Rumbling With Vulnerability PDF

**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**...

**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 decided to do a word search for these words and phrases to see how often they were used. A discussion of feeling- how men would feel---was referred to 147 times. The im­ portance of creating a sense of belonging was mentioned 21 times. The fear of combat, the fear of exclusion, the fear a life in the profession of arms will bring was mentioned 35 times. Love---what it means as a leader to love your men--- was brought up 13 times. I won't go through the entire doc­ ument, but suffice it to say this document used a language that speaks to the human experience when it was instruct­ ing leaders on how to lead people. I went back to our current manual on leadership and searched for the same words. Unfortunately, such words weren't used. Over and over again each search turned up zero. These words that address the real emotions of people have been completely removed from our language on lead­ ership. like *tactical leadership, operational leadership, strategic* *leadership.* Important concepts, no doubt, but the concepts provide little guidance to our young leaders on how to deal with the many complexities of how people, of how our air­ men, process the experience of being in the military dur­ ing a time of war. In sanitizing our language, I think we've decreased our comfort with expressing those feelings and holding that same space for others. awkward and uncomfortable feeling and word for us to talk about---because I am willing to sit in that discomfort and give them permission to be in it with me. talking about it, specifically the power of vulnerability in leadership, people would look at me like I was crazy. I real­ ized then I wasn't going to be able to talk about it on a large scale, so I decided I would start small, and I would use her work with just my six squadron commanders. I felt that if I did nothing more than help these six people become lead­ ers with different tools to navigate the challenges of leader­ ship, then I would have done enough. of that, there have been a million moments where Brene's work has changed the way we are leading people. If you read either DeDe's story or the story about how my team and I worked through our rumble and think *This is way too* *kumbaya,* ask yourself if you're underestimating the courage these types of conversations take, or maybe diminishing the ef­ fort so you don't have to give it a shot. If you read these stories and think *I'm not sure I could ever do* *this work with my team,* I have a suggestion. Make copies of this section, ask your team to read it, then bring them together for forty-five minutes. Ask a few questions: What did you think? Would putting any of this language or these tools into practice be helpful for us? If so, what would we need to do it? This is a great opportunity for container-building. If the team thinks there's nothing helpful here, ask why not. This is a daring opportunity to surface fears, feelings, and stealth expectations and intentions, or just to hear better ideas. If you read these stories and think *Who has the time?* I'd ask you to calculate the cost of distrust and disconnection in terms of productivity, performance, and engagement. Here's what I know to be true from my experience and what I consider to be one of the most important learnings from this research: Leaders must ei­ ther invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings, or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behavior. What this means is that we must find the courage to get curi­ ous and possibly surface emotions and emotional experiences that people can't articulate or that might be happening outside their awareness. If we find ourselves addressing the same prob­ lematic behaviors over and over, we may need to dig deeper to the thinking and feeling driving those behaviors. After the third one-on-one addressing the same issue, it's easy to make up the story that this person is just being difficult or even testing us. But what I've found in my own experience is that we haven't gone deep enough. We haven't peeled away enough lay­ ers of the onion. And once we start peeling, we have to leave long pauses and empty space. I know the conversation is hard enough, but people need white space. Stop talking. Even if it's awkward--- which it will be the first fifteen times. And when they start talking (which they normally will), lis­ ten. Really listen. Don't formulate your response while they're talking. If you have a great insight---hold it. Don't do that thing where the listener starts nodding faster and faster, not because they're actively listening but because they're trying to uncon­ sciously signal the talker to wrap up so they can talk. Keep a lot of space in the conversation. Another thing: When we're in tough rumbles with people, we can't take responsibility for their emotions. They're allowed to be pissed or sad or surprised or elated. But if their *behaviors* are not jkay, we set the boundaries: I know this is a tough conversation. Being angry is okay. Yelling is not okay. I know we're tired and stressed. This has been a long meeting. Being frustrated is okay. Interrupting people and rolling your eyes is not okay. I appreciate the passion around these different opinions and ideas. The emotion is okay. Passive-aggressive com­ ments and put-downs are not okay. Also, don't forget one of our favorite rumble tools: the time­ out. When rumbles become unproductive, call a time-out. Give everyone ten minutes to walk around outside or catch their breath. In our organization, everyone is empowered to call a time-out. And we all do it when we need it. Sometimes a team member will say, "I need time to think about what I'm hearing. Can we take an hour and circle back after lunch?" I really appreciate that because it leads to better decision making. And giving people a reasonable amount of thinking time cuts down on the meeting-after-the-meeting and back-channeling behaviors, which are both outside what's okay in our culture. Just remember, we can't do our jobs when we own other peo­ ple's emotions or take responsibility for them as a way to control the related behaviors, for one simple reason: Other people's emo­ tions are not our jobs. We can't both serve people and try to con­ trol their feelings. Daring leadership is ultimately about serving other people, not ourselves. That's why we choose courage.