Dare to Lead

by Brené Brown

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again … who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

We need braver leaders and more courageous cultures.

Here are the ten behaviors and cultural issues that leaders identified as getting in our way in organizations across the world:

We avoid tough conversations, including giving honest, productive feedback.

Diminishing trust caused by a lack of connection and empathy.

Not enough people are taking smart risks or creating and sharing bold ideas to meet changing demands

Too much shame and blame, not enough accountability and learning.

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 reason, the same problems continue to surface. It’s costly and demoralizing.

You can’t get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability. Embrace the suck.

Courage and fear are not mutually exclusive.

Self-awareness and self-love matter. Who we are is how we lead.

Courage is contagious.

Daring leaders must care for and be connected to the people they lead.

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.

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

Get clear on whose opinions of you matter.

if we shield ourselves from all feedback, we stop growing. If we engage with all feedback, regardless of the quality and intention, it hurts too much, and we will ultimately armor up

To love at all is to be vulnerable.1 Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.

How do I know if I can trust someone enough to be vulnerable? Can I build trust without ever risking vulnerability?

We need to trust to be vulnerable, and we need to be vulnerable in order to build trust.

trust is in fact earned in the smallest of moments. It is earned not through heroic deeds, or even highly visible actions, but through paying attention, listening, and gestures of genuine care and connection.

Trust is the stacking and layering of small moments and reciprocal vulnerability over time.

Simply put, psychological safety makes it possible to give tough feedback and have difficult conversations without the need to tiptoe around the truth.6 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.

Psychological safety does not imply a cozy situation in which people are necessarily close friends. Nor does it suggest an absence of pressure or problems.

Items that frequently show up as things that get in the way of psychological safety in teams and groups include judgment, unsolicited 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.

“What does support from me look like?”

setting boundaries is making clear what’s okay and what’s not okay, and why.

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?

To feel is to be vulnerable. Believing that vulnerability is weakness is believing that feeling is weakness. And, like it or not, we are emotional beings.

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

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.

Jim Collins’s classic book Good to Great.

“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.”

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.

Leaders must either 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.

we must find the courage to get curious and possibly surface emotions and emotional experiences that people can’t articulate or that might be happening outside their awareness.

In the past, jobs were about muscles, now they’re about brains, but in the future they’ll be about the heart.1 —MINOUCHE SHAFIK, director, London School of Economics

Our ego will do almost anything to avoid or minimize the discomfort associated with feeling vulnerable or even being curious, because it’s too risky.

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving for excellence.

Open, honest discussion, in which everyone feels free to offer suggestions and contribute, stimulates creativity.

innovation is hindered by allowing criticism from the cheap seats—from those who aren’t willing to get down into the arena.

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.

If you find yourself leading a team or culture in which criticism outweighs contribution, make a conscious and resolute decision to stop rewarding the former.

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., defined power as the ability to achieve purpose and effect change.

Hierarchy can work, except when those in leadership positions hold power over others—when their decisions benefit the minority and oppress the majority.

Daring leaders sit down with their team members and have real rumbles with them about the unique contributions they make, so that everyone knows where they’re strong.

sometimes we overlook our own strengths because we take them for granted and forget that they’re special.

“Catch people doing things right.”17 It’s much more powerful than collecting behaviors that are wrong.

instead of a ten-person race, we start to develop a coordinated relay in which team members baton-toss to each other’s strengths instead of vying to run the whole stretch alone.