Introduction

Choose courage over comfort. Choose whole hearts over armor. And choose the great adventure of being brave and afraid. At the exact same time. Brené Brown

What does brave leadership look like? How do you cultivate braver and more daring leaders? How do you implant the value of courage in your company’s culture?

Dare To Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts, by Brené Brown answers these questions by putting the ideas of her other books (Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, The Gift of Imperfection, and Braving the Wilderness) into practice. Dare to Lead is a “practical playbook” based on research with 150 global C-suite executives where Brené Brown shares what she learned about leaders taking off the armor and showing up.

According to Brené Brown, leadership is not about titles or a big corner office, but it’s about the willingness to step up, put oneself out there, and lean into courage, because the world is desperate for braver leaders.

A few of the big ideas that emerged from Brené Brown’s research are:

LEADERS CAN’T GET TO COURAGE WITHOUT RUMBLING WITH VULNERABILITY. THEY NEED TO EMBRACE THE SUCK

Daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are teachable, observable, and measurable. The foundational skill set of courage-building is “rumbling with vulnerability.” A “rumble” is a conversation where people show up vulnerable and serve each other. Being vulnerable is the emotion we experience in times of uncertainty, failure, risk, and emotional exposure. If people and leaders are brave enough often enough, they will inevitably fail and be criticized. But this is the price to pay, and Brené Brown encourages leaders to face moments of vulnerability with a whole heart and no armor.

Once leaders have built these rumbling skills, they can move on to the other three skill sets: Living into Our Values, Braving Trust, and Learning to Rise. According to Brené Brown, the ability to be daring leaders will never be greater than the capacity for vulnerability.

SELF-AWARENESS AND SELF-LOVE MATTER. WHO WE ARE IS HOW WE LEAD. COURAGE MATTERS

Joseph Campbell offers the purest calls to courage for leaders:

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

The greatest barrier to courageous leadership is not fear itself, but how leaders respond to their fears. Leaders need to cultivate courage in themselves and others. They need to get rid of their armor, that is the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that they use to protect themselves when they don’t want to be vulnerable, because their armor put them out of alignment with their values, and may damage trust with their colleagues and teams, and prevent them from being brave leaders.

COURAGE IS CONTAGIOUS

Leaders cannot accomplish all by themselves and therefore they need to promote daring leadership and courage across their organization. They need to cultivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations, and whole heartedness are the norm and expected, and armors are not necessary or rewarded. They have to be proactive and vigilant about creating and protecting a culture in which people may feel safe, seen, heard, and respected.

Rumbling With Vulnerability

Brené Brown’s research shows that vulnerability is not a weakness but it’s an essential element of good leadership and an asset for innovation.

Brené Brown asked the following question to thousands of individuals over the years: What makes you feel vulnerable?

Examples of vulnerability are things like the first date after a difficult divorce, starting to run your first business or how you feel when you get laid off from work. Vulnerability is a universal human emotion that we feel when we expose ourselves to others and during times of risk or uncertainty.

Nonetheless, despite being such a common feeling, there are six damaging myths about vulnerability:

1. Vulnerability is weakness
2. “I don’t do vulnerability”
3. “I can go it alone”
4. You can engineer the uncertainty and discomfort out of vulnerability
5. Trust comes before vulnerability
6. Vulnerability is disclosure

However, the truth couldn’t be any further. In fact:

1. Daring leadership is born through vulnerability
2. Without vulnerability there is no creativity or innovation
3. Vulnerability means empathy and connection with other people
4. You have to face vulnerability to learn
5. Trust and vulnerability grow co-dependently, not separately
6. Vulnerability minus boundaries is confession & manipulation

In other words, if we want to be an effective leader (and person), we should learn how to rumble with vulnerability, because while experiences that make us feel vulnerable can bring feelings of anxiety, uncertainty and a desire for self-protection, there isn’t a single piece of empirical data to suggest that vulnerability is associated with weakness. The opposite is actually true: without first putting ourself in a vulnerable position, acts of courage are impossible.

For example, the author describes the results of asking special forces military personnel in 2014 whether any of them had ever undertaken or witnessed a courageous act that did not require to feel vulnerable. None of the soldiers could come up with a single example of courage in which vulnerability hadn’t be an essential part of that experience. When people think about a specific instance of being courageous, they soon realize that vulnerability is not weakness, but actually an essential part of being brave.

Moreover, vulnerability is also essential to innovation and creativity, because the creative process always includes failures along the way, at least temporarily. In order to be creative we need to accept the uncertainty inherent to the search for innovation. In those societies where vulnerability is equated with weakness, there is usually a strong barrier to produce new ideas or develop fresh perspectives. But those who know how to be vulnerable, are usually the best thinkers and creators.

Top 16 Quotes from Dare to Lead

“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.'”― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“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 potential.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“The courage to be vulnerable is not about winning or losing, it’s about the courage to show up when you can’t predict or control the outcome.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“At the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of my life, I want to say I contributed more than I criticized.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts

“Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“Show up for people in pain and don’t look away.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“We fail the minute we let someone else define success for us.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“Daring leaders work to make sure people can be themselves and feel a sense of belonging.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“neuroscientist Antonio Damasio reminds us, “We are not necessarily thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“Feeding people half-truths or bullshit to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“People, people, people are just people, people, people.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“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 yourself on the line, I’m not interested in what you have to say.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“Rather than spending a reasonable amount of time proactively acknowledging and addressing the fears and feelings that show up during change and upheaval, we spend an unreasonable amount of time managing problematic behaviors.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“No trust, no connection.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“Diminishing trust caused by a lack of connection and empathy.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“Mastery requires feedback.” 
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

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