The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant - Courageous Leadership as a Daily Practice

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

In this Re:Thinking podcast episode recorded at Authors@Wharton, Brené joined Adam to dig into her book, Strong Ground. They explore why courage now has to mean being a learner instead of a knower, and why values aren't just what you care about-- they're what you sacrifice for. The conversation moves through the four skill sets of courage, why a value that isn't operationalized into behavior is just a poster with an eagle on it, and how to use the "story I'm making up" framework for hard conversations. They also get into executive presence, vulnerability, care, and why fake courage is easy to spot. Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit – Brené Brown, 2025, Random House Research – Brené Brown (n.d.). The discovery of grounded theory – Glaser & Strauss, 1967, Aldine Awareness of dying – Glaser & Strauss, 1965, Aldine De-tabooing dying control – Thulesius et al., 2013, BMC Palliative Care Never Split The Difference – Chris Voss, May 24, 2016, TEDx University of Nevada Expectancy Theory (Victor Vroom) – The Decision Lab, (n.d.) Dare to lead: List of values – Brené Brown, 2018 Dare to Lead Hub – Brené Brown Brené Brown brings Dare to Lead program to UT – University of Texas at Austin, 2020, UT News Neural processing of narratives – Jääskeläinen et al., 2020, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience The New Rules of Executive Presence – Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Jan-Feb 2024, Harvard Business Review The Gifts of Imperfection - Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life: 10th Anniversary Collection – Brené Brown, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, everyone. It's Bray, and we are on a summer hiatus for the next five weeks. While we're taking a break, we are revisiting some conversations that we really love. We think you're going to enjoy them. This week's episode is a conversation that Adam and I had at Authors at Wharton. It first aired on his podcast, Rethinking. I hope you enjoy it. You'll see a couple of times he's got me on the hot seat. I got a real good taste of what's going to be like to be in his class. room. He tried to drill me down, but fear not, I drilled back. Enjoy. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best As part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.

So why not you? Try O-D-O-4-3 at O-D-O-D-O-O-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-com. Welcome to The Curiosity Shop, a show from the Fox Media Podcast Network. If you do not care for and are able to connect with the people you lead, you will never see performance, period. Hey, everyone, it's Adam Graham. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast with TED on the science of what makes us tick.

I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. Bray Brown is a researcher and storyteller who's changed the way I think about vulnerability, shame, empathy, and leadership. She hosts the podcast Dare to Lead, where I've loved being a recurring guest, and she's given some of the most popular TED Talks of all time, and written six number one New York Times best-selling books. I hosted Brunet for a live conversation in the authors at Wharton series

to talk about her brand new book, Strong Ground. Bray Brown, so excited to have you at Wharton. Thank you. Nice to be here. She delivers a powerful message about courageous leadership that the world desperately needs, and our back and forth made my brain buzz and my heart tingle in the best possible ways. So I was at an event last week in New York.

Someone came up to me, and after having asked a brilliant question, said, you're my second favorite author. And I was very flattered, and then I was like, wait a minute, who's the first? And the answer was Brene Brown. I was just glad to be on the list. Well, first of all, people are laughing so hard at us. At us, not with us. Not with us. Not at us.

Literally, someone said, I love the podcast. I think of y'all as smart people, and it's so weird to watch you change your mind. Isn't that what learning is? To me, the most joyful thing is learning, the pursuit, the passionate pursuit of mastery, like really having a problem to solve or a strategy to figure out, that you almost don't want to figure it out because trying to solve it is so much fun, and that's so uniquely human. I just, I'm wondering why that's fallen out of favor a little bit. I'm wondering why the value has shifted from courage is being a knower instead of courage as being a learner.

That's not going to serve us right now. When I talk to senior leaders all over the world and they're saying, boy, it's really problematic when people come in and they act like they know everything, what I'm looking for are candidates who have exquisite questions and are really hungry to solve the problem. And so I think we have to shift the thinking there a lot. I'm inclined to agree with you on that. And asking questions is one of the things that you do best. So I think for those who have not been following Brne's work since you were four, I think when I first became acquainted with your work, it was when you were introducing yourself as a narrative researcher,

as somebody who studied stories. And I was just blown away by both the breadth and the depth of the questions that you ask people. And I've always wondered how you come up with your questions. You just said, hey, asking great questions is a skill. Can you teach it to us? I can't, and I will definitely not take credit for it. I will definitely go back to Barney Glazer, Glazer and Strauss. Grounded theory.

