before vulnerability. We sometimes do an exercise with groups where we give people sentence stems and they fill out the answers on a Post-it note. An example: I grew up believing that vulnerability is: If the group is big enough to ensure that comments will be anonymous, we stick them up for everyone to read. It's incredibly powerful because, without fail, people are stunned by how similar the answers are. We too often believe that we're the only ones wrestling with some of these issues. I'll never forget a sticky note that someone shared a couple of years ago. It said, "I grew up believing that vulnerability is: *The* *first step to betrayal."* I was with a group of community leaders and activists, and we spent an hour talking about how so many of us were taught that vulnerability is for suckers. While some of us were raised hearing that explicit message loud and clear, and others learned it through quiet observation, the message was the same: If you're stupid enough to let someone know where you're tender or what you care about the most, it's just a matter of time before someone uses that to hurt you. These conversations always bring up the chicken-egg debate about trust and vulnerability. How do I know if I can trust someone enough to be vulnerable? Can I build trust without ever risking vulnerability? The research is clear, but not a huge relief for those of us who would prefer a scoring system or failproof trust test. Or that app we just talked about. We need to trust to be vulnerable, and we need to be vulner able in order to build trust. The research participants described trust as a slow-building, iterative, and layered process that happens over time. Both trust building and rumbling with vulnerability involve risk. That's what makes courage hard and rare. In our work we use the metaphor of the marble jar. I first wrote about this in *Daring Greatly,* but I'll tell the story again here. When my daughter, Ellen, was in third grade, she came home from school one day, closed the door behind her, looked at me, and then literally slid down the front door, buried her face in her hands, and started sobbing. My response, of course, was, "Oh, my God, Ellen, are you okay? What happened?" "Something really embarrassing happened at school today, and I shared it with my friends and they promised not to tell any one, but by the time we got back to class, everyone in my whole class knew." I could feel the slow rising of my internal Mama Bear. Ellen told me that it had been so bad that Ms. Baucum, her third-grade teacher, took half of the marbles out of the marble jar. In her class room, there is a big jar for marbles---when the class collectively makes good decisions, they get to put marbles into the jar; when the class collectively makes bad decisions, marbles come out. Ms. Baucum took marbles out because everyone was laughing, appar ently at Ellen. I told my daughter how sorry I was, and then she looked at me and said: "I will never trust anyone again in my life." My heart was breaking with hers. My first thought was, *Damn* *straight---you trust your mama and that's it. And when you go to* *college I'm going to get a little apartment right next to the dorm* *and you can come and talk to me.* An appealing idea at the time. But instead, I put my fears and anger aside and started trying to figure out how to talk to her about trust and connection. As I was searching for the right way to translate my own experiences of trust, and what I was learning about trust from the research, I thought, Ah, *the marble jar. Perfect.* I told Ellen, "We trust the people who have earned marbles over time in our life. Whenever someone supports you, or is kind to you, or sticks up for you, or honors what you share with them as private, you put marbles in the jar. When people are mean, or dis respectful, or share your secrets, marbles come out. We look for the people who, over time, put marbles in, and in, and in, until you look up one day and they're holding a full jar. Those are the folks you can tell your secrets to. Those are the folks you trust with in formation that's important to you." And then I asked her if she had a friend with a full marble jar. "Yes, I've got marble jar friends. Hanna and Lorna are my marble jar friends." And I asked her to tell me how they earn marbles. I was really curious, and I expected her to recount dra matic stories of the girls doing heroic things for her. Instead, she said something that shocked me even more. "Well, I was at the soccer game last weekend, and Hanna looked up and told me that she saw Oma and Opa." Oma and Opa are my mom and stepdad. I pushed Ellen for more details. "Then what?" "No, that's it. I gave her a marble." "Why?" "Well, not everyone has eight grandparents." My parents are divorced and remarried, and Steve's parents are divorced and remarried. "I think it's really cool that Hanna remembers all of their names." She continued, "Well, Lorna is also my marble jar friend be cause she will do the half-butt sit with me." My very understandable response: "Lord have mercy, what is that?" "If I come in too late to the cafeteria and all the tables are full, she'll scoot over and just take half the seat and give me the other half of the seat so I can sit at the friend table." I had to agree with her that a half-butt sit was really great, and certainly deserving of a marble. Perking up, she asked me if I have marble jar friends and how they earn their marbles. "Well, I think it might be different for grown-ups." But then I thought back to the soccer game that Ellen was referring to. When my parents arrived, my friend Eileen had walked up and said, "Hey, David and Deanne, it's great to see you." And I remember feeling how much it meant to me that Eileen had remembered their names. I tell you this story because I had always assumed that trust is earned in big moments and through really grand gestures, not the more simple things like a friend remembering small details in your life. Later that night, I called the doctoral students on my team, and we spent five days going through all the research around trust. We started looking into trust-earning behaviors, which enforced what Ellen had taught me after school that day. It turns out that trust is in fact earned in the smallest of moments. It is earned not through heroic deeds, or even highly visible ac tions, but through paying attention, listening, and gestures of genuine care and connection. My job as a grounded theory researcher is to figure out what the data say and then jump into the literature to see how my find ings fit or don't fit with what other researchers are reporting. Ei- ther way, the theory that emerges doesn't change, but if there's a conflict---which happens often---the researcher has to acknowledge it. Most quantitative researchers go the other way, looking first at what existing research says and then trying to confirm whether it is true. In my approach, I develop theories based on lived experi ences, not existing theories. Only after I capture the participants' experiences do I try to place my theories in the existing research. Grounded theory researchers do it in that order so that our conclu sions about the data aren't skewed by existing theories that may or may not reflect real experiences by diverse populations. The first place I turned to see what was in the existing litera ture was John Gottman's research, which is based on forty years of studying intimate relationships. For those who are unfamiliar with Gottman's work on marriages, he was able to predict an out come of divorce with 90 percent accuracy based on responses to a series of questions. His team screened for what he called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse---criticism, defensiveness, stone walling, and contempt, with contempt being the most damning in a romantic partnership. In an article on one of my go-to websites, the University of California, Berkeley's "Greater Good" (greatergood.berkeley.edu), Gottman describes trust-building with our partners in a manner totally consistent with what I found in my research. Gottman writes, What I've found through research is that trust is built in very small moments, which I call "sliding door" moments, after the movie *Sliding Doors.