Book Review: “Dare to Lead”

Book: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown
Reviewer: Bobby Powers

My Thoughts: 9 of 10
In this book, Brown applies her impressive arsenal of vulnerability research to the domain of leadership. She explains why true leadership is about vulnerability and connection—not power and strength. Effective leaders lead through the connection they form with their people, and that personal connection is fueled by trust and authenticity. I have always been a big fan of Brené Brown, and this book further cemented her as one of my favorite authors. If you're unfamiliar with Brown's work, check out her TED talk at the end of this review.

Selected Quotes and Ideas from the Book

Rumbling with Vulnerability

Vulnerability = “The emotion we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure”
“You can’t get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability. Embrace the suck.”
“A rumble is a discussion, conversation, or meeting defined by a commitment to lean into 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, as psychologist Harriet Lerner teaches, to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.”
“Courage is contagious. To scale daring leadership and build courage in teams and organizations, we have to cultivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations, and whole hearts are the expectation, and armor is not necessary or rewarded.”
“It turns out that trust is in fact earned in the smallest of moments. It is earned not through heroic deeds, or even highly visible actions, but through paying attention, listening, and gestures of genuine care and connection.”
“Google’s five-year study on highly productive teams, Project Aristotle, found that psychological safety—team members feeling safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other—was ‘far and away the most important of the five dynamics that set successful teams apart.’”
“Simply put, psychological safety makes it possible to give tough feedback and have difficult conversations without the need to tiptoe around the truth.” -Amy Edmondson
“Vulnerability isn’t just the center of hard emotions, it’s the core of all emotions. To feel is to be vulnerable. Believing that vulnerability is weakness is believing that feeling is weakness.”
“We often fail to realize that without vulnerability there is no creativity or innovation. Why? Because there is nothing more uncertain than the creative process, and there is absolutely no innovation without failure.”

The 6 Myths of Vulnerability

Vulnerability is weakness.
I don’t do vulnerability.
I can go it alone.
You can engineer the uncertainty and discomfort out of vulnerability.
Trust comes before vulnerability.
Vulnerability is disclosure.

The Call to Courage

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again...who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” -Theodore Roosevelt
“The only thing I know for sure after all of this research is that if you’re going to dare greatly, you’re going to get your ass kicked at some point. If you choose courage, you will absolutely know failure, disappointment, setback, even heartbreak. That’s why we call it courage. That’s why it’s so rare.”
“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.’”
“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.”
“Get clear on whose opinions of you matter.”
“The irony across all self-protection is that at the same time as we’re worrying about machine learning and artificial intelligence taking jobs and dehumanizing work, we’re intentionally or unintentionally creating cultures that, instead of leveraging the unique gifts of the human heart like vulnerability, empathy, and emotional literacy, are trying to lock those gifts away...The hopeful news is that there are some tasks that humans will always be able to do better than machines if we are willing to take off our armor and leverage our greatest and most unique asset—the human heart.”
“I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.”

Dare-to-Lead-Brene-Brown-Business-Book-Reviewer

Curiosity

“Curiosity is unruly. It doesn’t like rules, or, at least, it assumes that all rules are provisional, subject to the laceration of a smart question nobody has thought to ask. It disdains the approved pathways, preferring diversions, unplanned excursions, impulsive left turns. In short, curiosity is deviant.” -Ian Leslie
“Researchers are finding evidence that curiosity is correlated with creativity, intelligence, improved learning and memory, and problem-solving.”
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” -Attributed to Einstein

Living Into Our Values

“Daring leaders who live into their values are never silent about hard things.”
“To opt out of conversations about privilege and oppression because they make you uncomfortable is the epitome of privilege.”
“A brave leader is not someone who is armed with all the answers. A brave leader is not someone who can facilitate a flawless discussion on hard topics. A brave leader is someone who says I see you. I hear you. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m going to keep listening and asking questions.”
“We don’t fully see people until we know their values.”