Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

by Brené Brown

Today’s organizations are so metric-focused in their evaluation of performance that giving, receiving, and soliciting valuable feedback ironically has become rare.

We’re not comfortable with hard conversations. We don’t know how to give and receive feedback in a way that moves people and processes forward.

For example, I can beat myself up for being too controlling and micromanaging, or I can recognize that I’m very responsible, dependable, and committed to quality work. The micromanaging issues don’t go away, but by viewing them from a strengths perspective, I have the confidence to look at myself and assess the behaviors I’d like to change.

Vulnerability is at the heart of the feedback process. This is true whether we give, receive, or solicit feedback. And the vulnerability doesn’t go away even if we’re trained and experienced in offering and getting feedback. Experience does, however,

How would education be different if students, teachers, and parents sat on the same side of the table? How would engagement change if leaders sat down next to folks and said, “Thank you for your contributions. Here’s how you’re making a difference. This issue is getting in the way of your growth, and I think we can tackle it together. What ideas do you have about moving forward? What role do you think I’m playing in the problem? What can I do differently to support you?”

“Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. This scarcity makes leadership valuable.…It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers. It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail. It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo. It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle. When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed. If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.”

Children with high levels of hopefulness have experience with adversity. They’ve been given the opportunity to struggle and in doing that they learn how to believe in themselves.

Storytelling is my DNA, and I couldn’t resist the idea of research as story-catching. Stories are data with a soul and no methodology honors that more than grounded theory. The mandate of grounded theory is to develop theories based on people’s lived experiences rather than proving or disproving existing theories.

In grounded theory we don’t start with a problem or a hypothesis or a literature review, we start with a topic. We let the participants define the problem or their main concern about the topic, we develop a theory, and then we see how and where it fits in the literature.

The power that connection holds in our lives was confirmed when the main concern about connection emerged as the fear of disconnection; the fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, something about who we are or where we come from, has made us unlovable and unworthy of connection. I learned that we resolve this concern by understanding our vulnerabilities and cultivating empathy, courage, and compassion—what I call shame resilience.

The grounded theory process consists of five basic components: theoretical sensitivity, theoretical sampling, coding, theoretical memoing, and sorting. These five components were integrated by the constant-comparison method of data analysis. The

The primary focus of the analysis was identifying the participants’ main concerns and the emergence of a core variable. As I conducted additional interviews, I reconceptualized categories and identified the properties that inform each category. I used selective coding when core concepts emerged and the data were saturated across categories and across their properties.

It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.