* In any interaction, there is a possibility of connecting with your partner or turning away from your partner. lationship. One night, I really wanted to finish a mystery novel. I thought I knew who the killer was, but I was anx ious to find out. At one point in the night, I put the novel on my bedside and walked into the bathroom. flection, and she looked sad, brushing her hair. There was a sliding door moment. think, I don't want to deal with her sadness tonight; I want to read my novel. But instead, because I'm a sensitive re searcher of relationships, I decided to go into the bath room. I took the brush from her hand and asked, "What's the matter, baby?" And she told me why she was sad. for her. I was connecting with her rather than choosing to think only about what I wanted. These are the moments, we've discovered, that build trust. always choosing to turn away, then trust erodes in a relationship---very gradually, very slowly. Trust is the stacking and layering of small moments and re ciprocal vulnerability over time. Trust and vulnerability grow to gether, and to betray one is to destroy both. Myth \#6: Vulnerability is disclosure. Apparently there is a misconception in some circles that I am a proponent of leaders disclosing personal experiences and openly sharing emotions in all cases. I think that notion stems from peo ple having only a peripheral understanding of the key themes of my TEDxHouston talk on vulnerability and the book *Daring* *Greatly,* combined with the fact that 80 percent of the work I do today is about vulnerability and leadership. It's a bad case of the 2+2=57 craziness that we see in the world today. We all know peo ple (and we've all been the people) who add up a couple of things that we *think* we understand and come to a clear, somewhat inter esting, and totally false conclusion. Let's dispel that myth right off the bat with two seemingly conflicting statements: 1\. I am not a proponent of oversharing, indiscriminate disclosure as a leadership tool, or vulnerability for vulnerability's sake. 2\. There is no daring leadership without vulnerability. Both of these are true statements. I know there's a problem when people ask me, "How much should leaders share with their colleagues or employees?" Some of the most daring leaders I know have incredible vulnerability rumbling skills and yet disclose very little. I've also worked with leaders who share way more than they should and demonstrate little to no rumbling skills. During a time of difficult change and uncertainty, daring leaders might sit with their teams and say, These changes are coming in hard and fast, and I know there's a lot of anxiety---I'm feeling it too, and it's hard to work through. It's hard not to take it home, it's hard not to worry, and it's easy to want to look for someone to blame. I will share everything I can about the changes with you, as soon as I can. I want to spend the next forty-five minutes rumbling on how we're all managing the changes. Specifically, *What* *does support from me look like? What questions can I try* *to answer? Are there any stories you want to check out* *with me? And any other questions you have?* each other during this churn so we can really rumble with what's going on. In the midst of all of this we still need to produce work that makes us proud. Let's each write down one thing we need from this group in order to feel okay sharing and asking questions, and one thing that will get in the way. This is a great example of rumbling with vulnerability. The leader is naming some of the unsaid emotions and creating what we call a safe container by asking the team what they need to feel open and safe in the conversation. This is one of the easiest prac tices to implement, and the return on the time investment is huge in terms of trust-building and improving the quality of feedback and conversation; yet I rarely see team, project, or group leaders take that time. Google's five-year study on highly productive teams, Project Aristotle, found that psychological safety---team members feeling safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other---was "far and away the most important of the five dynamics that set successful teams apart." Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson coined the phrase *psychological safety.* In her book *Teaming,* she writes, Simply put, psychological safety makes it possible to give tough feedback and have difficult conversations without the need to tiptoe around the truth. In psychologically safe environments, people believe that if they make a mistake others will not penalize or think less of them for it. They also believe that others will not resent or humiliate them when they ask for help or information. This belief comes about when people both trust and respect each other, and it produces a sense of confidence that the group won't em barrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up. Thus psychological safety is a taken-for-granted belief about how others will respond when you ask a question, seek feedback, admit a mistake, or propose a possibly wacky idea. Most people feel a need to "manage" interpersonal risk to retain a good image, especially at work, and especially in the pres ence of those who formally evaluate them. This need is both instrumental (promotions and rewards may depend on im pressions held by bosses and others) and socio-emotional (we simply prefer approval over disapproval). Psychological safety does not imply a cozy situation in which people are necessarily close friends. Nor does it sug gest an absence of pressure or problems. In our container-building work, the team would review all of the items that they wrote down, then work together to consolidate and match items to come up with some ground rules. Items that frequently show up as things that get in the way of psychological safety in teams and groups include judgment, unso licited advice giving, interrupting, and sharing outside the team meeting. The behaviors that people need from their team or group almost always include listening, staying curious, being honest, and keeping confidence. Dare to lead by investing twenty minutes in creating psychological safety when you need to rumble. Make your intention of creating safety explicit and get your team's help on how to do it effectively. What I also love about this example is how the leader is being honest about the struggle, staying calm while naming the anxiety and how it might be showing up, and giving people the opportu nity to ask questions and reality-check the rumor mill. What I really appreciate about this approach is one of my favorite rumble tools: "What does support from me look like?" Not only does it offer the opportunity for clarity and set up the team for success, asking people for specific examples of what supportive behaviors look like---and what they do *not* look like---it also holds them ac countable for asking for what they need. When you put this question into practice, expect to see people struggling