Dare to Lead Quotes

“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.

“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.

“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.

“Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”
― 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.

“People are opting out of vital conversations about diversity and inclusivity because they fear looking wrong, saying something wrong, or being wrong. Choosing our own comfort over hard conversations is the epitome of privilege, and it corrodes trust and moves us away from meaningful and lasting change.”
― 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.

“Don't grab hurtful comments and pull them close to you by rereading them and ruminating on them. Don't play with them by rehearsing your badass comeback. And whatever you do, don't pull hatefulness close to your heart.

Let what's unproductive and hurtful drop at the feet of your unarmored self. And no matter how much your self-doubt wants to scoop up the criticism and snuggle with the negativity so it can confirm its worst fears, or how eager the shame gremlins are to use the hurt to fortify your armor, take a deep breath and find the strength to leave what's mean-spirited on the ground. You don't even need to stomp it or kick it away.

Cruelty is cheap, easy, and chickenshit. It doesn't deserve your energy or engagement. Just step over the comments and keep daring, always remembering that armor is too heavy a price to pay to engage with cheap-seat feedback.”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead

“If we want people to fully show up, to bring their whole selves including their unarmored, whole hearts—so that we can innovate, solve problems, and serve people—we have to be vigilant about creating a culture in which people feel safe, seen, heard, and respected.”
― 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.

“Living BIG (boundaries, integrity, and generosity).”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“Only when diverse perspectives are included, respected, and valued can we start to get a full picture of the world:”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“If you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“the only thing I know for sure after all of this research is that if you’re going to dare greatly, you’re going to get your ass kicked at some point. If you choose courage, you will absolutely know failure, disappointment, setback, even heartbreak. That’s why we call it courage. That’s why it’s so rare.”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

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

“It turns out that 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.”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves.”
― 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.

“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.

“choose courage over comfort”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“to be the person who we long to be—we must again be vulnerable. We must take off the armor, put down the weapons, show up, and let ourselves be seen.”
― 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.

“Why do we insist on dress-rehearsing tragedy in moments of deep joy? Because joy is the most vulnerable emotion we feel. And that’s saying something, given that I study fear and shame. When we feel joy, it is a place of incredible vulnerability—it’s beauty and fragility and deep gratitude and impermanence all wrapped up in”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“For me, that strong back is grounded confidence and boundaries. The soft front is staying vulnerable and curious. The mark of a wild heart is living out these paradoxes in our lives and not giving into the either/or BS that reduces us. It’s showing up in our vulnerability and our courage, and, above all else, being both fierce and kind.”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“One of the signature mistakes with empathy is that we believe we can take our lenses off and look through the lenses of someone else. We can’t. Our lenses are soldered to who we are. What we can do, however, is honor people’s perspectives as truth even when they’re different from ours. That’s a challenge if you were raised in majority culture—white, straight, male, middle-class, Christian—and you were likely taught that your perspective is the correct perspective and everyone else needs to adjust their lens. Or, more accurately, you weren’t taught anything about perspective taking, and the default—My truth is the truth—is reinforced by every system and situation you encounter.”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“So often, when someone is in pain, we’re afraid to say, “Yes, this hurts. Yes, this is a big deal. Yes, this sucks.” We think our job is to make things better, so we minimize the pain.”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“The Ham-Foldover Debacle:.....you make yourself the center of something that has nothing to do with you, out of your own fear or scarcity, only to be reminded that you're not the axis over which the world turns”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead

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

“In a 1968 speech given to striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., defined power as the ability to achieve purpose and effect change. This is the most accurate and important definition of power that I’ve ever seen. The definition does not make the nature of power inherently good or bad, which aligns with what I’ve learned in my work. What makes power dangerous is how it’s used.”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.