This is Working: Brene Brown

welcome back to this is working i'm dan roth linkedin's editor-in-chief on this show we bring together some of the world's top thought leaders and business executives to help us make sense of the trends in the world around us but today's guest is going to make us look inward that's what brene brown does best makes us tackle our vulnerability brene brown has made a career out of exploring two parts of our personality that many of us have tried to hide from public view vulnerability and shame she's researched those two emotions for over 20 years but it wasn't until 2010 when she did a local ted talk in houston that she catapulted the celebrity status you know what you're imperfect and you're wired for struggle but you are worthy of love and belonging this is the world we live in we live in a vulnerable world that presentation has become one of the top viewed ted talks in history it's racked up over 51 million views brown has leaned into that success she's published five new york times bestsellers she hosts two podcasts and now has a netflix special that makes her the first researcher to have a filmed lecture on netflix today as we work through a global pandemic and watches social issues and work collide her insights have become more important than ever she knows the secrets to what business execs everywhere are slowly coming to terms with that is if your company your leaders aren't vulnerable they won't stay competitive and of course if we as individuals don't address our own vulnerability we're likely to head in the wrong direction and take others down with us and with that let's bring on brene brown hi hey brene thanks for joining us here today thanks for having me well let's start it is the end of the year it is a year many of us will never most of us will never forget and even though we'd probably like to um i'd love to know how this year has either reinforced or challenged some of your research how does how does has this year change at all how you think about vulnerability and shame does it is there anything new that has come out you know i i think more than anything it's been incredibly it's been a it's been a painful and enlightening uh experience of validation of the research you know right when the pandemic started i i wrote a post across social and you know it's on linkedin where i said this is going to be a tremendous experiment and experience in collective vulnerability and unless we consciously choose courage over fear we're going to come apart you know we're going to come apart individually and we're going to come apart collectively and i think that we have seen kind of the best of us and the worst of us in this period of time and i think the best of us you know our better angels have been connected to our willingness to be in discomfort and uncertainty and ambiguity without lashing out and the worst of us are you know our worst instincts have been to divide lash out um hide behind ideological bunkers um and so i think we've seen it all but i don't think it i think it just validates what we know about vulnerability and uncertainty and even about shame and fear i you know i deeply believe that people are inherently good and i also deeply believe that we are incredibly dangerous when we're in fear and i think you have seen they feel like opposites but they're but they're not they're just a paradox of the of i think the truth of who we are and we've got all of that inside each of us and all of that in the collective and we are dealing with all of that we're dealing with these incredible uh social challenges and life challenges and i'm talking to you from my attic and you're talking from uh you know your house and before we went down we talked about how there is no there's no one to support any of us as we go through this right now um if you think about in in the work environment what people are going through right now where so much i feel like we were people were embracing some of your ideas around being vulnerable at work and starting to connect with each other in different ways and now we are all stuck or most of us are stuck at home or a lot of us have lost our jobs and does it change at all how how you are able to let's just let's do the work from home component of it how are people able to connect and to find that vulnerability when we're doing so much over video conferences like this you know i think it's been i've been working with leaders and teams and organizations through the pandemic and um god we are so tired i mean i just think weary exhausted depleted um are all just truths of where we are and and i feel that way i i feel the exact i feel that way too and you know i've never i've always kind of worked maybe you know i guess what we consider remotely um and it's never been like this it's it's you know i i was on zoom and doing that kind of stuff before everybody was on it just because we again we have a remote team but this has been different this has been um this has been unrelenting video conferencing unrelenting aloneness um an unrelenting managing of multiple things in our lives like i haven't you know i'm every time i'm in a uh you know on teams or on zoom or you know on a video conference there's a toddler crawling up someone's back there's someone in tears there's someone that needs to nurse there's someone who's just whose dog is going crazy and we we laugh about it for sure and we have found some common humanity there that i think has been a good thing and i hope it doesn't go away but we're also tired and so i think we have to understand that while we're working and like we're doing this interview this is still screen time and screen time still has some difficult components with it i think some of us are doing meetings and in some of us are doing better than others of us you know in terms of putting these meetings together um i think we still need to think about the intentionality of our gathering i just did a podcast with priya parker who wrote a book called the art of gathering and boy if there's ever time if there's ever been a time in the world to follow priya parker and her work it's now because gathering needs to be intentional it has to be purpose driven it has to have a very clear goal and the better we can do that in this virtual environment the better we'll be in meeting so i think that's a really long way of saying we're pulling it off but we're also physically emotionally and intellectually paying a tab for it we are we have members here who are very excited uh to be joined to be seeing you and to be joining this chat we've got cheryl from california susan from washington allen from canada diane from michigan sally from houston um elsie says i'm always living to be a better leader nikki says thank you for all you do it's life-changing justin says courage over fear uh i want to get to your point about the um about being tired do you think that is it's so true we hear this all the time do you think there is going to be a hangover in 2021 what happens when we can start returning to work does this year change how how we operate for good or for bad you've been reading a lot of interesting business i mean there's there's there's so many different components to that question so there's like does this change the way we do business and i think for a lot of organizations yes and i think there's a interesting data right now that we have done this so long that we have created new habits we've created new ways of working we've created you know things have changed and what's working and effective about those things i think will change then there is you know how we gather i i think we will come back to gathering in person when possible with a new passion a new sense of gratitude about being with each other physically um i know that i will never take that for granted again um and so i think there will not be a return to what we know pre-pandemic and i think that's uncertainty and i think that's good news combined i think the good news is you know we had two pandemics and we're still in the middle of both one is a pandemic of you know covid and the others the pandemic of racial injustice and i don't think we are going to go back to normal around either one of those things which is we need to build new systems better ways of being together more equity and inclusivity and diversity we need to more representation we have work in front of us that we are clear about so i don't think that we'll be going back to normal in terms of how we gather when we gather and how we work but i do think as just a social species i doubt that any of us who've lived through this will take for granted what it means to be able to be together moving forward that's great and miranda in the comments says even introverts are tired of being alone it's very funny jesus it's so i mean yeah and i am the introverted of the introverts and um you know i i'm a very you know i would say that if you think about the way i work in the org we work in the organization as a creative when i'm writing a book or we do a lot of creative processes with teams and post-it notes and moving things and um it's been hard it's just been so hard i want to get back to your point about the second pandemic this question about racial injustice and what has been an awakening for many businesses and a thank god we're finally talking about this for so many people um you talk so much about i mean obviously oh your entire work is around vulnerability there is a second kind of vulnerability you can see it in in business leaders when they are talking about topics that they've really never talked about at work before maybe they've been like oh my diversity and inclusion uh uh expert is going to handle this question and i will just be here to answer the financial questions but now leaders are being expected to come in and talk about these topics they don't even know the right words for it sometimes they're not sure if they're stepping in in the mind holes or not they're not sure when they're saying the right thing and when they're not but uh their employees are demanding it of them and do you have have executives coming to you saying how do i talk about this thing what have you been uh thinking as you've been watching uh leaders start to have these conversations that are clearly uncomfortable for them yeah i think that they're really uncomfortable and they're and they're very difficult and they're they're you have their potential to really you know put your foot in it and but thank god you know what i mean like one of the hallmarks of courageous leadership is the ability and willingness to have hard conversations and not tap out or delegate and people do come to me and say how do we have these conversations and i refer them to people who've been doing this work who are not white like me who people who have expertise and lived experiences in this work and it's it's time to step up and put the conversation on the table open that door and it's time to step back and let people who have expertise and lived experience in this lead us and both things can be true and that's not the hand off to the dei person you know that's that's that's a that's that feels terrible to me it is watching your people you're letting your people watch you struggle and learn and unlearn and relearn and ask questions and be involved it's not checking things off the list and i would tell you that um i have a podcast with ikobithea who heads up diversity inclusion equity and belonging um for our organization and is also facility she's a facilitator in our deer to lead work she and i did a podcast together where we did some really uncomfortable hard role plays and it was interesting to see the comments on linkedin when we posted that because people were like oh my god the role plays like why where are the we need more role plays and we need to understand more about how to not take every easy exit ramp when things get uncomfortable and ico taught me something really interesting that that has really changed a lot of what we do in our organization which is what the leader brings in the room is what's allowed to be talked about what the leader doesn't bring in the room even by omission is clearly translated to this is off limits so as leaders let me let me just tell you this i have studied race class and gender for 20 years and taught it and i have never had a conversation about race class of gender where i haven't had my ass handed to me by someone who knows better where i haven't hit on you know a blind spot where i haven't said something that wow really centered me in an uncomfortable way that's all right because my motto is i'm not here to be right i'm not here to show wow look what an ally i am our look look i'm i'm i'm i'm a good white person i'm not here to be right i'm here to get it right and that's what we need to build in our leaders and the culture of our organizations we're not here to be right we're here to get it right we're not here to be knowers we're here to be learners and that's the bottom line to be better people uh that's fascinating and this idea that you do you recommend that people frame it that way i mean is it important to get up in front when you are talking to people to say like i might not be right about this or i am i i am we're going to go through this together or do you just put it out there and then wait till you get the feedback i think both i think whatever feels i mean i think the number one thing is whatever feels authentic and genuine to you is how you should do it don't fake vulnerability where there isn't any don't fake you know and and i would oh you know i'm always careful about the disclaimers cause like you know people armor up very quickly when they hear like hey i don't know what i'm doing i'm gonna suck at this but i'm just gonna lay it out there like people are like you know like transformers armored up i think it's best to say i'm going to give this a shot because this matters why what's the intention lead with the intention i don't know that i'm going to get this right but i but we are going to get this as a company we are going to get this right and maybe the first step in getting this right is me doing it and not getting it right but we're going to do this that's great we have a lot of really good comments coming in jason says thank you for identifying and clarifying the pandemics for what they are ava says you're my inspiration thank you for shedding light on these issues susan says i'm not here to be right here to get it right so true we talked a lot about work and what happens in the office this has been a uh incredibly brutal year for job losses and we there there is so much shame around losing jobs we know that people lie about it that they hide it from their spouses they hide it from potential employers a lot of questions coming in about what you do around that so lisa abbott is asking a job loss can so easily trigger shame what are some strategies for working through the emotions of job loss um what do you what do you say to that i say yeah i mean i think job loss is a huge huge shame trigger for all of us you know um and it really and it can be it's a it can be a huge shame trigger for everyone than if you have on top of it some kind of like family of origin messaging around provider um around perfectionism and so let's just look at the elements of shame resilience the elements of shame resilience are know what the trigger is and know how you're responding to it reach out and share your story with someone who can respond with empathy shame cannot survive empathy and job loss right now is not about you it's about a broken system it's about a pandemic it's about a pandemic that also revealed huge inequality fault lines across our countries and our organizations so if you're feeling shame about your job loss you need to talk to somebody shame can't survive empathy when you know shame hates having words wrapped around it it's powerful because it keeps you believing that you're alone so the minute you share your story with someone who can meet you with some empathy and say hey and empathy is not about relating to it i don't have to have had the same experience that you've had to to express empathy i need to know the emotion that you feel and so you know all of us know fear rage fury powerlessness grief like we all you know to be human and be adult we've had those experiences um heartbreak and so you need to talk about it and you know if you put shame in a petri dish it needs three things to grow exponentially into every you know corner and crevice of your life judgment secrecy and silence if you put the same amount of shame in a petri dish and you douse it with empathy you create an environment that's hostile for shame so we need to reach out and connect with other people and talk about how we're feeling and know you're not alone you're not alone i think there is there are a lot of questions that uh center around the question of what if you are someone who has adopted vulnerability who has read your books who understands what you're saying who believes in your research but they are working in teams or around people who don't yeah what what did you do to handle the environment where you are the vulnerable one and everyone else does not believe in it do you need them to come around or does that make you does that put you in a bad position to to to not have that armor when everyone else has it what do you say about that you know i always say you know let's break down what vulnerability is before we answer the question so vulnerability no definition based on the data it's the emotion that we experience in times of uncertainty risk and emotional exposure to be vulnerable is to show up when you can't control the outcome [Music] and you show up anyway like you can't control what's going to happen so when we talk about vulnerability one thing i need to always get clear with people is sometimes we go halfway with our work we're like okay