Grounded theory. So I'm a grounded theory researcher, and Anselm and Strauss were trying to develop a methodology for studying children who were dying. And back when they were trying to do it, the early 60s, there was a pact when a child was dying that the nurses, physicians, and parents, and religious folks, clergy, would not tell the child they're dying. They would keep that information from the child. So Glazer and Strauss were trying to figure out how can we talk to these children about their experiences when we can't let them know what's happening. So they came

with this idea of just a spill question, which became the real heart of grounded theory, which is, tell me about your illness. And the children would say, I'm dying, and it must be really terrible, because not even my parents will tell me about it. Yeah. So in grounded theory, we start with the main concern of the population. And then the theory we develop is how the population is continually resolving that concern. Does that make sense? Yep. And how we continually resolve those concerns is the basic social process that becomes a grounded theory. Is this too nerdy? I don't know. We have to ask the idea. Oh, shit. I mean, who am I asking here? So to me, the questions I ask are really about getting to what your main concern is,

not what I think it is or what the world portrays it as. That's the way I work today. So if I go into an organization and I'll spend three weeks just asking questions, I'll just look at a CEO and say, what's on your heart and mind? If you sit up straight and bed at 4 o'clock in the morning, what are you worried about? And then that's what I'm trying to resolve. Yes, I'm listening to investor calls. And yes, I'm looking at data, performance data, and engagement data.

But what I really want to know is what is keeping you up at night and how do we go after that? I would say the typical CEO I encounter is not that excited to talk about the thing that they're stressed about. How do you break through that barrier? Fifth generation Texan. You know, why am I here? If you don't want to talk about it, I got shit to do and places to be so we can either talk about it or I can go home. You know, like I don't get it. But I think for me, I often talk about playing to win versus playing not to lose.

I'm not everybody's cup of tea, as you can imagine. But I just say, look, what's more important to you to protect your ego or to win? And if you want to win, we're going to have to have these hard conversations. And if you can't have these hard conversations and you continue to play not to lose, let me tell you what that looks like both on a field and in an organization. Playing not to lose is always losing. How do you adapt that to the MBA and undergrad students in the room? So it's harder for them to go to their boss or their boss's boss and say,

hey, do you want to succeed here or do you want to protect your fragile ego? I would definitely send that via text. I think the strategy is actually the same. and I was talking to a recent MBA graduate at UT at McCombs. McCombs has a big program for vets who want to come back and get their MBA. And we were talking about how care for and connection with the people you lead is an irreducible prerequisite of courageous leadership. If you do not care for and are able to connect with the people you lead,

you will never see performance, period. You might do well in a very short period of time, but we both know. Like if without genuine care for and connection with, you don't. And so he asked this question. He said, you know, I come from a setting in the military we're caring for and connecting to is a fairly low bar, which I think is true because we both do work in the military. Like they, even the Air Force has, without deep affection for the troops you lead, we will move the soldier or we will move you.

And so he said, that's how I lead. But it's not accepted by my boss or the same. senior leaders. And I said, then I would change the focus of the conversation. Here's how I would do the conversation. I would say, if you work for me, I want us to win. And I want to contribute to the win. Help me understand what that looks like. What do you need me to do to win? And then Adam would say, here's what we need to win. We need to reduce churn here. We need to increase growth here, and we've got to solve these two problems here, then I would do this always.

Can I play back what I think you're saying? Always the playback. Here's what you're saying. We need to reduce churn. We need to grow this thing by 3% a quarter for the next two quarters. And then we have this problem that we need to solve around supply chain.

That's not directly me, but here are the three things I can do to help. And then your boss says, that's exactly right. Okay, I'm going to be on it. I want to ask you one thing. I have a way to win with my team that I think makes me the most effective leader and drives the most performance and trust in my team. I'm clear on what you want.

I've played it back for you. I need permission to lead my team. That's exactly how I would do it. That's powerful. Can you just accompany a bunch of our students to their jobs when they graduate? No, I don't work for anybody. That's why. But if you're like, oh, is that how leaders talk to each other?

Hell no. Like one out of a thousand people I meet would have that conversation. right? Like, it's a rare thing. So you know who I go to? This is why we're such a cute couple on the podcast, because I don't remember anybody's name. And I'm like, who's that dude, researcher, Baylor? And you're like,

the first article came out in 1977. Try me. Negotiating FBI. Chris Voss. Never split the difference. Thank you. Okay. He knows everybody's name. I can say the carpet

is centered. And you're like 15 years of research. on carpet centering would show, I mean, this is why I love talking to you. It is really true. It's like you're really good at contextualizing in, in period. We've worked on this. I'm shaking my head at carpets. Okay, but you're really good at doing this. Thank you, Brunet. You're welcome.

Bray told me I was bad at accepting compliments, and a lot of people have given me that feedback, and I take pride in being someone who takes feedback well, and now I'm stuck. I have to say thank you. There's so many things to compliment you about. Enough. Okay, so. Okay. I was doing work with the FBI hostage negotiators

because a lot of their work is about emotional resonance, understanding emotion, right? If I had to give one takeaway from Chris's work that I think is really helpful, it's this. Whether hostages or the hostage taker, whether they live or die, often comes down to two words. You're the hostage taker,

and I'm the negotiator for the FBI and you're telling me what's going and I'm like, shit, okay, so let me get this right, Adam. You can never get a fucking break. They took your kids, your wife left you, they shit on you at your job, and nothing ever goes your way

no matter how hard you work. And if you say back to me, two words, that's right. There is a connection now that changes all of the variables about survival. It's a human being. Like we are neurobiologically hardwired,

to be seen and heard, and that's right, is really a big part of being able to play back. So what's missing for, I think, new MBA students, new business students in general, just younger leaders, new people leaders, is the playback. So if I say to Adam, so all you really care about Adam is me reducing churn. And Adam goes, no, reducing churn is part of a three-legged stool. I need you to churn, but we have got to have. have growth. We have to have ARR for three quarters that looks like this. So that part is missing when you're managing up. Does that make sense? It's a really big part of getting clarity. I hear you,

I can play back for you accurately what's happening. The other thing I love about this is it's classic motivation theory. I'm thinking about Victor Vroom, expectancy theory. So many people, when they try to motivate someone, they project their own motivations on. to them as opposed to saying, if I want to motivate you, I've got to know what you value. That's it. And so by starting the conversation with that leader and asking, what does success look like for you? I'm now in a better position to ask you for what I want because it's aligned with your values

and your goals as opposed to at odds with or unrelated to what you care about. That's it. Hey, odds, Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if.

Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. We're going to talk about your new book, Strong Ground. And I think that values are one of the most important parts of this book. You push us all to identify our two core values. As you know, I've been struggling with three, generosity and excellence or integrity. And I would love you to walk us through how to figure out what your values are.

Maybe I'll just start by saying, for a long time, I thought about values just as guiding principles. And I said, it's what you care about. And I think that was incomplete. I think it's not just what you care about. It's what you sacrifice for. One of the ways that I've become clear about what my values are is to look at the things that I give up and why. I saw myself sacrificing time hanging out with my friends to field people's requests and help them. And that made it clear to me, okay, I'm giving up time with this group of people that I really like

because I want to make a contribution here that says to me that being helpful. helpful is really important to me. I saw myself in a couple of situations that I regret now, wandering into situations where I thought I was probably going to fail, and I was willing to sacrifice my ego because I really wanted to get better. And I thought, okay, that's some combination of excellence and integrity. And so I guess my first question for you is, what do you think about this distinction of values aren't just what you care about or what you sacrifice for? I think I'm going to use it from this split second forward. Okay. I think it's. Of course.

