Dare to Lead

Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation-Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy and is the author of four #1 New York Times bestsellers: Braving the Wilderness, Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts of Imperfection. Her TED talk-"The Power of Vulnerability"-is one of the top five most-viewed TED talks in the world with more than thirty-five million views. Brown lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Steve, and their children, Ellen and Charlie.

section one The Moment and the Myths the moment the universe put the Roosevelt quote in front of me, three lessons came into sharp focus. The first one is what I call "the physics of vulnerability." It's pretty simple: If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall. Daring is not saying "I'm willing to risk failure." Daring is saying "I know I will eventually fail, and I'm still all in." I've never met a brave person who hasn't known disappointment, failure, even heartbreak. Second, the Roosevelt quote captures everything I've learned about vulnerability. The definition of vulnerability as the emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure first emerged in my work two decades ago, and has been validated by every study I've done since, including this research on leadership. Vulnerability is not winning or losing. It's having the courage to show up when you can't control the outcome. We've asked thousands of people to describe vulnerability to us over the years, and these are a few of the answers that directly pierce the emotion: the first date after my divorce, talking about race with my team, trying to get pregnant after my second miscarriage, starting my own business, watching my child leave for college, apologizing to a colleague about how I spoke to him in a meeting, sending my son to orchestra practice knowing how badly he wants to make first chair and knowing there's a really good chance he will not make the orchestra at all, waiting for the doctor to call back, giving feedback, getting feedback, getting fired, firing someone. Across all of our data there's not a shred of empirical evidence that vulnerability is weakness. Are vulnerable experiences easy? No. Can they make us feel anxious and uncertain? Yes. Do they make us want to self-protect? Always. Does showing up for these experiences with a whole heart and no armor require courage? Absolutely. The third thing I learned has turned into a mandate by which I live: If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I'm not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their lives but who will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgment at those who dare greatly. Their only contributions are criticism, cynicism, and fearmongering. If you're criticizing from a place where you're not also putting yourself on the line, I'm not interested in what you have to say. We have to avoid the cheap-seats feedback and stay armor-free. The research participants who do both of those well have one hack in common: Get clear on whose opinions of you matter. We need to seek feedback from those people. And even if it's really hard to hear, we must bring it in and hold it until we learn from it. This is what the research taught me: Don't grab hurtful comments and pull them close to you by rereading them and ruminating on them. Don't play with them by rehearsing your badass comeback. And whatever you do, don't pull hatefulness close to your heart. Let what's unproductive and hurtful drop at the feet of your unarmored self. And no matter how much your self-doubt wants to scoop up the criticism and snuggle with the negativity so it can confirm its worst fears, or how eager the shame gremlins are to use the hurt to fortify your armor, take a deep breath and find the strength to leave what's mean-spirited on the ground. You don't even need to stomp it or kick it away. Cruelty is cheap, easy, and chickenshit. It doesn't deserve your energy or engagement. Just step over the comments and keep daring, always remembering that armor is too heavy a price to pay to engage with cheap-seat feedback. Again, if we shield ourselves from all feedback, we stop growing. If we engage with all feedback, regardless of the quality and intention, i