to come up with examples of supportive behaviors. We're much more accustomed to not asking for exactly what we need and then being resentful or disappointed that we didn't get it. Also, most of us can tell you what support does *not* look like more easily than we can come up with what it does look like. Over time, this practice is a huge grounded-confidence builder (we'll talk about that concept later). In this rumble example, the leader is not oversharing or dis closing inappropriately as a mechanism for hotwiring connection or trust with other people. There's also no fake vulnerability. Fake vulnerability can look like a leader telling us that we can ask ques tions but not taking the time to create the psychological safety to do it, or not offering a pause in the conversation for anyone else to speak at all. This leader is also not shirking the responsibility of attending to the team's fears and feelings by oversharing and sympathy seeking with statements like "I'm really falling apart too. I don't know what to do either. I'm not the enemy here." Basically, *Feel* *sorry for me and don't hold me accountable for leading through* *this hard time because I'm scared too.* Blech. Not only is fake vulnerability ineffective---but it breeds dis trust. There's no faster way to piss off people than to try to ma nipulate them with vulnerability. Vulnerability is not a personal marketing tool. It's not an oversharing strategy. Rumbling with vulnerability is about leaning into rather than walking away from the situations that make us feel uncertain, at risk, or emotionally exposed. We should always be clear about our intention, understand the limits of vulnerability in the context of roles and relation ships, and set boundaries. Boundaries is a slippery word, but I love how my friend Kelly Rae Roberts makes it simple and power ful. She's an artist, and several years ago she wrote a blog post about how people can and can't use her copyrighted work. The post had two lists: what's okay and what's not okay. It was crystal clear and completely captured what had emerged from the data we collected on effective boundary setting. Today, we teach that setting boundaries is making clear what's okay and what's not okay, and why. Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability. It's con fession, manipulation, desperation, or shock and awe, but it's not vulnerability. As an example of what vulnerability is not, I sometimes tell the story of a young CEO who was six months into his first round of investment funding. He came up to me after a talk and said, "I get it! I'm in. I'm drinking the Kool-Aid! *I'm gonna get really vul* *nerable with my people."* My first thought was *Oh, man. Here we go.* First, when people talk about "drinking the Kool-Aid," I get skeptical. It's a pretty ter rible reference, and if you have to turn off your critical thinking and chug the groupthink juice to be down with an idea or get on board with a plan, I'm already concerned. Second, if you run up to me excited about becoming more vulnerable, you must not really understand the concept. If, on the other hand, you come up to me and say, "Okay. I think I get it and I'm going to try to embrace the suck of vulnerability," I'm pretty sure you understand what's in volved. The conversation started with multiple flags. Not enough for a parade, but close. I gave him a nervous smile and said "Say more." *Another fa* *vorite rumble tool.* Asking someone to "say more" often leads to profoundly deeper and more productive rumbling. Context and details matter. Peel the onion. Stephen Covey's sage advice still stands: "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." The excited CEO explained, "I'm just going to tell the inves tors and my team the truth: I'm completely in over my head, we're bleeding money, and I have no idea what I'm doing." He paused and looked at me. "What do you think?" I took his hand and led him to the side of the room, and we sat down. I looked at him and repeated what I had said in the talk, but what he apparently missed: "What do I think? I think you won't secure any more funding and you're going to scare the shit out of some people. Vulnerability without boundaries is not vulnerabil ity. It might be fear or anxiety. We have to think about why we're sharing and, equally important, with whom. *What are their roles?* *What is our role? Is this sharing productive and appropriate?"* Before I go any further when I'm telling the story to a group, I always ask the audience this question: *We probably all agree that* *standing in front of your employees and investors with this con* *fession is not smart. But here's a question for you: If everyone* *here had a full year's salary invested in this guy's company, how* *many of you would be hoping he was sitting down across from* someone *saying, "I'm completely in over my head, we're bleeding* *money, and I have no idea what I'm doing?"* If there are a thousand people in the room, two or three might nervously raise their hand as they become increasingly aware of being in a tiny minority. The only exception was a room of fifty venture capitalists. They all raised their hand. I break the tension by raising my hand and explaining my thinking: "If I've got money invested in his company, I pray that he's sitting down with a mentor or an advisor or a board member and being really honest about what's happening. Why? Because we all know the alternative. He keeps pretending and hustling and grinding on the same ineffective changes until everything is gone." Now, if I were the guy, I wouldn't stand up in front of all of my investors or my team of friends and colleagues who left great jobs to come work with me to turn my vision into a reality and spill my guts like that---that's not good judgment. When I asked him why he'd share that with them rather than an advisor or mentor who might be able to help without becoming personally panicked, he revealed what I call the stealth intention and the stealth expec tation. The stealth intention is a self-protection need that lurks be neath the surface and often drives behavior outside our values. Closely related is the stealth expectation---a desire or expectation that exists outside our awareness and typically includes a danger ous combination of fear and magical thinking. Stealth expecta tions almost always lead to disappointment, resentment, and more fear. He said, "I'm not sure. I guess I want them to know I'm trying. I want them to know that I'm doing the best I can and I'm a good guy, but I'm failing. If I tell them the truth and get really vulner able, they won't blame me or hate me. They'll understand." Stealth intention: I can protect myself from rejection, shame, judgment, and people turning away from me and thinking I'm a bad person. Stealth expectation: They won't turn away from me and think I'm a bad person. Trust me when I tell you that stealth intentions and expecta tions are things I have to wrestle with often in myself, sometimes on a daily basis. I've wanted to shout the same type of thing to my team for the same reasons, but I've had enough practice to know that vulnerability is not a sympathy-seeking tool. As a leader, he needs to stay honest with his team and investors, *and* this vulner able conversation needs to happen with someone who can help him lead through it. Sharing just to share without understanding your role, recognizing your professional boundaries, and getting clear on your intentions and expectations (especially those flying under the radar) is just purging or venting or gossip or a million other things that are often propelled by hidden needs. More