Brené Brown on What It Takes to Lead with Courage

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Would tell someone going into college right now is we're unwittingly and some people wittingly building a world where there are going to be thinkers and consumers, creators and consumers. We want to be on the thinking, creating side. Your attention, your thinking and your focus are commodities that algorithms are desperate to get a hold of. Protect them at all cost. Read. Don't let anyone talk you out of liberal arts classes. Take them. Be mindful of how much time you spend consuming versus creating.

So listen, my podcast is called the Remarkable People Podcast. That's why you're on it. All right, so wow.

Right off the bat, Renee.

Don't be so modest, Renee. On my podcast, I've had Bob Cialdini, David Aker, Angela Duckworth, Carol Dweck, Richard Thaler, and now Brittney Brown.

I have arrived. That's the lineup right there.

I have arrived. This is a big moment. I can die tomorrow and I die happy now.

I'm excited to be here. I have followed your work for so long.

No.

Oh, no. I have for sure.

You say that to everybody.

Yeah, I actually don't. Despite my Texas upbring, I'm not a flatterer, but I have. I followed your work and probably been shaped by the role of beauty and excellence, passion, engagement. That's probably shaped how I think about my work. Maybe you invented it. I was introduced to the idea of evangelism, brand evangelism, but it was Jesus before me. But I mean, he was the OG evangelist, I guess, right?

It was 2000 year gap.

Yeah. I was introduced to the idea that if you don't love what you're doing and you're not excited about it, don't expect other people to be.

All right, so. Oh.

Oh, yeah.

We have an audience. Shit, I forgot that.

Hey, y'. All.

So this is an audience quiz. Okay.

Okay, let's do it.

This is Brene's latest book and I answer it. Yeah, put it on all the cameras.

All right.

So now this is a quiz for the audience. So which story do you think this book would open up with? And I'll give you some choices.

Okay.

I'm not asking you.

Right. The audience.

I know you. Yeah. So a story of Steve Jobs and the iPhone. A story of the reinvention of Microsoft. A story of the impact of Elon Musk going Nazi on Tesla. A story about helping her kids use artificial intelligence. Or a story of playing pickleball. Now, which story do you think would open up a tome like this, a serious academic work? It's pickleball.

It's pickleball all day, baby.

Why is that, Brene?

Because this metaphor just unfolded in front of me. So I got hurt playing pickleball. I go to a great trainer, and he uses the term compensatory injury. He tells me I'm hurt because I don't have a core, and I'm using insufficient muscle groups to do the work of big muscles that I should be using. And he keeps talking. He says, we're going to go slow. We're going to be intentional. We're going to not build on dysfunction. And the whole time I'm working with him, I'm thinking he's working with me on what I'm working on with CEOs and leaders, not building on dysfunction, building core muscles and skills. Yeah. It just made sense. So I loved it. And I am a very serious pickleball player.

Yeah, I notice I'm very competitive. I notice I'm not playing pickleball with you. So in this pickleball story, you talk about the word writhing, Right. Because you were in pain. Would you say that America is writhing right now?

No, but I hope we get there soon.

You want to writhe?

Yes.

Why?

Because we're clearly not at our pain threshold yet, so we're tolerating a lot of stuff. We are being injured, but the pain doesn't match the level of injury yet. And so I think at the time where the pain matches the injury, that's usually when people say, enough, I've got to do something different.

Are we close?

I hope so, because I don't know how much more injury we can sustain, to be honest with you.

Yeah. All right, I'm gonna just go dark for a little bit.

I mean, we're not there already. It feels pretty dark already. Just like saying, all right, I'm gearing up.

Yeah. So, seriously, so, you know, you've read my writing, I've read your writing, and, you know, we're all about empowerment and empathy and vulnerability. And all that kind of good stuff. But I gotta tell you, there are days right now that I look at this and I say, well, it seems like the path is you focus on crypto, you focus on long term capital gains, you work at Fox to become a high ranking government official. Do you ever just get disgusted and give up and say, the world is topsy turvy, we're living in a simulation. God has a sense of humor.

Yes. Three or four times a day. Yeah. I think if you are not questioning that, you need to probably go outside and take a look at what's happening. But I think that two things can be true. I think the call to courage has never been more important. And I think that these are really very difficult times. And I think right now we're not good in uncertainty. And I think a lot of people feel disconnected and distrusting and are in pain. And if you can deliver certainty whether it's real or not, and you can give people someone to blame for their pain, hopefully someone that doesn't look like them, I think in the short term you can gain a lot of advantage. I just don't think that's a long term play because I do believe the moral arc bends towards justice. And I do think people are inherently good. I think people in fear are inherently dangerous. And I'm not giving up on all the things that we write about. I'm just, I. I'm not going to.

Yeah, I don't even know if I dare ask this question. But you know, I was reading your book and I said, oh my God, what does Brene think of the Quantico Ritz Carlton off site for generals? I mean, I didn't see a lot of vulnerability. I didn't see a lot of leading from the ground. I didn't see anything like that. What do you think to yourself about the leadership?

I don't look toward those folks as models of leaders. And so I don't think much about it at all, actually. I look toward the leaders that I work with every day who are waking up. They're committed to understanding themselves. They're committed to accountability and discipline and courage. They're committed to understanding that the role of a leader is to serve the people they lead, not be served by them. And so I'm looking a vastly different, different direction for models of courageous leadership. And I'm not going to be distracted. I'm just not going to be distracted.

I don't know what day he's here, but. Have you ever interacted with Stanley McChrystal?

No. I know his work on character and I know about his military career, but I've never worked with him.

Now, I hope you can meet him here. He's a remarkable person. His book about leadership I think is the best book I've ever read about leadership. And I would rank Peter Drucker's work number one, and I would rank Stanley McChrystal's work on leadership number two.

There are some tremendous leaders coming out of organizations, military, non military. I've done a lot of work with the military and been able to work with a lot of the most kind of outstanding, humility driven leaders that I've met in my career who are all really struggling right now.

Yeah, yeah. I truly enjoyed your book. But could you just for the listeners, talk about what does finding your ground mean?

Yeah, I think it comes out of that injury metaphor where part of strength and stability is finding our ground. And the ground is such an interesting metaphor, and it's actually metaphor, but it's also real that the ground is the only thing in our lives that can be both stabilize us and give us a springboard for action. And I think that's what we're looking for right now. I don't think very many people feel tethered right now and they're looking for external things to tether them. And you're not going to find that. What you're going to find is your own ground, your own values, your own clarity about who you are, how you're going to show up, emotional awareness and self awareness. And that stability is also the springboard for change. And so I think it's time define our athletic stance.

Yeah. You know, and I have to say that I have never heard of the Tush push until your book. So you have got to explain the Tush push.

Yeah, the Tush push is. So there's a lot of sports metaphors in the book.

Yeah, there are.

Yeah. And I think it's because I really believe that sports is leadership theater. Like I can be with a supply chain group of, you know, senior managers for a year and slowly roll out some of the learnings. Or you can watch center court at Wimbledon and see how discipline and strategy and work and training play out. And so the Tush push is an American football play. It's a short yardage play where the team, the offense, needs to move the ball like a yard or less. And the way they do it is they literally ground into the ground, they push their feet into the tur and they shove the quarterback forward for that one exclusive yard that they need. And I like it because it's all physics. It's all physics, but it's actually the physics. I think it's the physics of great leadership and great teamwork. Imagine a team. Let's just take it into an organization. Imagine a marketing team of eight people, each of them firmly grounded in their own values, each of them firmly grounded in the mission of the brand that they're working for. All pushing together, being very mindful that they have a split second advantage in the market. Moving together, they can do anything.

When I read about the Tush for, the first question that entered my brain was, how the hell does Brene Brown come up with a metaphor from professional football about pushing the quarterback's ass forward? I don't understand it, like, where I'm.

A huge sports fan because what's interesting to me about the Tush push is Newtonian physics. Again, like force is mass times acceleration. Right, right. And so why no one else does it well, besides the Eagles? Go Birds. Go Birds. I see Aaron, your producer, saying, yes, go Birds is they think that there's gonna be an advantage when they send a player over the top of the scrum. But the minute that you lose your footing in the ground, you get pushed back. You get pushed back. Because then your force is only your weight, not your weight times the ground. And that's why if we can stay tethered, I mean, like, let's just take it to an organizational example of AI strategy. If you are going to put a team, a corporate team on a field and watch them with AI strategy, you've got five of the people airborne, not tethered at all into business strategy, not tethered at all into what it takes for the humans who are going to be using AI to be trained and on board. And that's why it's not working. That's why when the NFL is like, we're going to ban it. Why?

Yeah.

Why you gonna ban physics? Gonna ban stars?

I must admit, I have never seen Brene Brown tush push and Neil DeGrasse Tyson in one context together.

One of my favorite questions I've been asked on the book tour was, well, it actually started with a call from my editor who said, I cannot put a chapter on John Keats, the poet, next to a chapter called the Tush Push about the Philadelphia Eagles. And it was so crazy to me. It was like, why? Who doesn't love poetry and who doesn't love football? We can do it. Like, humans are very.

So you put David White instead?

I put them all like poetry and sports. I love it. We need both right now.

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An idea of if you ever go to Japan.

Yes. That's like number one on my wish list.

Yeah. So if you go to Japan, when.

I go to Japan, you can go.

To the sumo schools. You can watch how sumo wrestlers train. And if there is a sport where you need to be grounded, it's sumo.

Right.

If you're a sumo wrestler and you're in the air, you're gonna just push out. It's all about grounding.

Okay, So I have to ask you this question. I watched sumo videos when I was writing it, but I was really scared to take it on as a sports example because there's so much culture behind it. But they take big, hard steps into the ground to get ready. Like, they have such an intimate relationship with the ground. The wrestlers do.

The only problem with using sumo as a metaphor for what you want to do is that it's not a team sport. They're not pushing the quarterback's ass. They're pushing their own ass.

They're pushing. Yeah. But their relationship with the ground.

Yeah.

Like, you can tell in the middle. Is it a match? Is it called a match? What is it called?

I don't know.

Match. In the middle of a match. If you're watching the video, you can actually see them repositioning their body so they can get back to the ground. Yeah. Don't think I didn't look up sumo wrestling. I did.

Yeah.

And I'm going to Japan. I cannot wait.

Oh, that's better than a tush push.

It's probably better, but I think we need the team capability. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

I'm into it. I'm going to go to sumo.

That's why you're Brene Brown and I'm not.

I Do love a good metaphor.

Okay, so, you know, I encounter people who read my book, and they come up to me and they ask me questions, and I want to say to them, you know, you're thinking way too much. So I'm going to ask you a question that you can just say, guy, you're thinking way too much. Okay?

Okay. I'm so excited. I don't know.

All right, so you have this concept where you made it into math, which is S, and then parentheses, R. Right? So stimulus, response, and there's the parentheses. And you say you got to put space so that there's space between the stimulus and the response. And, you know, so you think and you ground yourself. See, I really read the book.

You really did? I'm loving this so far.

I really read the book. This is not npr. I really read the book. It's not like some producer just gave me a Wikipedia entry. I read the freaking book. Okay?

I mean, I love it. That's clear so far.

Okay, so here comes the part where you tell me, guy, you're thinking way too much.

Okay.

Okay. So I read that S parentheses are. And then I read your acknowledgments. And your acknowledgments is probably the most complete acknowledgments I've ever read in my life. You list your colleagues, you list your peers, you list your team. You list everybody. And then at the end, you list your dog, Lucy. And I looked at that. I said, that is an example of. She put space between the stimulus of writing, the acknowledgment, and the R actually writing it. And she filled all that space because she's so grounded and she's so intellectual and she's so empathetic. She got everybody in that space. How's that? I'm full of shit.

You know? I'll tell you what I'm doing right now. I forgot two people that were really important in that acknowledgment. And I'm going to tell you why I forgot them. There was not enough space between stimulus and response. So I don't think you're reading too much into it at all. I'll tell you what happened. Random House crashed this book.

Say that. Huh?

Random House, my publisher, crashed this book.

You mean the file got corrupt?

No. A publication crash is a book that they speed through the process of publishing. So I turned that book in, like, eight weeks or 10 weeks before it was published.

Really?

It was one of the fastest crashes in publishing history. So I was so rushed to do the acknowledgement that I did not see stick my foot in to that closing elevator door. And I didn't do right by a couple of people who were really important to me.

Well, call them out now.

Yeah. No. And now I'm so afraid that I've missed more than two. But I want to say to Tina James for sure. She had already left our team, but she was instrumental in this work. And so I definitely want to say to Tina James, she should have been in there. And she'll be in the next run, the next publishing run. We've already added it. But I do think that. You know what? I don't think you're overthinking. And I think it's such a guy. Kawasaki. Question to all of your work. I'm thinking about the books I've read by you. All of your work happens in the space between stimulus and response.

Oh, I thought it happened between getting on the plane and getting off the plane.

No. Because you put a lot of our thinking into slow motion.

I do?

Yeah. You do.

Okay.

Yeah. I don't think you're thinking too much. I just think you're thinking like you, which is a different way of thinking.

Oh, wow. Let's just end the interview now.

But it's true. Because it's like, I think beauty and excellence is one of our organizational values. I don't think it would have been had I not read your work, because I think I would have assumed that. I don't know. I think about my work and our brand very differently because you introduced the idea of love.

You know, I'm gonna have a very hard time getting out of the door after. Cause my head is gonna explode because it's so big now.

Well, I don't know, because I think a lot of us think that way now. But I think it was really weird when you started writing about it. Do you not think that's true? We were surprised.

This interview is not going how I planned, Brene.

Excellent.

Okay, so here you hear.

He's going back in the driver's seat. I see you shifting gears.

This is what happens when you get two podcast hosts together.

Yeah.

No.

Right. Whose interview is it? Right. But I do think. Do you not think it's true that the way we think about brands and business today has been changed?

Oh, yeah.

By the idea that we have to create space between stimulus and response and make sure love exists in that space and excitement and enthusiasm.

Wow.

Do you not think you introduce those ideas?

This is a beautiful. I mean, I. I'm not as cerebral as you.

Bullshit. I Mean, that's like, nice. That's like. Yeah, yeah, you're uncomfortable right now, but you are cerebral, so. Okay, well, but I mean, I think it's true.

In the. In the last interview I did in these chairs, the guests forced me to sing with her.

So you know that you don't ever have to worry about happening. Unless we're gon like some kind of University of Texas fight song or the Liverpool, you'll never walk alone.

Hook em hard. Oh, sorry. This is a shocker.

Oh, yeah, yeah, let's go here.

It's Hawaiian. Hook em horns.

Right? Let's go here and let's look directly at the camera and say, hook em horns. Oh, you sucks.

Okay, so now the next part of the book that I read, I said, oh, my God, that is Steve Jobs, which is someone who combines plumbing and poetry.

Oh, James March's quote.

Steve Jobs truly combined plumbing and poetry. He was in the Nitty Gritty, and he was in the Big Vision and the Romance too. He was really. I love that. Well, first of all, I love alliteration, so poetry and plumbing is already a winner.

That's good, isn't it? Already?

Yeah.

That's James March from Stanford. I have to say, I would love. We don't even have to do a podcast, but we could take a walk one day. I would love for you to read March's book on leadership. And it's a very difficult read. And I don't have the balls to say I've read it. I just have interacted with it for long periods of time because it's complicated. But he's the one who said leadership is plumbing. In poetry, we have to be poetic enough to cast a vision that people want to follow and then care enough about operational excellence to build the systems that deliver upon that vision.

This is plumbing.

That's Steve Jobs, right?

Yeah. Yeah, it really was. It really was. You think that those qualities are learned or you're just born with them because there's not been too many Steve Jobs.

No, I think what's interesting is, and I was actually talking to Reid about this just an hour ago. I'm better at poetry than I am at plumbing. Maybe you find both in founders more than anything else.

By necessity.

By necessity. Because I think I can't decide whether I'm good at plumbing or I'm an anxious micromanager. I do know I'm good at the poetry play part because I love language and I can cast a vision, and I'm creative and problem solving, but operationally, I just want that shit to work, no pun intended on the plumbing, but, like, I just want that to work. And I don't want to talk about, like, time fences and critical paths, but I do. I'm going to insert myself in conversations about font choices.

All right, now, next topic is vulner. Tell me about vulnerability.

You know all about vulnerability, but I'll tell you about it.

I'm the host, you're the guest.

Okay, well, definition that emerged from the data probably 15 years ago that has held up through the test of much more data, that vulnerability is the emotion that we experience when we feel uncertain, at risk, or emotionally exposed. So vulnerability is the emotion, My kids would call it the cringe feeling or the awkward feeling. And so we know that the mythology around vulnerability is that vulnerability is weakness. Right? But the truth of vulnerability is there's no courage without vulnerability. Because if you think you're being brave, but there's no uncertainty and no risk and no exposure, if you already know how it's going to end, it doesn't require very much bravery. And so every act of courage is, at its heart, an act of vulnerability.

So when you see that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are channeling each other to wrestling or MMA fight, that's not exactly vulnerability. You think that's just pseudo macho bullshit?

I mean, those would be the first terms that came to mind, but yes.

Like, who do you see in the Brene Brown hall of Fame of vulnerability?

I work with leaders every day, possibly whose names you wouldn't know. Let me define it in a way that who can face uncertainty and fear and risk and not be an asshole?

That's a short list.

Right? But who can, in the midst of those really hard emotions, stay self aware, dignity, accountability. I think we've got a lot of leaders. I just don't think they're really famous because I think when you get to politicians, I don't know that we're talking at least today about leadership on either party. No, I think we're talking about power and control, and that's different than leadership. I mean, like, one of the things that I think you'll find really interesting is for people who want to do our work. So we've taken 150,000 leaders through our work. 45 countries the last six years. About 30% of the people who are interested in doing the work with us make it through the assessment in the beginning because we ask really hard questions in the beginning. They drop off. They do. Or we say it's not a good fit because one of the things we'll say right off the bat is we're going to want to have really honest conversations about power and how it's used in your organization. We need people who are not armored up every day. So we're going to ask a lot of people here, why is armor required to come to work here every day? Day. Or why is it rewarded? And there's a whole group of leaders that say, you're not going to ask that around my company. Right. But then there's a whole bunch of leaders that say, ask away. I want to know I care more about doing good work than I do protecting my reputation. And if there's things I need to learn or unlearn, I'm all in.

And that eliminates 30%.

That eliminates 70%.

70%.

30%. Yeah. And not just those questions, but, but you know this. The readiness for transformation. Transformation's hard. You're gonna break some shit, right?

Yeah. By definition.

By definition. And you're gonna break some of the things that are even off limits to talk about, much less interrogate and break. Yeah. So you gotta be ready for transformation. It's a hard walk. And if you quit transformation early cause it gets. Gets too hard, you don't have healthy incremental change. You just have broken transformation.

Which arguably is regression.

Which is regression. Yeah.

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I have to ask you, so if magically, God, she put you in charge and said, okay, Brene, you can redesign the electoral system. You can design Congress, you can design separation of powers. What does Brene Brown do with her magical powers?

Damn. I take got up on the offer for sure. What?

Say that again.

I would definitely take got up on the offer for sure.

Well, sure. So you're in the 30%.

Yeah. I would take God up on the offer, and then I would surround myself with people who are much smarter than me, whose integrity and character I trust. And then I would go back because I actually am a big believer of democracy, and I'm not sure, actually, that extremists on either side actually want democracy. Democracy is very difficult and very messy, and you can't control what it's going to deliver. But I'm a real big believer in multicultural democracy. I think it's beautiful. So I'd probably go back to the founding fathers and mothers, because there were as many founding mothers as fathers, for sure.

We just didn't hear it.

You didn't get the credit. And I'd go back to the original kind of. I got to interview Ken Burns about the American Revolution. And one of the things that struck me when watching that is that the hallmarks of democracy are virtue and education. And whatever I built would examine virtue and education, income equality, and I would build a country where our ability to take care of the most vulnerable people was an exact reflection of our character.

Well, you are exactly 180 degrees from what's happening right now.

Right. I might be 180 degrees different than what's happening in some places, but am I 180 degrees different from the American public? I doubt it.

Yeah, that's true.

I doubt it. Am I different from the people who hold a lot of power right now? Mercifully, yes.

Wow. Okay. So now really gonna go off the track here.

Oh, my God.

As you know, because you heard me discuss your acknowledgments as a space between the S and the R. I read in your acknowledgments a name. Nellie Novak. Nelli Novak is the person who did the head.

What do you call it? Noly.

Noly.

Noly. Noli Novak.

Nolan Ovak. She does the.

What do you call head Cuts. Like the Wall Street Journal, like pen and ink.

So I read that. I was like, so this is how it's done. So today I went to her site and I sent an inquiry in. But I really want to know, how does it work? Do you just send them a picture and then they send you the art? And does it take months and months and thousands of dollars?

No. So first of all, to get those kind of those classic Wall Street Journal head cuts, and they've tried to introduce some AI that could just take a picture and do it not even close to the artists. And first of all, even if you could make it look like that, you could never make it feel like that. The head cut artists are so amazing, and Noly is incredible. So you send a picture, and it's gotta be a certain quality of image because they're really using that. It's almost like engraving. And then we just got him back, and we were like, holy shit, this is how it works. Like, we had the same question you did. Like, how does it work? But I wanted those in there because I thought they were beautiful.

Oh, they were. They are.

Yeah. They're beautiful. Absolutely.

Your book is beautiful. And even, like, the COVID is beautiful.

Do you want to hear about the.

COVID The COVID is beautiful. Cover story. Yeah.

Of course, the subtitle had the word pattern recognition in it in the beginning because I think pattern recognition skills are going to be very important moving into the future. And so I thought, I want a beautiful pattern on the COVID And that's my wallpaper in my room in Austin. It is, yeah. And so I literally called the creators of that wallpaper who own the company, Mind the Gap. They're Romanian. They're located in Transylvania. And I said, can I use that wallpaper for the COVID of my book? And you know what they said? Let's go. And so, yes.

Wow.

I love art. I love art and creativity. We have that in common. I love. I mean, creators are just.

I really love this book.

Creat resistors.

Yeah. And you know what else is proof about how we're on the same bandwidth? We dress alike. We got black and jeans and, I.

Mean, where are your cowboy boots?

But I don't have my cowboy boots.

Do you have cowboy boots?

Like, ten pairs. All right, so let's end up here. So let's have this scenario that, you know, I'm a high school senior or an incoming freshman. I'm listening and watching this. And besides my education and, you know, tush pushes and sumo, I would like to ask Brene, knowing what, you know, seeing what you see, how should I prepare myself to be a leader if I'M just entering college.

I thought about this a lot when I was writing the book because there's a chapter on grounded confidence that kind of drills down into what are the skills and mindsets for grounded confidence. And it took me six weeks to write that one chapter. It was so hairy when I stood back from it. I thought I was gonna think the leaders that I work with every day. But the first thing that came to mind were my kids, who are 20 and 26. And I think what I would tell someone going into college right now is we're unwittingly and some people wittingly building a world where there are going to be thinkers and consumers, creators and consumers, and we want to be on the thinking, creating side. Your attention, your thinking and your focus are commodities that algorithms are desperate to get ahold of. Protect them at all cost. Read. Don't let anyone talk you out of liberal arts classes. Take them. Be mindful of how much time you spend consuming versus creating and getting real tactical.

When you write a book, are you sitting down with Microsoft Word or do you have some like 18 karat nib mobile? A Mont Blanc pen, and you're writing on parchment. How do you write a book like this?

Microsoft Word, but missing Word Perfect. Every day. I was a Word Perfect fan.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I mean, I'm just a word writer.

Huh?

Yeah. Empty. Microsoft Word.

Do you start in an outline format and you just dive in?

Oh, do you want to hear about. It's a massacre. It's a post it note massacre. Like hundreds and hundreds of post it notes. I take over. I commandeer the entire house. There are hundreds and hundreds of post it notes.

And you know what? You post all the notes and then you type them in.

I post them on windows and doors and refrigerators. Because as a grounded theory researcher, I'm trying to understand categories, big fat qualitative categories and the properties that support those categories. And so I'm coding data, then I'm writing it out then. And I'm looking at it. It looks like a crime scene.

Now we can get sponsored by 3M.

I mean, it's not rare for them to send me things because I use so much post it note. I mean, like, yeah, crazy.

I hate to bring this to an end, but I must. Yeah. So thank you, Brene, for it was so fun. Oh, man.

Thank you for all your great work.

Okay, so I want to thank you. Thank you. I want to thank Madison Knysner, my producer, Jeff C. Producer, Shannon Hernandez, sound design, Tesla KN researcher, all my friends here. We have a great team, Renee. And it isn't no shit. Okay. It is an honor to have you on my podcast.

It's an honor to be here. It's fun.

This is remarkable, people.