Brené Brown has established herself as a prominent figure in the realm of team leadership and building corporate work culture, but her work extends into and resonates deeply with teaching and education. It’s about time that I engage with her work, so here we are with Dare to Lead. I listened to the audiobook, read by Brown herself with some welcome tangents and clarifying remarks that add to the original text. Having finished this book, I can understand why her work is so broadly accepted. She offers clear, insightful, and manageable guidelines for engaging with others as a leader, whatever form that might take.
When it comes to nonfiction books, Dare to Lead is comparatively short but still offers a comprehensive guide for a few core concepts. One of the common threads is how emotional intelligence influences our work as leaders. Leaders require a level of vulnerability when engaging with others and making decisions. In one moment, Brown clarifies how to practice vulnerability in response to a misunderstanding with one of her workshop attendees. After discussing vulnerability and openness, the man came up to her and said he was going to start divulging all kinds of personal information and discuss his doubts in the work and so on and so forth. She clarifies that vulnerability and openness does not divulging everything—divulging everything, especially in a business meeting, could send people into a panic. Instead, it requires a fine balance and sharing only what is pertinent to help enable the team. There’s a closer affinity to accountability than oversharing.
Some moments were more resonant with me as an educator. Within systems, peoples’ values can often clash. We have different visions of how institutions should operate and what our outcomes could be. One section of the book outlines an exercise she does with her audiences where they have to select their core values. She talks about narrowing down to two core values to guide our actions. If we are not able to narrow our values down to two, our scope is too big and we don’t have the focus for our decision making. It’s a little bit cheezy, but there’s an administrator I work with who encourages us on the first day to choose one value to focus on and I’ve gained a new appreciation for that level of intention.
Teaching can often be contentious. Brown presents several ideas for better management and thoughtfulness. One of the practices she holds with her team is that everyone has the power to call a time out during meetings. It’s a smart idea to say “I need time to think about what I’m hearing” and not come to immediate decisions. As we know as teachers, building in “wait time” and giving students time to think increases the depth of thinking, so logically the same would apply for adults. She says that calling a time out gives reasonable thinking time and it cuts down on the “meeting after the meeting” and backchannels, ultimately leading to more transparency and better decision making. I love that.
I also appreciate the way that Brown establishes healthy boundaries while maintaining empathy. One of the passages that really resonated with me is when she writes,
We can’t do our jobs when we own other peoples’ emotions or take responsibility for them as a way to control related behaviours for one simple reason: other peoples’ emotions are not our jobs. We can’t both serve people and try to control their feelings. Daring leadership is ultimately about serving other people, not ourselves. That’s why we choose courage.
So much of our work as educators requires navigating others’ emotions, at least it feels that way. Whether it’s a student being upset about not getting a grade, or a parent being angry because their child has been accused of cheating, or whether colleagues have different views on which pedagogies are most effective—it can get uncomfortable. Brown gives permission to separate other peoples’ feelings from our decision making. It really is about serving others, not necessarily about making others happy (although it’s a nice byproduct of being transparent, vulnerable, and collaborative). In that vein, Brown also gives advice to people who are trying to demonstrate empathy to others. She says that “empathy is not connecting to an experience. It’s connecting to the emotions that underpin an experience.” I liked that, because I think a lot of people say, “well I’ve never been through that thing” and try to exclude themselves from confronting those hard feelings. It’s well-intentioned, generally, but this gives us the power to maintain connection without imposing our own half-connected experiences. Brown illustrates the example with a personal anecdote involving high emotions in an airport and it was a beautiful demonstration of how to engage with others without owning their emotions or imposing your own experiences.
Overall, Dare to Lead gives a really nice framework for some foundational qualities. I hope it makes me a better leader and decision maker. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
Happy reading!
