Dare to Lead

by Brené Brown

Sharing values is a massive trust and connection builder for teams.

Each of these has been operationalized into behaviors that we are all held accountable for demonstrating. Each behavior is evaluated on a Likert scale (5–1, always to never)

Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.

Operationalized values drive what I think of as the sweet spot of decision making: thoughtful and decisive.

Replacing tactics by values in arguments

It’s much easier to deal with conflicts when you are able to engage your team in a values conversation.

we assume the worst about people’s intentions when they’re not respectful of our boundaries: It is easy to believe that they are trying to disappoint us on purpose.

What boundaries need to be in place for me to be in my integrity and generous with my assumptions about the intentions, words, and actions of others?

my life is better when I work from the assumption that everyone is doing the best they can.”

exercise, we ask folks to write down the name of someone who fills them with frustration, disappointment, and/or resentment, and then we propose the idea that that person is doing the best they can. The responses have been wide-ranging. “Crap,”

And when we’re overwhelmed and struggling, it also means turning those positive assumptions toward ourselves: I’m doing the very best I can right now.

If we want to be values-driven, we have to operationalize our values into behaviors and skills that are teachable and observable.

Just the slightest inkling that someone is questioning our trustworthiness is enough to set total vulnerability lockdown in motion.

defines trust as “choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.”

Trust Talk We Can Actually Hear

saying from the Asaro tribe in Papua New Guinea that I love: “Knowledge is only rumor until it lives in the bones.”

The BRAVING Inventory is first and foremost a rumble tool—a conversation guide to use with colleagues

Dare to Lead hub at brenebrown.com

Each person fills out the BRAVING Inventory independently, then meets one-on-one to discuss where experiences align and where they differ.

Boundaries: You respect my boundaries, and when you’re not clear about what’s okay and not okay, you ask.

best tools for putting these new skills and tools into practice is finding an integrity partner—

“Many parents have gone from helicopter parents to lawnmower parents.

The Reckoning, the Rumble, and the Revolution

We are emotional beings, and when something hard happens to us, emotion drives. Cognition or thinking is not sitting shotgun next to behavior in the cab of the truck. Thinking and behavior are hog-tied in the back, and emotion is driving like a bat out of hell.

Risers immediately recognize when they’re emotionally hooked by something: Hey, something’s got me. And then they get curious about it.

when I’m emotionally hooked, time slows down, my armpits tingle, my mouth gets dry, and I immediately start playing whatever has happened on a continuous loop in my head. Now when any of those things happens, I try to pay attention and take it as a cue. My cue is personalized just for me: Something’s going on. Get curious or get crazy.

Instead of feeling our emotions and getting curious, we offload them onto others.

term chandelier from Steve. It’s used within the medical community to describe a patient’s pain that is so severe that if you touch that tender place, their response is involuntary.

It’s much easier to say “I don’t give a damn” than it is to say “I’m hurt.”

We’re not erupting with misplaced emotions or using blame to deflect our true feelings or numbing the pain. Stockpiling starts like chandeliering, by firmly packing down the pain,

Midlife and midcareer are when we often start to see the effects of having stockpiled emotion for too long. The body is holding down the emotional fort, and as a result, we can experience many symptoms including anxiety, depression, burnout, insomnia, and physical pain.

One reason we deny our feelings is the fear of getting emotionally high-centered—that is, getting stuck in a way that makes it difficult to go forward or backward. If I recognize my hurt or fear or anger, I’ll get stuck. Once I engage even a little, I won’t be able to move backward and pretend that it doesn’t matter, but moving forward might open a floodgate of emotion that I can’t control.

I don’t want to cry at work, or on the battlefield, or when I’m with my students. Getting high-centered can be the worst because we feel a total loss of control. We feel powerless.

strategy for staying with emotion instead of offloading it is

The yoga teacher called it box breathing. The soldiers called it tactical breathing.

just stop and trace a square on my desk: In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.

one of the most underrated leadership superpowers: practicing calm. I define calm as creating perspective and mindfulness while managing emotional reactivity.

Overfunctioners, like myself, tend to move quickly to advise, rescue, take over, micromanage, and get in other people’s business rather than look inward.

For those of us who overfunction, our work is to become more willing to embrace our vulnerabilities in the face of anxiety.

combination of breathing and curiosity. They talked about taking deep breaths before responding to questions or asking them; slowing down the pace of a frantic conversation by modeling slow speech, breathing, and fact finding; and even intentionally taking a few breaths before asking themselves a version of these two questions: Do I have enough information to freak out about this situation? If I do have enough data, will freaking out help?

how much time, money, energy, and engagement bad stories cost.

The promise of that Aha! I’ve solved it! sensation can seduce us into shutting down the uncertainty and vulnerability that are often necessary for getting to the truth.

The idea of a “shitty first draft” comes from Anne Lamott’s exceptional book on writing, Bird by Bird. She writes: The only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.

When it comes to our emotions, the first stories we make up—our SFDs—are definitely our fears and insecurities romping all over the place, making up worst-case scenarios.

I could have walked in and said, “I heard the ham comment, and the story I’m telling myself is that you’re sick of me and all of the stress of my work right now.” I’ve known Steve for more than thirty years, and I’m 99 percent confident that he would have pulled me in for a hug and said, “I know you’re overwhelmed. What can we do?”

Clear is kind. And clarity absolutely reduces story making and conspiracy theories.

Confabulation has a really great and subtle definition: A confabulation is a lie told honestly. To confabulate is to replace missing information with something false that we believe to be true.

confabulations—lies, honestly told.”11 Confabulation shows up at work when we share what we believe is factual information, but it’s really just our opinion. It

that first story, that conspiracy, that confabulation, that scribbled mess in our heads. “Oh, my God, she looked at me like that in the meeting because she doesn’t trust me. She thinks my ideas are stupid, and she is probably plotting to get me taken off this project.”

Today, I try to use my phone to capture my SFD before I act on it. I write it out when I have the opportunity simply because 70 percent of the risers we interviewed write down their SFDs. Nothing elaborate, just some variation of: The story I’m making up: My emotions: My body: My thinking: My beliefs: My actions: