Leadership Book Club: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown, Part One

Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.

Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.



Kristen: Hello and welcome back to Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen

Mike: and I'm Mike

Kristen: and today we are doing an LBC epIsode. 

And we are also going to have a Love and Leadership first, where this is actually our first book slash episode that we are breaking into two parts because 

the book we're doing today is Dare to Lead, Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts, by the one and only Brene Brown.

And it's funny, this book doesn't seem that long. I think it's only 270 pages of actual content, but there is so much packed into here. I mean, I think it's really a combination of two or three of her books applied to leadership that as soon as we started going through it, we're like, yep, this is a two parter.

So,we will cover the first half or so today and then we'll be back in a couple weeks with part two. 

This is the first leadership book that I read written by a woman, I have obviously a predilection for military history books and military leadership And all those are dudes, Not a lot of women writing those.

Mike: Not a lot of women, there probably are now there's some pretty well known generals.

I mean, I would say the genre of business books in general is very dominated by male authors as well.

So, I mean, reading this was, I would say, pretty life changing just to hear a completely different viewpoint.

And, oh, you know, men and women don't see everything the same. Fascinating. Okay. What can we learn here? So, amazing book. And we're going to get into it. 

Kristen: Yeah.

Just to give some background before we jump into the book itself,

So Brene Brown, I'm guessing there is a very good chance you've heard of her.

She's, probably the most famous, definitely the most famous author I think we've covered so far and probably will cover for a while. But she is a researcher at the University of Houston, Graduate College of Social Work, and her work there has centered on courage, vulnerability, shame, empathy, and leadership.

And she really came to fame with her 2010 TED Talk, which was called The Power of Vulnerability, which is one of the top five most viewed TED Talks of all time.She's the author of six number one New York Times

Mike: Only six. Come on. 10 or it's not impressive.

Kristen: Oh, my God, six New York Times number one bestsellers. It's crazy. It's like an author's dream.

Mike: Sure. Well, she's clearly filling I mean, she's an amazing researcher. Her methodology is, is very solid, but she's filling a real vacuum of need and want in the genre and the industry and society of talking about the things that nobody else wants to talk about and doing it very openly.

And, later on, she says, courage is one of her main values and she's pretty vulnerable with the things she talks about.

Kristen: She is, yeah. Dare to Lead was published in 2018, and it really takes the concepts that were primarily presented in her books, Daring Greatly, which is all about like vulnerability and shame, and Rising Strong, which is about resilience, and applies them to the workplace.

And she also has some concepts from her first book, The Gifts of Imperfection, as well. So it's really like this masterpiece of pulling in these concepts from her work and like all these different things and applying it to leadership, which is why I think there's so much meat in here.

Mike: Yeah, this is the first book of hers that I read and then I went back and read all the other books and I was Like, oh, okay.

This is her masterwork her compendium of decades of research and 

Kristen: Yeah, and it's funny. I had, I mean, I'm a big fan of hers. I had read her earlier books, and, listen to podcasts and so forth, but I had never actually read this book. So it was, 

Mike: oh, you, this is, oh,

Kristen: yeah.

Mike: Yeah. This is my second reading.

Kristen: Yeah, no,

Mike: it's super amazing.

Kristen: So kind of jumping into the introduction of the book, I think it's really worth knowing she talks about the, all the research that informs this book comes from 400, 000 pieces of data.

Like she is a researcher first and foremost. 

Mike: She's a, a hardcore researcher.

Kristen: Yeah, so I think that's, that really speaks to this, she's not just saying things like they're very based in research and evidence, And then

Mike: we welcome our first podcast

Kristen: Beezus is here.

Mike: today. Hi Beezus.

Hi 

Kristen: Yep. It wouldn't be a Love and Leadership episode if it didn't have at least one Beezus appearance.

Mike: There'll be many.

Kristen: I'm sure she'll be back. Anytime we're podcasting, she's like, oh, this is a great time to come up and get attention.

Mike is very distracted.

by her beauty.

So I'll talk.

So she defines a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential. And this book really came out of interviews that indicated that we need braver leaders and more courageous cultures as a whole.So she, she says there's basically these three truths to daring leadership and what she means by that.

The first one is you can't get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability, also known as embrace the suck, which I like.

So start saying that regularly, embrace the suck.

Mike: Yeah. And this is, this is an amazing concept.

Kristen: But yeah, so she, I think it's worth spending a moment defining the word rumble because she uses it a lot in this, like all the way through the book, right?

So she defines it in this context as a discussion, conversation, or meeting defined by the commitment to lean into the vulnerability, to stay curious and generous. to stick with the messy middle of problem identification and solving, to take a break and circle back when necessary, to be fearless in owning our parts, and to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.

Mike: Yeah, when I hear rumble, of course I'm going right to West Side Story. 

Kristen: Ha! I did not even think of 

Mike: Ba da dum! da No? Maybe.

Kristen: But yeah, I will say like Rumble is not my favorite. word for 

Mike: No, not my favorite. I

Kristen: great alternative either. but it's Brene's 

Mike: it is. And I understand like what she's talking about, like what's going on in your stomach during this happening is a bit of a rumble, it's an emotional,churning rumbling 

Kristen: lot of references to like going into the arena,

Mike: That's, that's where she got the, so that quote is from, Teddy Roosevelt and it's worth saying, right? And a lot of people say this nowadays, so it's 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 up 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.

So, yeah. It's so good. 

Kristen: And she says, Our ability to be daring leaders will never be greater than our capacity for vulnerability. 

Mike: Oh So

Kristen: So good. Yeah. So like rumbling in the context of this book is really having a hard, the hard discussion, being willing to get into the difficult stuff, being vulnerable, being curious, listening like that is really like the heart of this.

And it's hard, but the second truth of this is self awareness and self love matter. Because who we are is how we lead, and courage is less about who we are and more about how we behave and show up in difficult situations, which is so true. I think that's one of the things I heard several years ago is courage is not an absence of fear.

Mike: Yeah, it's a behavior in the face of fear.

The book circles back and forth between these topics, but she has a very, poignant anecdote where she's giving, she's given a lot of, talks to the military members, military leaders, and she's talking to some, what seems like very battle hardened soldiers.

And she asked them something like, how many of you have either carried out or seen an act of courage? And of course, everybody raises their hand and then says something like, how many of you have felt vulnerable or something, and no one raises their hand because of no, of course, no one wants to admit vulnerability.

And then she circles back and says, how many of you have seen an act of courage that wasn't also accompanied by a moment or moments of extraordinary vulnerability. So when you put it like that, yeah, in order to have courage, you are, you have to be in moments of vulnerability. So it's a behavior in the face of uncertainty.

Kristen: Yep. And then her third truth is that courage is contagious. And it's, you can truly build a culture out of it. Which I think is absolutely true.

And she talks about if you're truly a daring leader, you need to care for and be connected to the people that you lead. Which I think is a really important point, right?

Mike: This whole book is about connection. Her whole, her raison d'etre is connection. 

Kristen: Yeah, for sure. But I think this is also the way she frames this because I think we've all managed people we didn't necessarily get along with super well, or had a harder time relating to,and things like that.

And she says as a leader, if we do not have the sense of caring towards somebody we lead, you have two choices. You can either develop the caring and the connection within yourself, or find a leader who's a better fit. And I think that's a really meaningful thing. thing to say, if you have somebody on your team who frustrates youand you may or may not have the ability to put them somewhere else or find a better fit for them or whatever, right?

But if you're in a situation where like they're going to be on your team, sometimes if you really get down to the vulnerability to these conversations and you approach it with curiosity, you can completely change your perception of them and you have a responsibility as a leader to care for and connect with That doesn't mean they always need to like you, but you need to at least care about their well being and their best interests. 

Mike: We'll talk about later, like empathy. The first thing is perspective taking so even if you don't get along your team or you're only like, you can try and take their perspective.

It will soften the situation for sure.

Kristen: For sure.

And then she says, Courage is a collection of four skill sets that can be taught, observed, and measured.

That's another important thing with this is that this is all stuff that can be developed. But, these are also the four parts of the book, right? Rumbling with vulnerability, living into our values, braving trust, and learning to rise. And, I love the way that she ends the introduction is this quote, If you want to call these soft skills after you've tried putting them into practice, go for it. I dare you.

Mike: I wrote this down too. And I thought of the strong reaction you had the other week.

And I was like, okay, that I totally agree with that. I that's absolutely true.

Kristen: Yeah, and I can't remember which episode that was off the top of my head, but yeah, we were, I was on a rant about how I hate the phrase soft skills being used because it implies that they're less important. And yeah, I, it's, I love this quote.

Mike: Yeah. It's, it takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of, straight up courage to have really difficult conversations with people and knowing that, they may be uncomfortable, they may be hurt. They may be, they may lose a job. They may not see themselves clearly. And that, that's the connection part, right?

Like it's hard. Those are very hard skills as opposed to, the technical skills. I think we can call them human skills. 

Kristen: Yeah. I like human skills.

Mike: skills. And this is real courageous stuff.

Kristen: Yeah, it is. It's hard. It's not stuff that we are taught. Maybe the generation that has children now is, taught more of this stuff 

Mike: They're being taught like regulation skills andhow to, that's the real warrior stuff right there. Yeah. When I read this part, I was like, this woman's a warrior, like you don't have to wear a patch on your arm and carry a weapon to be a warrior.

This is warrior stuff right there. I wrote down a quote from Dune. So I'll quote the recent Al Gaib, right? Long live the fighters.

Kristen: I love it.So that kind of wraps the introduction of the book. So moving into part one, which is rumbling into vulnerability, which

This is broken into like five sections and is actually over half the book. So I will be surprised if we actually get all the way through this in our first episode, cause there's so much in here. 

Mike: One of us likes to go off on tangents also. 

Kristen: yeah, not only one of us, one of us has a greater tendency.

I love you. 

Mike: I make a lot of connections.

Kristen: There's a lot of And I will try and refrain from bringing, Jocko into this too much. But there's a lot of parallels, you know. But just so fascinating to hear it from, From a different perspective, from a woman's perspective, and there's a reason we need to hear women's voices, Yeah,

Mike: In this space and in our lives, 

I think that's like the, the more episodes we do of this podcast, I think it's clearer and clearer. All the stuff we're talking about is connected, but it's so valuable to get different perspectives on it. And, I think feeds into like our mission as a podcast. Right?And, the thing I got on this reading was courage is actually a teachable skill,

Kristen: And

Mike: you know? And that's our raison d'etre of the podcast is like leadership can be learned.

Well, you can learn these skills. They're teachable and repeatable and practice, practicable, if that's a word. yeah. 

Kristen: So, moving into section one, which is about the myths surrounding vulnerability. And she starts out by, saying if we're brave enough, often enough, we will fall. Daring is not saying I'm willing to risk a failure. It's saying I know I'll eventually fail and I'm still all in.

Mike: hmm.

Kristen: For high achiever personalities, this is hard, but yeah, I mean, this is a lot of this is like the center of my work, right? With aspects of improv, and learning how to fail. So I deeply

Mike: Yeah, I thought of Olympic lifting again to where the first thing you learn is how to ditch the bar on a missed left and you'd practice that for a while in judo. You practice how to fall for I've never learned judo, but probably you should for the first six months. All they'll all they teach you is how to fall.

Kristen: Yeah. Yep.

Mike: Skill. That's a skill.

Kristen: It is. Absolutely. Oh, it's so hard. So hard, but you know what? I'm better at it than I used to be. And 

Mike: Well, that's some, that's some self 

Kristen: I think you are also like that's, you know, we're all works in progress. This stuff is hard for everybody. Nobody,

Mike: She recommended a book that I'm going to pick up. Kristen Neff, who's a self compassion researcher.

I'm like, that sounds interesting. I need some of that for breakfast. And the book is called self compassion. I'm like, oh, okay. I'm going to look at 

Kristen: Seems valuable. So she defines vulnerability as the emotion we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. And so that vulnerability isn't, 

Mike: I knew you'd see that. So my, my amazing, note taking wife, she probably reads like she could probably read this book in an hour if she really just powered through it an hour.

Like she's such a fast reader and she types just as fast. And if she had vulnerability equals the emotion we experienced during times of uncertainty, rusk, and emotional exposure. And we're working off a shared document and I, backspaced and corrected it to risk in front of her eyes.

Kristen: Did it matter? We'd already said 

but I, Yeah, no, I know. Perfectionist. Perfectionist. It really fits

Mike: You never know when we might need these notes again. Like

Kristen: right? Yeah.

Mike: Maybe Brene will want to have us on her. Does she have a show?

Kristen: She does have a

Mike: plan. 

Kristen: Sorry. That have such a, that really cracked me up as

Mike: Yeah. I thought you would perfectionism.

Kristen: and

Mike: I thought you would like that 

Kristen: But it's, so yeah, vulnerability isn't winning or losing. It's having the courage to show up when you can't control the outcome. 

Mike: So the way she's broken these concepts and elucidated them

Sorry. I have such a leadership crush on her now.

Kristen: I know, yeah, me too. I also relate a lot to her, which we'll get into in some of these other parts.

But, but I love that she says, if you're, if you were not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, she's not interested in or open to your feedback. Thank you. So many people will never be brave with their own lives, but will spend all their energy hurling advice and judgment at those who do dare greatly.

Which is so true. So it's if you're thinking about who, whose opinion matters to you because so many people will have feedback and opinions and criticism of you, but so often they're criticizing you because they're not willing to take those same risks themselves. And it's a lot easier to get feedback from that place.

Mike: Yeah. We see that a lot, especially keyboard warriors now. Right? Like, yeah, we see that like in MMA, all these guys are like, you shouldn't have tapped. Oh my God. Like you're sitting on your couch eating Cheetos, how are you commenting on some dude, like in a UFC fight? 

Kristen: Yep.

So then she says it's important to get clear on who's opinions matter to you and seeking people, feedback from those people, like even when it's hard to hear. So I love this concept of a Square Squad, where she says, take a one by one inch square piece of paper and then write down the names of the people whose opinions of you matter, which is it's specifically constrained so 

Mike: one inch by one

Yeah, you can't fit too many people on it. So it really forces you to think about whose opinion do you actually care about? And I love this. the square squad, the

Kristen: the square squad. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: Yeah.

Kristen: I heard Mike call someone one of his directs or said that she was on his square squad the other day. 

Mike: She was like, what is that? I was like, read the book, which she will. Yeah.

Kristen: But, and then she says, Take 10 minutes to reach out to those people and share a little gratitude, which is always a good reminder, right? But like these people should be people who love you, not despite your vulnerability and imperfections, but because of them. 

Mike: I don't think I love myself because of my vulnerabilities and imperfections. I mean, that's the real work, right? Is like, uh,

Kristen: right? It's like having that for yourself also. Well, she talks about like, talk to yourself

Mike: She talks about, like talk to yourself the way you would talk to someone you love and she gives a lot of examples of how she doesn't do this and she makes a mistake on a, two hour long form podcast where she uses some vulgarity and she's from, I do heart this.

She's from Texas, they cuss, they're very direct and she lets, let's fly and then she beats herself up over it. She's you're so stupid. How could you do that? And then, she wouldn't talk to anybody else like that. why am I talking to myself like 

Kristen: Yep. 

Mike: But

Kristen: I use this as a tool in like coaching and facilitation. A lot, actually. Like, the other week when I was facilitating a workshop, one of the ways I have people introduce themselves is with three adjectives that a friend would use to describe you.

And I use it in coaching, too. It's like,what would you say if, a friend came to you with this issue? Because we're so much better at thinking about how we would talk to somebody we love versus about how we talked to ourselves, not usually like somebody that we love.

Mike: Mm mm. Mm mm. You're an idiot. How could you do that? Yeah. What's wrong with you? Um, okay. 

Kristen: Then gets into the six myths of vulnerability and debunking them. And the first one is that vulnerability is a weakness. Which she says that to feel emotions is to be vulnerable, because it's vulnerability is at the core of all emotions. So if you believe that vulnerability is a weakness, then you believe that feeling is a weakness, which like, granted, I have had a lot of problems with feeling my feelings and such.

But, so I do get this, but it's really true. And this is where she was talking about that. That's that story. Where she was talking to a group of soldiers and had them realize that

Mike: realize that well, to bring Jocko back into this, one of the things he said he does with his soldiers and then he did when he was training fighters is he prepares them for what they're going to actually feel.

Kristen: Hey, sir, you're going to feel terribly afraid. You're going to feel, fear in the way that you have never felt before. And he starts to normalize that for them. And he's not only that, here's what's going to happen to your body when you feel that. And here's how to deal with it. So if Jocko can admit that, you feel like we can all yeah,

Mike: up and say, okay, I'm often afraid and she breaks down a lot of our behaviorsand at the root of them are a lot of different fears of fear of loss of connection, fear of loss of job, fear of loss of livelihood, but I'll, and we're about to air in between in the middle of these two episodes, an interview with Megan Romano who is a very accomplished, psychotherapist. Is that the right way to

She's a therapist.

She's 

Kristen: a therapist, she's a licensed marriage and family therapist, 

Mike: But she says, the main fear is like losing people. So all, so many of our behaviors are, subconsciously rooted around trying to keep people in our 

Kristen: Yep. And then the next myth is I don't do. Vulnerability, but she says, our daily lives are defined by experiences of uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. You can do vulnerability or it can do you and pretending you don't do it means letting fear drive our thinking and behavior without our input or even awareness.

Mike: Do love Texas women. They are very direct. They are no nonsense. They don't have time for your hoopla or your

Kristen: your

Mike: nanny or anything. They are very direct and strong.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Kristen: sure.

And then number three is I can go it alone but she talks about the fact that human beings are hardwired for connection, like our neural, hormonal, and genetic makeup support interdependence over independence.

And this was written in 2018, so it was before the pandemic, but I think that going through the pandemic proved that pretty thoroughly in a way we didn't fully understand before that.

Mike: I think the interesting thing here is the hormonal makeup too, like your body rewards you for connection with other people, be it mental, or physical, A lot of, I've seen marriage counselors say do a 20 second hug. Why 20 seconds? Cause the body starts to release, it's probably dopamine, certain chemicals when you are in physical contact with your partner long so we're literally rewarded forAnd one of the stress responses that you can respond to, stress is the tend and befriend response. And so your body will reward you when you're under stress. If you go and seek out,connection and find your tribe, so toit will give you reward, a chemical reward for that, which I think is cool. Neurobiology, right? 

Kristen: Yeah.

Yeah, it Number four is you can engineer the uncertainty and discomfort out of vulnerability, which you cannot.

But she, I thought it was actually interesting. She says the people who have the hardest time grasping this are people like engineers who, where the vulnerability is used like in the context of a systemic vulnerability, which is really like a weakness or a place

Mike: Yeah, that's mechanical.

Kristen: Yeah, so a lot of times they have a really hard time separating systemic vulnerability from emotional

Mike: I thought her antidote was cool. She was giving a presentation to a group of engineers, and one of the engineers said something like that, I don't do vulnerability or I don't understand that. My whole job is like engineering that out of systems. And she said, have you had, And I'm probably not quoting it correctly, but she's something where he, she's have you had any difficult conversations with colleagues?

And he said, yeah, I have a direct report. Who's just not getting it. And I've, he's not getting it. And I've had to coach and counsel him. And I think I might have let him go or something. And she goes, how does that feel? And he's okay, I'm going to sit down now.So like the, that's the parts of our job that involve other humans, not just our technical work.

We don't talk about that. That's just like a whole current of our existence that we don't

feel comfortable discussing. 

Kristen: And then the last two of the myths I think are both really interesting. The fifth is that trust comes before vulnerability. So it's like you can only open up and be vulnerable with somebody when you trust them. And. she tells a story about she was doing an exercise with post it notes with groups where they complete the sentence, I grew up believing that vulnerability is. And then they, they share at the same time what was on their post it note. And one person answered, the first step to betrayal. 

Mike: Jeez, that's aggressive. Ooh,

Kristen: Yeah, but she said the, we need trust to be vulnerable and we need to be vulnerable in order to build trust.

So it's actually really this chicken and the egg thing where they both help build each other. And trust is actually like the stacking and layering of these small moments and reciprocal vulnerability over time. So trust and vulnerability grow together, but if you betray one of them, you destroy both.

Mike: So what did, so let's do this now. What did you grow up believing vulnerability 

Kristen: Oof,

Mike: I grew up believing vulnerability is weakness.

Kristen: Mm hmm. I think, yeah, I think I did as well. 

I think the generation of our parents, like our parents are around the same age, right? Like 

Mike: Yeah, they're boomers.

Kristen: Yeah. I don't, I just don't, there was not a lot of understandingof this in that generation. I think it was generally, yeah. Vulnerability is weakness is the messaging that they passed down.

Mike: Down. In my family, feelings other than anger were not really allowed or 

Kristen: Yeah, in my family, it was more like, the negative feelings were more avoided versus but there's a lot of like love and positivity. So I think it can show up in different ways, but this was not something that our parents were educated on.

Mike: And, and. How can we blame them for that?

Kristen: We have the internet. We have tens of thousands of leadership books, parenting books. Our parents had one book by Dr. Spock. that was it. they couldn't, the resources also weren't there. Oh, absolutely.

Mike: It's a generational thing, not an individual thing. But for sure, I grew up believing don't show your feelings. Any vulnerability is weakness. If you show that somebody's going to exploit it. The first step to betrayal.

Kristen: Yeah, for

Mike: Well, you're going to have a hard time connecting with anyone for the rest of your life. If you grew up like Sure.

Kristen: And then the sixth myth is that vulnerability is disclosure, where she says like vulnerability is not the same thing as oversharing.

And I think our episode last week with Melissa Jurkoic gets into some really great examples of this with like boundaried vulnerability.

Mike: vulnerability.

Kristen: So definitely listen to that if you have not heard that interview yet. But Brene gives some examples of something a leader might say during times of uncertainty. So things like being honest about the struggle, naming some of the unsaid emotions in the room, creating a safe container by asking the team to write down what they need to feel open and safe in the conversation.

So you're finding ways to create that vulnerability. You're acknowledging the feelings that exist and even acknowledging like some of your own feelings without dumping on other people. So like remembering it like vulnerability is not the same as oversharing I think is a 

Mike: You have to remember your position to,

Kristen: Yes.

Mike: You can tell your team, Hey, I'm actually having a real hard week at home. I might not be my best and I apologize for but telling them why, or like dumping your, your emotions and your stress from your home life to someone that especially reports to you,is generally not going to work because they're going to perceive, you have to, that's the perspective taking part.

How would you feel if your boss just came in and started telling you all his life's problems and my wife is leaving, and my dog, no, not good. Not good.

Kristen: Yeah. And like, even when the thing you're talking about is work related. There's a difference between boundaried vulnerability and coming in and, just making statements that are actually seeking sympathy from the people in your team. She gave an example of, like, I'm really falling apart, too. I'm not the enemy here. Like, that is, not what you want to say, right? Cause there's a certain degree of self management as a leader, but you can be honest, you can say like, this conversation is incredibly difficult for me, but your feelings are not the focus I think ultimately is.

It's one of the differences.She also notes fake vulnerability, which is where a leader says things like they can ask questions, but then they don't actually take the time and go through the work to create the psychological safety or really allow anybody to speak up at all. So that's the classic, like, Oh yeah, let's have psychological safety, but like people don't actually feel safe. 

And that actually. It's not just ineffective, but it actually breeds distrust.

And we've talked about boundaries, a good deal on our podcast, but basically she defines it very simply.

Mike: Yeah. I thought the way she described it was just so clear. You can have a discussion with someone and say, Hey, I know we're having a hard discussion being angry. That's okay. Yelling not okay. And it's just so like, there's some boundaries. They're cut and dried, 

Kristen: It's making clear what's okay, what's not okay, and why,

Mike: And why. And why.

Kristen: It's all like very simple.Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability, 

Mike: Fair. 

Kristen: She also kind of warns of these things that can exist beneath the surface for us and like a lot of this really just comes back to when we talk about self awareness and how you can build that.

But the stealth intention is like a self protection need that lurks beneath the surface and it often drives behavior that's actually outside of our core values because it's trying to protect us. And then a stealth expectation is a desire expectation that exists outside of our awareness. These are like below the surface, right?

So if you take the iceberg model, this is the stuff that's like way below the water level that you don't necessarily see on the outside. But this is this desire expectation that typically includes a dangerous combination of fear and magical thinking. 

The guide that she, she gives, don't share without understanding your role. Who are you talking

Mike: Who are you talking

Kristen: role in context to them? recognizing what your professional boundaries are and getting clear on what your intentions and expectations are, especially if there's any of those stealth ones that can be lurking below the surface. So asking yourself, why am I telling this person this? Am I trying to make myself feel better? 

Or is this actually about the other person? And I think that's a, great guideline.



Mike: All right, so then moving into section two, the Call to Courage, which like, oh my god, I related so hard to Brene in this chapter in general, but she gives this kind of opening story where, first she gets confronted by her team and then she also shares getting confronted by her husband as well for her, you know, her poor ability to estimate time, um, and how long things will take to complete, which my ADHD time blindness is real, so

is 

Kristen: Mike is just sitting over there, like, making a lot of sounds, yes, and then she like goes home to like do some research on project managementas a way to help improve,her project timelines. And she like decides she's going to get a Six Sigma black belt, which the next day she realized this is not a good idea, but that is very much something I would do.But she ends up tying a lot of that back to feeling fear, scarcity, and anxiety.

Mike: She did some, some hard self introspection. Her team confronted her and they're like, Brene, we need to rumble with you. Okay. That's a little dorky, but you know,

Kristen: I mean,

Mike: fine. Who am I six best New York times. Okay, so fine. and they're like, You're driving us crazy and you're, you're creating a lot of anxiety and I love the story where she, they're about to have like a dinner party or it's like a pub crawl and she wants her husband to go to Home Depot and get flowers for the lawn.

And she's you're going to paint and we have two hours. And his face is like melting off like, You know, I, I identify with this a little bit too.

I don't know why, but yes, some people do not perceive time the same as the rest of us 

Kristen: Uh huh. Uh huh. Hey, I know it about myself

Mike: about myself now. Yeah, it's fair. I'm still salty that you blamed me for missing the flight to your bachelorette party. I didn't

Kristen: I didn't exactly blame you. 

Mike: Chronically early. Like, I'm, I'm, you know, as a, and you were a musician too. Like, so I don't know how, and I know you were successful. Like, you can't be late.

Like, you're not,

Kristen: And I wouldn't be for music stuff, but it requires so much from me to plan enough time, I would just have to get there like insanely

Mike: Well, now you have an app on your computer that, like, when you have an appointment, it, completely, like, takes over your computer.

Yeah. So that you can't keep snoozing the alarm.

Kristen: It's been like the best thing. In the world. The app, if there's any other ADHDers here that has, have the problem of getting into hyper focus and, forgetting about your calls there, this app, I think it's called In Your Face, 

Mike: That's genius.

Kristen: A great name. Yeah. Literally takes over your whole screen. So I cannot miss my meetings.Anyway though,

Mike: Anywho.

Kristen: So a lot of what she says in this chapter is around clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. So like being clear with people in general, is super important. And I really liked this Joseph Campbell quote she talks about where the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. So like when you're afraid to get into something, it probably means you need to get into it. Yeah. She

Mike: uses the Star Wars example from Empire Strikes Back and I actually remember, I still don't feel they did that scene very well in terms of in displaying the meaning of what they want, wanted to but it's 

Kristen: It is great.

And she says that everybody, when she's talking about like team dynamics, like it's a really important for everybody to be take the roles of both being an optimist, which is doing the dreaming and a realist, which is reality checking the dreams with facts.I definitely have a lot of strong opinions about, how both of these activities are very important, and that there are different types of thinking and they have to be separated. But

Mike: She quotes from Good to Great, who uses the Stockdale paradox, Admiral Stockdale was, captured in the early years of Vietnam and He was

Held as a prisoner of war for eight years taught,tortured many times but he took it as his mission to keep everybody's spirits up and try and get as many people home as possible and After he got home, eight years is a long time to be in a POW probably the jungles of Vietnam I don't think I'd make that. But they asked him like, who, who didn't make it?

And he said, the optimists, the people that were like, Oh, we're going to be home by Christmas. And then Christmas would come and go and and it would come and go again. And they died of broken hearts, but they just gave up. so he said, you had to have faith in the ultimate success of your goal.

And like, we're absolutely gonna make it, but not, fail to confront the, reality of the situation in which you found yourself. So Stockdale paradox I think is used in business a lot and that's,it's pretty pertinent. 

Kristen: Yeah. 

Mike: The economy can be down, that may be something you have to confront, and you can't ignore that. You can't ignore the reality of the conflict or battle that you find yourself in. But you have to believe in your ultimate victory. 

Kristen: And then the rest of this section is really getting into, the people on your team have fears and feelings right, because we're all human. How do you as a leader deal with that? And, she says 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.

Which means if you're not holding space for those feelings and fears up front, it's going to come out in a lot of behaviors that are not desirable and it's going to be take a lot of your time to manage those behaviors.

Mike: I feel that real hard. People are not machines. You as a leader, you need people to perform complex duties and help you achieve a mission, a goal.

But if you don't recognize them as thinking, feeling complex beings and treat them accordingly, you are going to manage their unproductive behaviors. So, Choose your hard, I guess.

Kristen: Yeah.And she also notes, I think, another important thing to say, allowing space to talk about feelings does not mean that you as a leader are responsible for the emotions of others. And you can still set boundaries.

Mike: Yeah. That's around that. She talks about that in the empathy section later. Identifying with the emotion is 

Kristen: Yeah. It doesn't mean you're, you are taking ownership of it.

Mike: Yeah. or letting it necessarily. I really, I, I had a kind of a little epiphany when she described empathy versus sympathy.

Sympathy, you have in music, you have sympathetic vibration. So if you play something loud enough next to a timpani, it will start to vibrate and it's vibrating in its own pitch and it's creating, a wave action between two things. That's not the same as empathy, which is I identify with the pitch that you are.singing at this moment.

Kristen: Yeah. Well, sympathy is like a disconnection, I, it's, I forget where she says this, but it's, I feel sorry for you I 

Mike: sorry with you. Yeah. I 

Kristen: Yeah.So I think that's, it's funny that we refer to like, there's a genre of sympathy cards and sympathy flowers when somebody dies.

But it's, there is 

Mike: I'm sure there's a lot of doctoral theses is on the difference between these two and so there should be.

Kristen: Yeah, absolutely.

Mike: Just under half of the leaders we interviewed initially talked about courage as a personality trait and not as a skill. It is in fact a skill that can be taught is a painful process. 

Courage is something, I've seen in jujitsu. I've seen many unathletic, nerdy uber nerds, go from, scared and,hesitant to absolute, absolutely just beasts on the mat. And if you saw them outside, you would think this is the most like hipster, nerdy guy possible. He's got a mustache.

But on the mats, he's absolutely fearless and you develop that confidence through repetition and through time, through, as Renee says, rising so many times, getting, losing so many times and gaining skill and confidence over the years. There's no substitute for that, but it is absolutely a learned skill.

Kristen: Yeah, 

Mike: Section three, the armory.

Kristen: /; , Yeah. So section three is, has a lot of meaty stuff in it, So she starts off talking about what the meaning of wholeheartedness is, which is engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness.

So integrating our thinking, feelings, and behaviors and knowing no matter what that I am enough. And so many organizational cultures and leaders think that if we sever the heart, like the vulnerability and emotions, we'll be more productive, efficient, and easier to manage. But when you imprison the heart, she says, you also kill courage.

Mike: Yeah, she talks about integrity. The root of the word integral is integralis, which is making up a whole an older Latin integer.

As my fellow math nerds may know, untouched and entire. In the modern usage, we say integrity as kind of like honesty, but it's a lot more than that. It's an integration of all the parts of you. 



Kristen: She talks about, like, when we get disembodied from our emotions to the point that we don't recognize what physical feelings are connected to which emotional feelings we feel we don't gain control, we lose it. Which is, I think, also a theme in next week's episode. But the body is really where, our feelings live, right? And if you don't understand, which I certainly didn't before I started doing this kind of work, is what feelings are you feeling in your body when you feel a certain way? And if you're not connected to that, then you're not gonna have control or self regulation. 

Mike: Yeah. 

There's a, um, much more somatic work being done now. the, I haven't read the book, but the book, The Body Keeps the Score or something like that.

It's really true. if you don't address the feelings that you have, they will stay in your body. They will live there. Yeah. And that's not, touchy feely. That's not woo. That's not,

Beezus. Here's somebody that expresses her emotions as they come up.

Kristen: Oh my god. Beezus not mess with the podcasting equipment? She's very active 

Mike: Okay.

So shame is the feeling that washes over us and makes us feel so flawed that we question whether we're worthy of love, belonging, and connection.

And the resultant is put it on your armor.

Kristen: Yeah, and shame. She gets more into shame in the next section after this. It's so powerful But yeah, that is one of the reasons why we reach for our armor, right? And then I love that she gives these 16 examples of what does it look like to be an armored leader versus what does it look like to be a daring leader. So, kind of like going the armored leadership, driving perfectionism, and fostering fear of failure, versus modeling and encouraging healthy striving, empathy, and self compassion. So like that, and I think it's actually really interesting, likeshe defines perfectionism as a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels the thought that if I look perfect, if I do everything perfectly, I can minimize my painful feelings of blame, judgment, and shame.

Mike: No comment.

Kristen: We relate to 

Mike: Yeah, it's really deep. Like I was a perfectionist as a musician and I was, if I made a mistake, even in practice, I was so hard on myself and I would get so frustrated.

Kristen: Oh my God.

Mike: And I've fought that the whole time in the beginning in jujitsu. It's like, why am I not good at this? You just started, sir.

And it takes years to get good. I don't care. I should be. No, that's not, that's not actually how these things work.So I think we're hopefully teaching our children nowadays a healthier, approach to achievement progress. 

Kristen: Yep. And the daring leadership counterpoint of this is healthy striving.

And the difference between that and perfectionism m is it's self focused. So you're looking, you're comparing with yourself, right? You're like, how can I improve? Versus perfectionism is focused on other people. And it's more like, what will other people think. And then the next one is working from scarcity and squandering opportunities for joy and recognition versus practicing gratitude and celebrating milestones victories, Which also I really felt.

But she said there's two reasons why leaders often don't really celebrate enough, and don't give enough like recognition. Like one is like this, when's the other shoe going to drop feeling where you're like, if we celebrate this, then something's going to go wrong. We're like inviting something to go wrong, which is a very real fear.

And then the other one is Oh, if we celebrate, we don't want our employees to get too excited because there's so much work still to 

Mike: to do. Yeah. I read a book by Tim Grover. He was Michael Jordan's trainer and he classified three different levels of,achievers.

And at Jordan's level,you maybe celebrate, okay, I won a title. Okay. You're happy for about 15 minutes. And then you're on to the next thing. And while that may be,I don't know, be very happy, but generally that level of person is not happy unless they're actively winning and then immediately going back to well, I got to do it again.

And I think that can be hard. What happens when the thing that you were achieving goes away? Can you guess you have to find something else, you know? Being able to be happy with, long term progressive growth as a person rather than achieving external things is something we should be talking about and don't really talk about.

Kristen: Yeah, totally.

Mike: And I did the same thing, I would win some, I would win. And then I'm like, okay, back to the practice room. I would have an amazing concert. And then, 10 30 at night, I would go home and start practicing. I was like, okay, maybe I can, you know, we, we launched a podcast we didn't celebrate. We just

Kristen: Oh my God. Yeah.

Mike: We are still, we've still barely done anything. It's what are we doing next? 

Kristen: right.

Yeah, no, this is something where we actively try to have a practice of ending every day by talking about our wins.

Mike: Yes. We have

Kristen: Gratitude and our intentions for the next day. We try to hold each other accountable for it. We are far from perfect at it, but

Mike: We're doing better.

Kristen: But we're doing better.

Mike: upwards. Yeah,

Kristen: And that's recognizing that is not our natural tendency, but it's

Mike: No, it's not.

Kristen: Yes. Yeah. And then the next one is numbing versus setting boundaries and finding real comfort. And this is really the difference between numbing is really like you're avoiding the feelings and you're just gonna take the edge off with whatever provides the quickest relief whether that's substances or food or like whatever it is, right?

Mike: Anything can be anything. 

Kristen: Versus finding real comfort, like the cure for that is developing tools and practices that allow you to lean into the discomfort, like actually feel your feelings and then renew your spirit. So what is bringing actual comfort? Which is very individual, but maybe it's like journaling out your feelings or just doing some breathing exercises or going to a yoga class, taking a walk, like whatever it is, finding out the difference between numbing behaviors and behaviors that are actually going to help your feelings and then process them and move on. Which, oh my gosh, is that a, an ongoing thing to work on?The next one is propagating the false dichotomy of victim or viking crush or be crushed, which is like this win lose zero sum power dynamic, and instead practicing integration with a strong back, soft front, wild heart.

With strong back being grounded confidence and boundaries, soft front staying vulnerable and curious, and wild heart, living out these paradoxes and not giving in to the either or BS that reduces us she says.

Mike: Yeah,I'll bring back like extreme ownership and Jocko it's all being comfortable with the dichotomies of

Kristen: Mm hmm.

Mike: and being comfortable in that chaotic environment somewhere in between them and being able to exist or as Brene would say, rumble in that space.

That's hard. I don't know if we're wired to look for binaries. Good, bad, us, them, right, wrong. But getting to the truth, we may be.

Kristen: I think it's a, I think it's a cognitive bias actually. 

Mike: don't remember the name of But being okay with the ambiguity and the chaos, has been a struggle for me, for sure.

I like things in order. I like things chronological order, color order, size order. And the life is not like that at all.

Kristen: And the next one is being a knower and being right versus being a learner and getting it right. Which, yeah, I think this kind of goes back to like our, when we talked about imposter syndrome, right? Like the five types of imposters. One of them was like that knowledge one where you feel like you have to know everything, right? She says for many people. That's, that comes from shame and trauma, right?

So recognizing that is important. But for learning the, like the three strategies she gives, it's like name the issue that's at hand, make learning and curiosity skills a priority and acknowledge and reward great questions that are like that. I don't know, but I want to find out instead of being like, Oh my God, I don't know this, what's wrong with me. Which I feel.

Mm hmm. And then hiding behind cynicism versus modeling clarity, kindness, and hope. And this is an interesting one because she,I think we both have fairly sarcastic senses of humor. 

Mike: I also wrote this down. The root of the word is sarcasian, which means to tear flesh like dogs. Yeah, so that is sarcasm, right?

It's like tearing the, I definitely, I've worked to make myself less sarcastic because I also, it's fun to be funny once in a while. But it's also, I recognize that as like a defense mechanism to places that I feel vulnerable, unworthy, uncertain, not sure if I'm up to the task or don't know how to deal with a situation.

Cynicism, I don't know. I'm, I still identify as a curmudgeonly New Yorker, but, those aren't super healthy leadership traits to model. it's good to keep people's sense of humor. But not to deflect problems with these, Sarcasian, yeah, that's very dramatic.

Kristen: Well, yeah. And she says that, yeah, cynicism and sarcasm are often masking anger, 

Mike: I said that so I can have six New York time best sellers. Cool. Just as easy, Right? I guess that's sarcastic or cynical. See my feelings of inadequacy.

Kristen: Whereas like the antidote to sarcasm and cynicism is stay clear and kind, practice the courage to say what you mean and mean what you say, and cultivate hope when the cynicism is coming from a place of despair. I mean easier said than done, but.

Mike: Oh, it's so hard. But I think the naming it is super powerful. Yeah. She talks about that like in meetings too. Like it seems very tense in here. Okay. If you say that out loud as a leader, people will relax just a little bit because they'll notice it's not hidden anymore.

At least bring it into the sunlight. 

Kristen: Yeah. And then using criticism as self protection versus making contributions and taking risk. And I think a lot of this is kind of like yes and from improv, right?

Where it's important for everybody to make a contribution. She talks about like criticism is often from fear and unworthiness. And there's these two different, the nostalgia criticism is like the knee jerk, that's just how we do it here reaction. And then there's also the invisible army, where instead of saying how we feel about something, it's we don't want to change course.

So you're like pretending like you're representing a group instead of saying this is how I feel.

Mike: royal

Kristen: The royal we. Yeah. I was like, Oh God, I've been in a lot of meetings where that's been used for sure. But her company has a rule where you aren't allowed to criticize without offering a point of view in return.

think

Mike: That's awesome.

Kristen: Really good. Yeah. It's like that because the people who are just naysayers who just want to tear everything down but don't actually have any solutions is not a productive form of communication. And then using "power over" versus using "power with," "power to," and "power within." So, and she says like hierarchy works except for when people in leadership positions hold their power over others, which is when their decisions benefit the minority, the people at the top and oppress the majority.

So common, but the other side of that is power with is finding common ground among different interests so that we build collective strength. Power to is giving everybody on your team agency, empowering them, and acknowledging their unique potential. And power within is the ability to recognize differences and respect others, which is really grounded in self worth and self knowledge.

Mike: Such a huge topic, right? And I, MBS, Michael Bungay Stanier. He says, And I identify with this too as being a white man. We got dealt a lot of cards, so his approach and mine that I try and give power away whenever possible. Yeah. But your perspective and your experience may be different.

And Brene says the same thing too, you know, being part of majority culture right in America, white, straight, Christian.She had to overcome some gender biases, of course. But she still got dealt a better hand than a lot of people as far as being part of that majority.

As a leader, you have to be super conscious of how you're using your power, which is often tacit that you don't realize that other people perceive how they perceive you, and you're always on stage and you know what may seem like a passing moment to you may live in somebody on your team it may live in their brain all day or all week.

So you have to be super conscious of how you're wielding this power

Kristen: Absolutely. And I think that, that could just be a whole, like, coaching session, right, how are you wielding power over people versus how can you more consciously use power with power to empower within.

It's so good.Hustling for your worth versus knowing your value. Oh my God. Some of these I'm like, did you write this for me?

Mike: Yeah.

Kristen: But

Mike: Stop talking about me Brene. Thanks. 

Kristen: About like, as a leader, you should not. be encouraging your people to just hustle for the sake of hustling because people hustle when they don't understand their value for the organization and rather getting clear on the leader's value and the team member's values will create lanes and we stop hustling for worthiness and we start leaning into our gifts.

Mike: Yeah. Knowing your value, that's takes a long time.

Kristen: It does, yeah. 

Yeah, and then the next one is leading for compliance and control versus cultivating commitment and shared purpose. And this is like true leadership, right? Versus the former is like really about fear and power.

So you're trying to get people to like get the task exactly right instead of actually using creative problem solving. And people tend to hold onto their power and only push responsibility down. So then people are asked to do things that they don't actually have the authority to accomplish, and then they ultimately fail. Seen that before. 

Mike: And I, this is the part I played for my team. And it's I love the example that she uses a paint done. What does done look like? And she goes through a really interesting example where she's she has some expectations for the team that aren't verbalized, that they don't understand, and they're doing what she asked them to do, but she gets very frustrated.

And, how are they supposed to know what you're, what was deep, and I had a moment of, Revelation that I expect people or I not expect, but I think they can read my mind.

Kristen: Yeah.

Mike: And I think they can see from my perspective and my experiences. I'm like, I can see it. Why can't you? okay.

You're not in my brain. So.

Kristen: wife, I can agree.

Mike: So the paint done thing, and when she does this, she, explains the finished vision, not just in terms of a task completion list, but what her overarching vision is for the end of the situation. And she, as soon as she does that, her team is not only able to help her better, but also to look for the holes in her thinking, or the things that aren't going to work based on knowledge that they have that maybe she didn't. So, you know, I'm actually learning to paint right now so I love the paint done. So we've adopted that, we've adopted that nomenclature. I think it's awesome because you get people that see their role in the overall mission and their value to the mission rather than just getting a, a checklist done, which is what she means by compliance.

She doesn't mean, regulatory compliance. She means I'm just doing this because you told me to do it. I don't understand the big picture at all.

Kristen: Yeah.

Mike: And going back to Jocko, knowing the why, but she actually explains the process in very vivid detail.

Kristen: Yeah, for sure.And then weaponizing fear and uncertainty versus acknowledging, naming, and normalizing collective fear and uncertainty, which is so interesting, right?

Because I think there's so History, like, really shows, the, all these examples of keeping people afraid and giving them a common enemy, but that is not actually an effective, human led approach to leadership, versus And I love this quote. Leadership has a responsibility to acknowledge the tumult but not fan it, to share information and not inflate it or fake it without feeling divisiveness or benefiting from it.

That is like acknowledging the underlying fears and uncertainties, acknowledging the elephant in the room, right? But you're not adding to it. You're like giving space for it without like fanning the flame. I love that image.

Mike: Yeah. Megan talks about this and we're doing an episode on, wellness in the workplace, especially in this time of uncertainty in the political landscape and the elections coming up, the weaponization of fear is, again, like some of the fundamentals of the art of war, ancient Chinese texts, there's like the five fears and how to use them in warfare, and there's an undercurrent of fear in our society.

We don't talk about it and it leaves us open to psychological manipulation. 

Kristen: Let me name that very clearly. Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. And then this next one I think kind of goes hand in hand with companies that t really like value hustling and see that as a good thing, but this, rewarding exhaustion as a status symbol and attaching productivity to self worth versus modeling and supporting rest, play and recovery. Which, oh my god, I think thisthe companies attaching productivity to self worth, for one thing, many people, us included, naturally tend to think that our worthiness is tied to our productivity, right?

And when that is true, doing anything that doesn't add to the bottom line is gonna provoke stress and anxiety. But like, I also, like, I worked for a company where I had I started, I was starting a new job, I had told them about a vacation that was already booked before I started, and then, two months after I started, we were coming up on the vacation, and I was planning for it, and they're like, you're not really going to go on that vacation, are you?

Like, could you, like, just cancel that? And I, good for me, I said no. But I went on my vacation because I thought that was ridiculous. But I'm like, this whole idea of, Oh no, we need you here. You need to keep working. Oh my God. It's so unhealthy, right? It's like such just like unproductive, like hustle culture.

Mike: Yeah, I, I, looks, looks around uncomfortably.

I'm.

Kristen: Yeah, it's like modeling and supporting rest, play, and recovery, which is so hard. I think we could almost do an episode just

Mike: You could do like a series 

Kristen: just on this,

Mike: do a whole podcast on it.

Kristen: Yeah,

but I love, she does give a shout out for play here, which as an improviser I always appreciate. That play shapes our brain, fosters empathy, helps us navigate complex social is at the core of creativity and innovation.

So, Okay.So last few of these, I know there's a lot of these, but I, I did want to go through them because I feel

Mike: they're so good when she's there's only 16 of them.

I'm like, ah, okay. The brain actually can't remember. It doesn't keep that many

Kristen: It's so many,

Mike: too many to keep in working memory. But, um,

Kristen: But I love that it's actually breaking down to like specific behaviors. Yeah,

Mike: Naming them and naming the armored behavior and the open behavior, if you will, the unarmored behavior of daring leaders.

Yeah. Well, like all of these on the armored leadership. I'm like, I've worked for this company. They're very relatable.

Kristen: So tolerating discrimination, echo chambers in a fitting in culture versus cultivating a culture of belonging,inclusivity and diversity.

She says only when diverse perspectives are included, respected, and valued can we start to get a full picture of the world. And this requires the courage to acknowledge our own privilege and staying open to learning about our biases and blind spots. 

Mike: Yeah, I used to have a real bias against the word bias because it implies. I guess I'm from the 80s, like almost like a racism, right? And I'm not biased, but in fact, bias is literally a slant in definition. So it's the way of seeing something that's honestly just slanted from your own perspective.

Kristen: Well, it's actually like it's shortcuts that your brain.

Mike: brain. Yeah, we use

Kristen: They're heuristics or mental shortcuts that your brain uses to help make the tens of thousands of decisions that it has to make every day.

When we're not operating at our like conscious

Mike: So that's like system one and

Kristen: Yes, that's exactly what I'm pulling it from. Yeah, which we've talked about before.

Beezus, no. Bezos does not want to let us finish getting through the 16 behaviors.

So the diverse, the general conversation about diversity and inclusion and belonging and all of that. I think that is very much deserves its own episode or series. so I'm not, I don't want to get too much into that here, but I think she's, this is absolutely true.

There's a really good take on it in Melissa Jurkoic's interview last week as well, about diversity in thinking specifically and why it's so important. But we will absolutely get more into I think there's a lot of what she says is that if you, so many people think that it's better to not talk about it,and actually being able to not talk about things, it's from a place of privilege.

You only have the power to not talk about it if you are coming from a power, from a place of privilege. So I'm very, that's something that I've been very aware of recently.

Mike: That is, that's, yeah, if you're African American or you're,not part, anything that's not part of a majority culture, it's probably not in your, ability to not face these issues because they're being, they're forced upon you and as someone from the majority culture, I can just be like, eh.

I don't want to deal with that. Yeah. I don't want to discuss that. That's, that makes me uncomfortable. Well, everybody else has to deal with it. So saying no to dealing with it, that's the literal definition of privilege. 

Kristen: She gets into this a little more towards the end of the book, but yeah, it's like part of all of this right is that it's not staying silent.

Like you need to listen and try to understand and try to facilitate discussion and also know that like you're going to make 

Mike: You're gonna make a lot of mistakes. Yeah, it's gonna be messy

Kristen: But you can't just not say anything at all or you're just acting on your privilege basically.

Mike: That is not courageous leadership

Kristen: So last few of these collecting gold stars versus giving gold stars.

This is another one, right? Because we get promoted into leadership, based on our own, what we've done to, by ourselves, right? As individual contributors. But once you're in a leadership role, it's, you need to be thinking about how you're rewarding others instead of just seeking to be rewarded on your own, which is very difficult on the ego.

Mike: Well, you're, It can be, yeah, this is, you wrote down, right? Like what got us promoted in the first place gets can get in the way of good leadership because, again, you have to see whererank on the privilege scale to it's probably different for me than it is for somebody else.

But, we, crave that recognition. We crave that acceptance and that safety. If my boss sees that I'm doing well, I do, Oh my God, I do this. My boss sees that I'm doing well. I just want to, I don't

Kristen: I love recognition,

Mike: I don't love the recognition. I'm looking for the psychological safety of if I don't, do really well, I could potentially lose my livelihood and I'm, I catastrophize.

So I'm going to be, unemployed and I can't feed myself. And I go pretty quick to that. So you can, I don't know, that's a work in progress. Yeah.

Kristen: And then zigzagging and avoiding versus talking straight and taking action. So zigzagging, she says, is the energy we spend trying to dodge the bullets of vulnerability, whether it's conflict, discomfort, confrontation, or potential for shame, hurt, or criticism.

So I just get this visual of dancing around the real issue and because you're trying to not have that moment of vulnerability and discomfort versis actually bringing clarity to what you're trying to avoid and then getting clear about what needs to actually be done to step into it.

And she does

Mike: know.

Yeah. This is squirming.

this God is squirming

Kristen: And she's just the running around, like the zig zagging is a huge energy

Mike: Sure. It is.

Kristen: So it could actually,we talk about this in our episode with Megan next week, but the feeling of pain and discomfort is so much worse than usually than just actually sitting and feeling it. And this is the same thing, right? Like the, you can sense, it takes so much energy to avoid something, to dance around it and run around it and zigzag it than to actually face it head on. so that's a good thing to remember for my logic brain.

And then the last one of these 16 is leading from hurt versus leading from heart. She's like, many people lead from a place of hurt and smallness, and they use their position of power to try to fill that self worth gap. But it doesn't work because that's not what they really need. And this quote, that you can never get enough of what you don't need. So, seeking external validation and the power that comes with leadership to help improve your self worth is not going to work, versus actually investing the time in our own fears, feelings, and history so that we're minimizing our own unproductive behaviors and we can actually lead from the heart.I love these, took us awhile to go through all these but honestly I think they're so valuable, and yeah I think lastly if shame and blame is our management style or a pervasive cultural norm we can't ask people to be vulnerable and brave. 

Mike: I just want to say things about shame and blame and shaming others and blaming others is definitely coming from a place of It's a fear of, our own positions, vulnerability, As a leader, it can be hard to rally everyone to accomplish a mission.

And when that doesn't happen, you're going to be the one that has to answer for it. Because you as the captain of the boat are responsible for everything that happens, even though you're not carrying it out. You're And, you have one of two choices in that moment, you can coach and teach and review and go over things, or you can get mad or upset and that, and blame people and shame them for their failures or shortcomings.

And that's a very selfish reaction. It's a very self centered reaction.

Kristen: Yep. So, so yeah, I think that's a good stopping point. The next section, she actually gets way more into shame. 

We will finish out this book, this LBC in two weeks, actually, because as we mentioned, next week we are airing a special episode on how leaders can promote mental health and wellness during the high stress times like this upcoming election.

So in two weeks we will air part two and we will see you guys next time. Thank you guys so much for listening. 

Mike: Thanks for listening everyone. The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

Kristen: You can also find more information on our website, loveandleadershippod.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again next week.