than occasionally, I find that the people who misrepre sent my work on vulnerability and conflate it with disclosure or emotional purging either don't understand it, or they have so much personal resistance to the notion of being vulnerable that they stretch the concept until it appears ridiculous and easy to discount. In either case, if you come across an explanation of vul nerability that doesn't include setting boundaries or being clear on intentions, proceed with caution. Vulnerability for vulnerabil ity's sake is not effective, useful, or smart. TO FEEL IS TO BE VULNERABLE For those of us who were raised with a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of "suck it up and get 'er done," rumbling with vulnerability is a challenge. The myths I outlined above work together to lead us to believe that vulnerability is the gooey center of the hard emotions that we work full time to avoid feeling, much less discussing (even when our avoidance causes us and the people around us pain)--- emotions like fear, shame, grief, disappointment, and sadness. But vulnerability isn't just the center of hard emotions, it's the core of all emotions. To feel is to be vulnerable. Believing that vulnerability is weakness is believing that feeling is weak ness. And, like it or not, we are emotional beings. What most of us fail to understand, and what took me a decade of research to learn, is that vulnerability is the cradle of the emotions and experiences that we crave. Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, and joy. We know that vulnerability is the cornerstone of courage building, but we often fail to realize that without vulnerability there is no creativity or innovation. Why? Because there is noth ing more uncertain than the creative process, and there is abso lutely no innovation without failure. Show me a culture in which vulnerability is framed as weakness and I'll show you a culture struggling to come up with fresh ideas and new perspectives. I love what Amy Poehler had to say in her web series *Smart Girls:* *Ask Amy:* It's very hard to have ideas. It's very hard to put yourself out there, it's very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers, and the creators. They are the magic people of the world. Adaptability to change, hard conversations, feedback, prob lem solving, ethical decision making, recognition, resilience, and all of the other skills that underpin daring leadership are born of vulnerability. To foreclose on vulnerability and our emotional life out of fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living. As the neu roscientist Antonio Damasio reminds us, "We are not necessarily thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think." In the next section we'll break down one of my own leader ship stories to better understand how fear and feelings left unat tended can cause major problems, and we'll explore more rumbling language, skills, tools, and practices. ![](media/image2.jpeg) **In the earliest days of building our company, I found** **myself sitting at a table with my team after they asked** **if we could meet for an hour. When I realized there** **was no agenda, I got that sinking *What now?* feeling.** **Charles, our CFO, looked at me and said, "We need to rum** **ble with you on a growing concern about how we're work** **ing together."** For years, my first thought in a situation like this would have been *Oh, God. It's an intervention. And I'm the intervenee.* But I trust my team, and I trust the rumble process. Chaz, as I've called him for twenty-five years, cut right to the chase. "We keep setting unrealistic timelines, working frantically to meet them, failing, setting new timelines, and still not meeting them. It's keeping us in constant chaos ard people are burning out. When you set a timeline and we push back because we know I 45 \| it's unattainable, you get so insistent that we stop pushing. It's not working. You have a lot of strengths, but you're not good at esti mating time, and we need to find a new process that works for all of us." As my team sat there looking anxious for me to respond and relieved that the issue was on the table regardless of my response, I thought about the first time I heard someone say "You're not good at estimating time," and I drifted off to the memory of an almost-fight I had with Steve a decade before this meeting. Steve and I, along with our next-door neighbors, signed up to host a progressive dinner party to raise money for our daughter's PTO. Steve and I were in charge of appetizers and salad at our house, then the guests would walk next door for dinner, then back to our house for dessert and coffee. Very retro and very fun. Everything sounds easy when it's months away. I remember exactly where I was standing when I looked at Steve and said, "This is going to be great. I'm excited about the new recipes. All we need to do is get the house ready. I can do a little paint touch-up in the dining room, and I need you to add some pops of color in the front yard. I need the yard to say, *Wel* *come! We're glad you're here! These flowers are evidence that* *we're awesome neighbors who have our shit together!"* Steve just stared at me. I glared back at him. "What? Why are you looking at me like hat?" Steve said, "The dinner party starts in two hours." "I know," I said. "I've thought about it. It'll take you fifteen minutes to get to Home Depot, thirty minutes to pick out the right combination of flowers, fifteen minutes to get home, forty-five minutes to plant them, and then fifteen minutes to take a shower." Steve couldn't speak. He just stood there shaking his head until I said, "What? What's wrong?" Steve said, "You're not good at estimating time, Brene." I quipped back without thinking, "Maybe I'm just faster than most people." I drew a deep breath, immediately regretting being a smart ass when I needed him to hightail it to Home Depot. I responded to my own comment before he could. "Really? Why do you think that I'm bad at estimating time?" "Well, for starters," he said, "you didn't factor in the hour we're going to need for the fight that's going to break out when I say 'Hell, no, I'm not going to landscape the front yard two hours before company comes' and you respond by accusing me of never caring about the details or worrying about the little things. You'll say my lack of attention to detail is why you're so stressed out all the time. Then you'll say something like 'It must be nice not to have to worry about the little things that make a big difference.' " I just stood there. The fact that he was saying all of this in a kind way and not being crappy made it worse. He continued, "Your 'must be nice' comment is going to feel like blame and criticism, and it's going to piss me off. All of the stress of hosting this party is going to escalate things. You'll try not to cry because you don't want puffy eyes, but we'll both end up in tears. We'll spend the rest of the night just wanting it to be over. So we're not going to get flowers, and I think we should skip the fight, given our tight timeline." His prophecy forced me into a weepy laugh. "Okay. That was painful. And funny." Steve said, "The best thing you can do right now is go for a short run and take a shower. What people see is what they get." As I pulled myself back from this memory and into my seat at the table with my team, I found myself deeply grateful for Chaz's clarity. Over our years of researching and working together, we've learned something about clarity that has changed everything from the way we talk to each other to the way we negotiate with external partners. It's