I'll send you a quarter every time I say it. When we were doing the qualitative interviewing of daring leaders who care about performance and culture equally, who care about people and impact, they were so clear and can speak so quickly and they never had more than one or two core values. And when I would dig in that, they would say, no, that's important to me. these two are where everything else is forged. Like, yes, I care about a lot of things, but these two values, this is where the rubber hits the road. So my two values are faith and courage. And those are two areas where I would be willing to sacrifice and do that on a regular basis. Like,

oh, Jesus, I want to hate your guts. But I'm going to sacrifice hating you because I have to find God in everybody's face. And you roll your eyes as you say. I do. God has told me nothing about, enjoying the practice at all. But I am willing to sacrifice a lot of things, including my self-righteousness for my values. And I think it's a beautiful and a different way of thinking about where things are forged. So when we give people this ginormous list of values, there's the two places where they really struggle the most. One, they're like, are we talking about personal values or professional values. I was like, if you only have one set, like, just your values, you know. And then the other question is like, I need 15. And so we always say circle 15. And then start asking yourself,

what two are the home base and the fire for everything else? And we've never had anyone not be able to get there. And we've probably done, well, we know we've done it with at least 160,000 people, because that's the data we have. Only 160,000. Over six years. Yeah. So, But we know that people get there. But then what's really exciting is that's where they think they leave it. And, you know, I'm not a fan of, like, a value not operationalized into behaviors. Neither are you. And that's what most organizations we go into have all the posters and have done none of the work.

Like, integrity with an eagle. Ha! What does it even mean? And so then we have people operationalize their values into behaviors, find indicator lights when they're out of alignment. So for example, for me, I know I'm out of alignment with my courage value when I'm in resentment. Because I'm probably not being brave enough to ask for what I need or want or I'm not setting a boundary. I'm not being brave in some ways if I'm in resentment. And so that work becomes, it's actually a trick that we do.

When we first started doing DARE to lead work in organizations, the four skill sets of courage have held. They've held through COVID and all the new data. Tell us with the four. Living into your values, the ability to rumble with vulnerability, meaning to be able to be in uncertainty, risk, and exposure, and stay grounded. emotionally regulated and make good decisions, the ability to build trust with others and self-trust,

and no one talks about self-trust, which is a big thing, and often the first casualty of failure. And then the last is to be able to reset. Can you be responsible for your own bounce after failure, disappointment, and set back? So these are the four skill sets of courage. When we first started teaching it, we taught rumbling with vulnerability first. And the college students in a course that I taught at UT. At the end, we asked for feedback and they were like, dude, you need to teach values first. I was like, why? We actually, we did the feedback as a class so they could experience saying hard things to me that were productive and respectful and we can say things to each other and they could learn how to be in a hard conversation. And I said,

tell me why. And they said, you had to convince us that vulnerability, was something we needed to experience and manage. But if you did values first, people would understand intrinsically that if they wanted to live into their values, they would need to be vulnerable and courageous. And you wouldn't have to convince anybody of anything. They're choosing courage.

They're choosing generosity. They're choosing excellence. If you want those things and you want to live into those things, then diving into uncertainty and risk and exposure is not optional. I love that. You know, it reminds me of an exercise I've been doing for years with students and also with leaders. And I'm going to put you in the hot seat for this one. So, okay, you just mentioned vulnerability.

Why is vulnerability important to you? Because my value is courage. If there's no uncertainty, no risk, and no exposure, you're not being that brave. Why is courage important to you? Because the word courage in its original definition, Kerr, meaning heart. And the original definition of courage was to tell the story, story of who you are with your whole heart. We are nothing without our story. And to not tell it honestly pulls all the meaning out of our lives. So to me, I want a meaningful life and I'm

going to have to be brave to do that. Why do you care about having a meaningful life? I'll be failing this fucking class. Um, because what's the point if you're not? Wow, that was hard. It's supposed to be hard. But when somebody has a long list of values, I just we pick a value and we go through the Y, why, why, why process. And eventually they just kind of throw up their hands and say, because that's who I am, or because that's important to me, or because otherwise what's the point? And at that point, I know we've reached a terminal as opposed to instrumental value.

So many of our values are in service of other values, right? The terminal values are, no, this is core. So I think you landed courage as a core value. I see you, Adam Grant. What does that mean? It was irritating but effective. Okay, so then to your point, yeah, it is annoying. I think it has more comedic effect if you do it this way, but it's much friendlier when it's like,

oh, that's interesting, tell me more about why that's important to you. We want to then go the other way and say how? How do you live that value? And that's where you get to your behavioral standards. So I would love to hear you talk a little bit because you're, I have been just floored by how specific and clear and actionable these are. Can you take us from, okay, my core value is courage to how do you come up with behaviors that would fulfill courage and violate courage? I think the hardest one that I'm working in every day because it's so bad.