vulnerability is not weakness it's you know it's the birthplace of courage and trust and creativity and innovation but we don't go the other half of the way which is it's not disclosure it's not you know how many times do i cry at work it's vulnerability without boundaries is not vulnerability and so when people say i'm vulnerable at work but other people are not i always want an example of that so if people say so what does that mean so to me vulnerability at work means you don't tap out of hard conversations you hold people accountable instead of blaming or shaming you don't talk about people you talk to people you don't act like the knower you are the learner you're not there to get it right you're there to be right you're not cynical you're invested you're not proving you're improving you're not hustling for worth you understand your value so when people say i'm surrounded by so for example let's just say you and i are on a team together and you know and you have committed to this idea of daring leadership which is you know vulnerable let me tell quick story just as way of explanation i'm working with special forces military and i ask the simple question because they're having a hard time linking vulnerability with courage right and they and i said well give me an example of courage on the battlefield or off give me a single example of courage that did not require uncertainty risk and emotional exposure one and there was quiet there was emotional response and finally one guy stood up and said three tours there is no courage on or off the battlefield without vulnerability a week later i'm working with pete carroll and the seattle seahawks asked the same question same answer uh nope there is no courage can't give you a single example of courage and now i've asked 10 000 people the question give me an example of courage something you did that was brave that didn't require wrestling with uncertainty risk and exposure emotional exposure you can't and so when people say i'm vulnerable at work but my colleagues aren't i want to know what they're talking about are you personally disclosing at work and other people aren't i've got a flag around that because what's your intention behind the disclosure are you personally disclosing to move work forward to move psychological safety forward to move trust forward or are you doing it just as a matter of proving that you can be vulnerable i mean like i read something on linkedin recently in my comment section where someone said i had to take a couple days off work when i went back into the first team meeting with my team i took a risk and i explained that i had had a miscarriage and we don't ever talk about things like that at work and i'm one of the only women on my team and it was hard and by the time it was over everybody in my team was on tears people were sharing their own struggles around fertility or miscarriages and we're not the same team we were a month ago and you have to evaluate for yourself is this a safe place to share is this an okay boundary is there a safe enough container that we trust each other but the thing is that we're human and every leader i've ever worked with in my life has said i need all of everybody you know there is you know not enough innovation not enough trust not enough creativity i need all of everyone well if you need all of everyone then you better build a cur a culture that supports the wholeness of our humanity and you know and build a psychological safety so we can be whole so so so important to really uh understand what that vulnerability is and what it's not um and it sounds like what you're saying is that there is no way to stand out from the crowd and be vulnerable in a way that harms you doing leaning into this idea will make you a better leader will make your team better will make your team operate better so there is no you you're not suffering by being vulnerable within a place where where their people aren't vulnerable it people will come to you they will come over to your side because they want to be around a leader like you or they won't so let's just do a quick role play for them so let's say we walk out of a meeting and you say to me like let's let's put both of us up together so people can see us talking and you say to me dan um i think that idea that we just heard was it's never gonna work so you say that to me that idea was that is never going to work renee yeah i'm concerned dan because they asked who had concerns about it and none of us said anything and here's the deal i'm happy to go back in there with you and have a bigger conversation about why we think it's not going to work but i'm not going to have a meeting outside the meeting so that's an example of vulnerability i'm going to show up i'm going to have a hard conversation with you because you know meetings outside the meetings the dirty yeses that that kills culture so vulnerability i always wonder when people say i'm doing it but i but knowing you know it means courage it means saying look i get it i'm a you know i voiced that i was a little worried about it but if you feel that strongly let's go back in there brother and you know lay it out for them but i will not do this with you or yeah just honest it reminds me of we had mary barra on here very soon after she had become the ceo of gm and one of the things that she insisted on that brought the story up before was she wanted everyone in the room to talk and she said she was because at gm the culture was you nod and you say yes and then you go and you do exactly the opposite or you just that's right at all and she was like nope i'm going to make people commit in meetings i'm going to make them give themselves here and i'm going to pull them off the wall and make them talk and i'm going to hold them accountable and she's really changed the culture by doing that so it sounds like i mean it's a great example and the thing is let's go to p project aristotle at google you know long-term study around the most most highest performing groups not the highest lovey-dovey we care about each other groups the highest performing groups at google what did they share in common number one trait of high performing teams vulnerability trust and psychological safety so you can say you know what moving forward everyone everyone has a point of view but if you haven't built a container or psychological safety for that you can't ask people to do that so that's your job i would love to talk to you about career advice what do you you were you had an unusual start of your career and you went to college you dropped out of college you traveled you took some jobs and you really didn't come you didn't start at ut until you were 27 if i'm not mistaken is that right yeah i think somewhere around there yeah all right so what kind of advice do you give people who are just starting their career and do they need to know exactly where they're going do you recommend the path you took or what do you say two words nothing wasted that's my career advice you know you know my daughter is a senior in college and she said you know she called me and i don't know during her first semester and she said oh my god you know that whole thing you told me about college it's not true everybody knows what they're going to be except for me it's so hard it's cringy it's awkward and i said if you know what you're going to be at 18 i'm not paying for school like you've got to be curious i want you to take every class that seems interesting to you i want you to you know i want you to going to school and having college paid for is a privilege and and i get that because i didn't have that um and i worked my way through i cleaned houses i bartended i did it all and i'd had a long circuitous route for sure dropped in dropped out um hitchhiked through europe i just did some dumb and fun things um but the reason why i tell people that and i know people are under pressure people are like well that's a luxury to you know curiosity and exploration is a luxury well we need to change the world where that is a function of privilege because everyone deserves to be curious and be and i want to build a world where that's okay and and i mean i think you know the first thing we'll have to do is dismantle you know we'll have to attack poverty and white supremacy and equal measure for that to happen but i do believe that i am i think i'm good at what i do and i think i owe as much of that to seven years of bartending as i do to you know nine phd hours in multivariate linear statistics um nothing is wasted and you've got to stay and be curious you know i talk about endearing leadership what we take we take off our armor because it's not fear that gets in the way of daring leadership it's armor it's how we self-protect right and so people are like oh god i'm gonna be naked at work like no no armor what am i gonna do i'm like we're gonna replace it with grounded confidence and grounded confidence is a combination of practicing new ways of showing up like rumbling with vulnerability and curiosity curiosity is the great it's the great skill set of the future be curious yeah i have to tell you really quick i just did this event um for a a global construction company and they they were like i started talking to the the group and they and it was virtual because it was during the pandemic and they're like how how do you know so much what was like how do you know so much about construction i'm like oh i used to work in construction uh i i didn't wear tools but i i was in charge of progressive billing for a drywall an industrial drywall company and then you know i'll be doing a talk with who knows what i've had a lot of life experience i think about you know steve jobs who studied fonts you know and said boy there's some fonts that make me feel peaceful and at home and some fonts that are jarring and you know and empathy design curiosity you know try it all but when you try it and you and it's time to leave it you think damn i have two years over there nothing wasted that's great i gotta say when you started talking about nothing wasted i thought you were saying don't waste any moments but you're saying nothing that you do is wasted everything will tell you where you're going that's awesome yes yes nothing is wasted this is great renee thank you so much i want to end with a couple comments from uh from from people who are tuning in right now miranda says courageous leadership is the name of the game we don't have to all have the answers but we need to be willing to ask the questions and admit what we don't know it's all about growth and andrea says spend your life with an open and learning mind this will keep you young so that's good no yeah thanks andrea i'm for that all right well brene thank you so much for spending the time with us here today thanks for all the contributions you make on linkedin and beyond i really think you've given a lot of support to a lot of people going through very tough times this year and i hope we'll have you back to keep talking about how the world's changing and and what we all need to be doing to make it better yeah you're welcome and you know i think we're i love that quote we're all just walking each other home like that's that's it's it's me helping people but it's people helping me too it's just we don't have to do it by ourselves we were never meant to that's great well thank you renee thanks remember everyone we release this is working episodes every week as a podcast also you can subscribe to my newsletter at lnkd.in slash tiw or just go to my profile and you'll see it there and then you'll be notified when those articles and podcasts go live and you can watch this replay of this video there as well you should see links to that in the stream thank you so much for joining this is working we will be back soon with another great guest you

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Length: 33min 19sec (1999 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 12 2020