simple but transformative: Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. I first heard this saying two decades ago in a 12-step meeting, but I was on slogan overload at the time and didn't even think about it again until I saw the data about how most of us avoid clarity because we tell ourselves that we're being kind, when what we're actually doing is being unkind and unfair. Feeding people half-truths or bullshit to make them feel bet ter (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind. Not getting clear with a colleague about your expectations because it feels too hard, yet holding them ac countable or blaming them for not delivering is unkind. Talking *about* people rather than *to* them is unkind. This lesson has so wildly transformed my life that we live by it at home. If Ellen is trying to figure out how to handle a college roommate issue or Charlie needs to talk to a friend about something \... clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. I looked at my team and said, "Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me this. It's not the first or even hundredth time I've heard this feedback about my sucky time estimation skills. I'm going to work on it. I'm going to get better." I could tell they were a little disappointed in my response. The "Okay, I get it and I'll work on it" is a common shut-down tech nique. I took a deep breath and leaned into the mother of all rum ble tools---curiosity. "Tell me more about how this plays out for y'all. I want to understand." I'm glad I asked. I needed to hear what they had to say, and they needed me to hear how frustrating, demoralizing, and un productive it was for me to continue pitching ideas and timelines that were completely unrealistic and then looking at them like they were crushing my dream when they did their jobs by being honest and saying, "That will take at least twelve months, not two months, and it will require a significant cash investment." It was painful and uncomfortable. Which is exactly why we try to wrap things up quickly and get the hell out of conversations like this. It's so much easier to say "Got it, on it," and run. After listening, I thanked them for their courage and honesty and promised again that I would think about it. I asked if we could circle back the next day. In my research and in my life, I've found absolutely no benefit to pushing through a hard conversation un less there's an urgent, time-sensitive issue at hand. I've never re gretted taking a short break or circling back after a few hours of thinking time. I have, however, regretted many instances where I pushed through to get it over and done with. Those self-serving instincts end up costing way more time than a short break. When I got home that evening, I downloaded a couple of books on project management, and for some reason, maybe some thing I read on Linkedln, I convinced myself that I needed a "Six Sigma black belt." I had no idea what that even meant, but I googled it, and after I read for a few minutes, the thought of it made me want to knock myself unconscious with my laptop. It didn't take long before I realized that my plan wasn't going to work. I'm not good at time or things with hard edges, like Tetris or Blokus. I don't think that way or see the world that way. I see projects in constellations, not lines. I see plans the way I see data---relationally and with rounded corners and a million con nection ports. As much as I read and tried, it felt like a strange and terrible spreadsheet world to me. Interested in an example of how I think? *Brace yourself.* When I realized that I couldn't return to my team and im press them with my shiny new black belt and laserlike time esti mations, it made me think immediately of Luke Skywalker struggling to become a Jedi warrior in *The Empire Strikes Back.* I share my love for this story in *Rising Strong,* but I'll share it again here because there's no such thing as too much *Star Wars.* Yoda is trying to teach Luke how to use the Force and how the dark side of the Force---anger, fear, and aggression---is holding him back. Luke and Yoda are in the swamp where they've been training when Luke points toward a dark cave at the base of a giant tree and, looking at Yoda, says, "There's something not right here \... I feel cold. Death." Yoda explains to Luke that the cave is dangerous and strong with the dark side of the Force. Luke looks confused and afraid, but Yoda's response is simply, "In you must go." When Luke asks what's in the cave, Yoda explains, "Only what you take with you." As Luke straps on his weapons, Yoda hauntingly advises, "Your weapons, you will not need them." Luke grabs his light saber anyway. The cave is dark and scary. As Luke slowly makes his way through it, he is confronted by his enemy, Darth Vader. They both draw their light sabers, and Luke quickly cuts off Vader's helmeted head. The head rolls to the ground and the face guard blows off the helmet. Only it isn't Darth Vader's face that's revealed; it's Luke's. Luke is staring at his own head on the ground. This parable got me thinking about the possibility that maybe the problem was less about my time estimation and project man agement skills and more about my fears. So I wrote down a couple of very specific examples of timelines that I forced on my reluc tant team, and sure enough, the biggest enemy was not a lack of estimation skills but a lack of personal awareness. Was I cutting off my own head with a light saber? I discovered that my unreasonable timelines were seldom driven by excitement or ambition. I drive these unattainable timelines for two reasons: (1) I'm feeling fear, scarcity, and anxiety (e.g., *We're not doing enough, someone else is going to think of* *this idea before we get it done, look what everyone else is doing),* or (2) In addition to the daily work we do together, I'm often hold ing visions of longer-term university commitments, publishing contracts, and a dozen potential collaboration conversations in my head. Sometimes I'm pushing timelines because I'm trying to sync up the timing on projects and deadlines that my team doesn't even know about because I've failed to share. It was powerful to figure out the source of the issue, but that didn't translate to my wanting to circle back with my team about these key learnings. I didn't want to say "I'm actually not good at the time estimation piece, and the more I understand that skill set, the less confident I am that I will actually get much better." I didn't want to share the truth about my fear. *What if the* *scarcity and anxiety are happening because I have no business* *being a leader?* Even being honest about my failure to communi cate larger strategy was daunting. *What if my communication* *fails are just symptomatic of my being in over my head trying to* *run businesses?* The most critical thing that the shame gremlins kept whispering was *You don't belong in this job. You study lead* *ership, but you can't lead. You're a joke!* When we're in fear, or an emotion is driving self-protection, there's a fairly predictable pattern of how we assemble our armor, piece by piece: 1. I'm not enough. 2. If I'm honest with them about what's happening, they'll think less of me or maybe even use it against me. 3. No way am I going to be honest about this. No one else does it. Why do I have to put myself out there? 4. Yeah. Screw them. I don't see them being honest about what scares them. And they've got plenty of issues. 5. It's actually their issues and shortcomings that make me act this way. This is their fault, and they're trying to blame me. 6. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm actually better than them. People think it's a long walk from "I'm not enough" to "I'm better than them," but it's actually just standing still. In the exact same place. In fear. Assembling the armor. I don't want to live in fear or lead from fear, and I'm sick to death of the armor. Courage and faith are my core values, and when I'm in fear I show up in ways that leave me feeling out of alignment with these values and outside my integrity. This is when I remember Joseph Campbell's quote, which I believe is one of the purest calls to courage for leaders: "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." Campbell consulted with George Lucas on *Star Wars,* and there's no question in my mind that my favorite scene is Lucas bringing this wisdom to life. This is how I think. No black belt, but I have to believe that the Force is with me. Treasure Hunting What is the treasure I seek? Less fear, scarcity, and anxiety. Less feeling alone. More working together toward goals that ex cite all of us. What is the cave I fear to enter? I'm afraid to admit that I don't know how to do some of the things that I think all "real lead ers" know how to do. I don't want to share that when I'm scared I make bad decisions, and I've felt stuck and scared, tired and lonely, a lot lately. When I sat down with my team for our circle back, we started the meeting with one of our rituals: permission slips. We each wrote down one thing that we gave ourselves permission to do or feel for this meeting. Sometimes we do it on Post-it notes, but I prefer to write in my journal so that, in addition to my meeting notes, I have a reminder of what I was feeling that day. That afternoon I gave myself permission to be honest with my team about my experiences and the stories I make up about shar ing my feelings. Two of the other permissions I remember my team sharing that day were "Listen with passion" and "Ask for breaks if we need them." Permission slips are powerful. I've seen people, after com ing into meetings hell-bent on getting approval for their idea or plan, instead give themselves permission to stay open-minded or to listen more than they talk. I've also heard "I give myself permission to ask for more time to think about something before I share my point of view" or "I give myself permission to be pres ent here even though I'm getting pulled in another direction today." We love permission slips. Because, just like when I used to sign a permission slip to allow Ellen or Charlie to go to the zoo with their class, they still had to get it to the teacher and get on the bus. Just because you write down "Permission to speak up even though I'm the only person here who isn't a content expert" doesn't mean that you're going to do it. Permission slips aren't promissory notes, they are for stating and writing down inten tions only, so there are no repercussions if you fail to deliver; how ever, they are useful for increasing accountability and the potential for support, and also for understanding where everyone in the room is coming from. After we shared permission slips, I told them about my unsuc cessful experience reading the business books. I explained how I had discovered that fear, anxiety, and scarcity were driving my un realistic timelines, and how I got even more fearful when they re sponded with the realities of "contingencies and critical paths." I walked them through what it felt like for me when they pushed back about timelines that I'd calculated based on a million moving pieces, some of which were completely off their radar. Be cause we're a close group and they work their asses off, it was hard to tell them that I can feel completely alone in trying to keep and coordinate all of the balls in the air. Basically, I owned that all my timeline pushing stemmed from fear, and that rather than being honest about those feelings and owning them, I would offload the emotions on them with anger and the really shitty behavior of looking at them like they were dream crushers. I told them about trying to read the books on project manage ment and estimation skills, and believing that the time estimation part of my brain might be missing. They didn't respond with "No, it's not missing!" Instead, they actually agreed. Murdoch, my manager, kindly said, "Yes, it could be missing. But the good news is that it makes more room in your brain for all that creativity." And we all laughed hard about the black belt. We identified four key learnings during our rumble. First, as a leadership team, we need a shared understanding of all the moving pieces so no single person is the connective tissue. We've fixed this with new communication processes that include the team continu ing to meet---across all areas of the businesses---when I'm locked away writing, researching, or on the road. We also have a new meeting minutes process. Everyone takes their own notes, but one person in the meeting volunteers to capture minutes. These are narrowed down to: Date: Meeting intention: Attendees: Key decisions: Tasks and ownership: The great thing about this new practice is that everyone in the meeting is responsible for stopping to say "Let's capture this in the minutes"---not just the minute taker. And we now stop meet ings five minutes early to review and agree on the minutes before we leave. Before we walk out of the meeting, the minute taker Slacks them to all of us and puts them in any other relevant chan nel so there isn't any clean-up or synthesizing guesswork after we've dispersed. The minutes process also solved several other ongoing prob lems, including subjective minutes (as a result of one person writ ing them up from memory hours after the meeting) and keeping our dispersed teams up to speed on the frequent pivots that define a start-up environment. This new meeting documentation pro cess, combined with my commitment to copy my team on plan ning emails with potential collaborators and my publisher, means that everyone has much more access to what's going on across the different areas of our work. We also agreed that we'd work together on estimating time lines and due dates, rumbling on them until we all owned them as a team. Today we've started using a time estimation and project priority practice that seems simple but is effective and wildly tell ing. We call it the Turn & Learn. We all get Post-it notes and write down how long we think a project is going to take, and if we're looking at several projects that we need to prioritize, we'll write the projects in priority order. Once everyone has written down an estimate or priority ranking in private, we count to three and show our answers. This practice controls for the "halo effect" created when ev eryone sees what the person with the most influence in the room wants and follows suit. It also controls for the "bandwagon effect"---that very human instinct to follow suit even when you disagree. It's tough to be the last to share when everyone is on board and getting increasingly excited about an idea. We call it Turn & Learn because it's not about being right or wrong, it's about creating space to understand different perspec tives, learning from everyone around the table, and identifying areas where we need to get clear on expectations. Most often, we learn that we're all working off different data and assumptions, or that we don't fully understand the lift, or we don't get the load certain people are already carrying. It's a huge connection tool. It was clear that I had some serious personal work to do, and we also unearthed a dangerous pattern that we needed to name and deconstruct---a pattern that I observe in organizations all the time but was in my blind spot. It's operations versus marketing. Finance versus creative. The spenders versus the savers. The hearts versus the analytics. The dreamers versus the sticks-in- the-mud. This type of binary thinking is very dangerous because we're not leveraging the fullness of people. The roles become car icatures and stereotypes: *Juan is such an optimist with his sales* *projections, but it's all right because Kari will come in hard with* *worst-case-scenario numbers and kill thosefantasies.* We should all be held accountable for being both optimistic *and* realistic. If you gain a reputation for being an idealist, you lose credibility and trust. If you're forced to be the reality-checker, you never get the opportunity to take chances and risk. This insight took us straight to the pages of Jim Collins's clas sic book *Good to Great.* We had done a companywide read of the book, and even at the time, the Stockdale Paradox was something that stuck with us. As Collins explained, the Stockdale Paradox was named after Admiral Jim Stockdale, who spent eightyears as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He was tortured more than twenty times during his imprisonment from 1965 to 1973. In addition to fighting to stay alive, he worked every day to help the other pris oners survive the physical and emotional torment. When he interviewed Stockdale, Collins asked him, "Who didn't make it out?" Stockdale replied, "Oh, that's easy. The optimists." Stockdale explained that the optimists would believe they'd be out by Christmas, and Christmas would come and go. Then they would believe they'd be out by Easter, and that date would come and go. And the years would tick by like that. He explained to Collins, "They died of a broken heart." Stockdale told Collins, "This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end---which you can never afford to lose---with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." We named this third key learning gritty faith and gritty facts, and today we all work to take responsibility for both dreaming and reality-checking those dreams with facts. When stress is high, we can still find ourselves slipping into some of these patterns, especially failing to communicate all of these pieces and to maintain connective tissue. What's powerful about doing this work is that we now recognize it very quickly and we can name it. Once that happens, we know what rumble needs to happen and why. At the end of the meeting, I apologized for offloading my emo tions on them. And, of equal importance, I made a commitment to make good on that apology by talking about my fears when they creep up and staying aware of the behaviors that fear drives in me. I also checked with my team to make sure we agreed that if I was successful changing those behaviors, it would address the key learnings that we discussed. Apologizing and backing that up with behavior change is normalized in our organization from on boarding. While some leaders consider apologizing to be a sign of weakness, we teach it as a skill and frame the willingness to apol ogize and make amends as brave leadership. Reflecting on the key learnings, all of us owned our parts and talked about how we would incorporate those learnings going for ward. Examining "our part" is also critical to our rumble process. I've yet to be in a rumble, or any tough conversation---even one where I'm 99 percent sure I'm totally in the clear---in which, after digging in, I didn't have a part. Even if my part was not speaking up or staying curious. We're big believers in "What's my part?" The Power and Wisdom to Serve Others Joseph Campbell's lesson was that when you find the courage to enter that cave, you're never going in to secure your own treasure or your own wealth; you face your fears to find the power and wis dom to serve others. In that spirit, I want to introduce you to Colonel DeDe Half hill. She is currently the director of innovation, analysis, and leadership development for Air Force Global Strike Command, which comprises 33,000 officers and enlisted and civilian airmen. Prior to her current position she commanded the 2nd Mission Support Group at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, and was responsible for 1,800 airmen and the day-to-day sustainment op erations of Barksdale Air Force Base. It was during her tenure as the commander of that organization that the following incident took place. DeDe Halfhill is one of my leadership heroes and a total badass. I often think about this story when I need inspira tion to choose courage over comfort so I can serve others. DeDe writes: I think one of the most helpful things I've learned from Brene's work is the importance of using the right language to talk about hard things and tackle tough subjects. Con ceptually, as leaders, I think we understand vulnerability, and are even personally willing to be vulnerable, but we don't always have the right language or practice in applying such concepts. It doesn't really work to say: "I'm going to be vulnerable here with you right now." During the first year of my command, I was present ing an award to an airman at a squadron event. At the end of the presentation, I asked if anyone had any questions. A young airman raised his hand and asked, "Ma'am, when is the ops tempo \[the pace of current operations\] going to slow down, because we are really tired?" "Yeah," I said. "It has been very busy, and we ask a lot of you." I explained, "It's not just here at Barksdale, though. I just came from a different command, where I heard the same thing. Across our Air Force, leaders know we're ask ing a lot of you, and they know you're tired." "Yes, ma'am, we're tired." While the squadron itself is larger, there were probably about forty airmen at the event that day. I asked everyone who was tired to raise their hands, and pretty much every hand went up. I thought about Brene's work, and the power it has given me to talk about things that are uncomfortable. I went on: "I want to share something with all of you that I read recently that has really made me stop and think. Three days ago, I was reading an article in the *Harvard* *Business Review,* and it was talking about an organiza tion that was researching companies that were reporting high levels of exhaustion. This team went into these com panies to see what was driving such high levels of exhaus tion. What they found was that while these employees were in fact exhausted, it wasn't just because of the ops tempo. They were actually exhausted because people were lonely. Their workforces were lonely, and that loneliness was man ifesting itself in a feeling of exhaustion." then continued, "Because that's what happens, right? really want to do anything; we think we're tired, and we just want to sleep." I paused: "So, if I were to ask you, instead of who's tired, who's lonely? How many of you would raise your hand?" I thought maybe one person would raise a hand. But when fifteen people raised their hands, I was shocked. For lack of better language, I had an "Oh shit" moment. I really didn't know what to do. I'm not a therapist. I'm not equipped for this. I certainly wasn't prepared for nearly a quarter of the group to admit such a raw emotion to me. And truthfully, I'm trying to get through some of the same emotions myself. It was uncom fortable, and the discomfort was making me want to move on to a different topic. But that's where Brene's work has given me courage. Five years ago, before hearing her work, I would never have had the courage to ask that question, and I certainly wouldn't have been prepared to hold space for the answers. Our Air Force, our military in general, is facing chal lenges with suicide, with people feeling isolated and hope less. As leaders we are trying everything we can to reach our airmen and ensure they know that suicide is not the answer. We spend so much time talking with them about available resources, but I'm not sure enough of us are talk ing about the fact that in the end, a lot of people are just lonely. They're not connecting, and they're not reaching out. Before I even asked the question, I knew it was going to be very uncomfortable, but I also knew it was an important question to ask. So, I decided to call on courage and vulner ability and stay in the moment. I decided to be honest with them. "This breaks my heart. Loneliness isn't something I've talked about with you before. But seeing so many of you raise your hands today scares me a little because I'm not entirely sure what to do with this information. As a leader, if you tell me you're tired, I'm going to send you home, tell you to take some leave, to take some time away and get some rest. But if what's really going on is you're lonely, then sending you off to be by yourself, yet again, means that I could possibly exacerbate the very problem we are so desperately trying to combat in our Air Force, which is that some people are so out of hope, feeling so isolated, that they are doing something irreversible." My willingness to ask an uncomfortable question opened the door to a great conversation. We ended the af ternoon event having had a very candid discussion about how we build relationships in the unit, how we reach out to others when we're feeling alone, and how we create a com munity of inclusion. It also provided invaluable insight for the squadron commander and set him on a path to address the right issue: connection and inclusion versus busyness and exhaustion. growth. I realized that day that as a leader, if I am com fortable enough to use the right language and say "Are you lonely?" I may be able to create a connection that gives someone hope. It's possible that by using the right language I'll create a connection where maybe, just maybe, they will come and talk to me. And then we can do something about it. Most of the time, if I'm not comfortable with the discom fort that can come from such a moment, and I encounter someone who is having trouble, I send them---and rightly so---to helping professionals, to trained therapists. ing the message "I don't know how to deal with this" or "I don't have the space to handle the heaviness of this" or "I have so many other demands that I just can't deal with it." As leaders I certainly believe we all want to do the right thing, but we don't always have the bandwidth or experi ence to take care of someone the way they need to be taken care of. Sending them to helping professionals is absolutely the right thing to do, but I also think it can add to the feeling of isolation. In some sense, it may feel as if I'm pushing that airman away, and I'm telling them to let the professionals "deal with it." The subconscious message that I could be sending is: You are not with me, and I am not with you. me so much that I tell the story every chance I get. I want leaders, I want fellow airmen, to hear and feel for them selves how it feels when we use words like *lonely* versus *exhausted.* I've now told the story at least thirty to forty times to different groups, to people of different ranks and professions in the Air Force. I know I've hit a nerve because every time I tell the story, as I look out at the crowd, I see people nodding in agreement. They're connected. You can see it. You can feel it. They are relating to what it feels like to be in the military, to be away from home, and how hard it is to build community with every new assignment. They're enthralled in what I'm saying in that moment, because they too have had their own moments of loneliness. I tear up every time I tell the story because I know it's resonating with them, and I'm sad that we don't talk openly about it more often. In some cases, our lives depend on it. Now, after almost every presentation, someone will come up to me and ask: "What do I do when I'm lonely?" I am certainly not an expert on this topic, which in itself is intimidating. I've opened the door to a conversa tion I don't always feel equipped to address. But that is why Brene's work is so important. We have to have the hard conversations even when we're not ready. I always use Brene's words and tell the asker, "I am a traveler, not a mapmaker. I am going down this path same as and with you." I tell everyone who shares this moment with me that I try to be very deliberate in scheduling plans, that I am very deliberate in building relationships so that when that feeling of loneliness strikes, I have someone I can reach out to. More than anything, I tell them I'm honest about the way I'm feeling and when I'm struggling. Never once, before this event, did an airman of mine come up to me and tell me they were lonely. By starting the conversation, I believe I've given them permission; I've conveyed that it's a safe topic to discuss. Now when they come to me, and they themselves are vulnerable, I have an opportunity to ad dress it before their loneliness gets to a level of overwhelm and they see no other way out. came up to me and said, "I talk to my folks all the time about being disconnected." I looked at her and said, "Why do you use the word *disconnected?* It's such a sterile word. Why not just use the word *lonely?"* I can't say for certain but she appeared uncomfortable with that. I went on, "If I ask an airman 'Are you feeling disconnected?' I don't feel like that airman knows that I truly see them, that I understand what it is they're going through. Because again, *disconnected* is a sterile word. It's a safe word. It's not a word that conveys the true depth of shared human experience like loneliness. Whereas if I ask an airman 'Are you lonely?' I feel as if I am reaching them at a deeper level. I am letting them know in that moment, I am comfortable addressing the messy parts of life and I won't shy away from their loneliness. In a sense I'm telling them: Let's go there together. I am strong enough to hold this for the both of us." *ness, empathy, compassion,* are not words often discussed in our leadership training, nor are they included in our leadership literature. Force Doctrine Document 1-1: Leadership and Force De velopment, was written in 2011. In the document it explains that our Air Force's current core values are an evolution of seven leadership traits identified in the Air Force's very first manual on leadership, Air Force Manual 35-15, which was written in 1948. One of the seven traits was humanness. My first reaction was "Huh? What is humanness?" Intrigued and curious, I set out to find the 1948 docu ment. Interestingly, it took me a few hours to find the 1948 manual because it was not located in any of the leadership files. It was actually buried in the historical documents of the Air Force Chaplain Corps. As I was reading the docu ment, I was struck by how much emotion I was feeling from the words on the page. So I started to pay more attention. The pages were full of words and phrases like: *to belong, a* *sense of belonging, feeling, fear, compassion, confidence,* *kindness, friendliness,* and *mercy.* I was amazed. Here's this military document that's talking about lead ership with mercy, and kindness, and belonging, and love. Yes, the word *love* was in this military leadership manual. I decid

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