I don't talk about people. I talk to people. And how did you come to that as a behavior that was key to courage? I think it was from the integrity hangover that I would have after I talked about somebody with someone. and thought, A, the person I was talking about deserves more respect than this, and B, the person I was talking to, should in fact trust me less.

So as a leader, instead of shit talking you and I'm frustrated, I'm going to get unfrustrated first, and then I'm gonna talk directly to you. So that's courage and action for me. Wow. Yeah, I don't wanna be that. person. And I would say I have more hard conversations a day than 90% of the people I know. I've seen it. I can vouch for it. I've been the beneficiary of it. Oh, we have had a hard

conversation or two. Yeah. I go in knowing that I'm very messy and imperfect and I will have had a part. When whoever's not going well, I have a part. I want to pick up on two things there. The first one is I think of maybe all the sentences you've ever written, the one, the one that I find myself referencing the most, including when we teach difficult conversations here, is the story I'm making up is. I think about this all the time. Whenever I go to give someone some feedback

or raise an issue that might be a little bit touchy or contentious, like, okay, the story I'm making up is. Can you just walk us through how to apply that? I think that our brain is wired for story. We know that. That's not like an advertisement. It's like literally wired for narrative. It's how we've taught and communicated since the beginning of human history.

When something hard happens, because our brain is wired for survival above all things, it looks to understand what's happening with a story. And the brain does not like a messy story. The brain likes a very clear story, bad guy, good guy, dangerous, safe, on your side against you. So the minute you can give your brain a story that has the bad guy who's against you and what's dangerous, you're literally rewarded chemically with more calm. So let's say Adam and I are in a meeting and I work for Adam and we walk out of the meeting and I say, great meeting I'll see you this afternoon and Adam looks at me and goes, what the fuck? And just walks away. How many of you would be hooked by that?

if that was your boss. Like, triggered. Like, oh, shit. And so immediately what the brain says is what's happening, what's happening, what's happening. And the way it normally plays out is, oh, my God, I pissed him off. I did something in that meeting. I should have not shared those sales numbers with a client. Oh, my God.

What's going on? How many times a day do you think that happens in organizations? A lot. So what we found, that fourth quality of courage, you know, the ability to rise. the ability to reset, what those folks had in common more than anything was the ability to check the stories they're making up. And so the first question you ask is,

do I know what's happening and do I have enough data? And let me tell you, you're neurobiologically, they're like, we don't give a shit, give us a story, tell us who's, tell us who is against us. And so what would happen if I went into my office and I thought, oh God, I don't know what's going on. That was pretty scary. I need to calm down. For me personally, I know I'll need to walk. I'll loop the parking lot. I'll walk the office. Okay. Hey, Adam, do you have a sec? Yeah. When we were leaving

the meeting today, and I said, have a great day. You looked at me and you were like, what the fuck? And the story I'm making up is something happened in that meeting that really pissed you off. And I just want to check in with you. And if we've got something to clean up, I'd love the opportunity to clean it up. And then Adam looks at me and said, oh, my God. that meeting was scheduled to end at 10 o'clock. We went to 11.15. I have Zumba every Thursday at 10.30. Why were these meetings going so late?

Yes or no? And you're like, wait, what about the part where I'm the center of your world? And everything you do and say is about me, you know? And so be really honest here, which you are actually never anything but in my experience, to be honest. which is kind of a pain me ass sometimes. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. That compliment he accepted.

As a leader who works for you, I knock on your door and say, here's the story I'm making up, do we have something to clean up? Do you respect me more or less? More. Trust me more or less. More because I know that if there's ever an issue between us,

you're going to bring it to me, as opposed to me wondering what you're thinking but not repeating or maybe gossiping about behind my back. Yeah. This reminds me of something I've been so curious, about for a long time and never asked you, which is sometimes I find it helpful to go into a conversation like that when I've made up the story and I'm worried about how it's going to go

and just say to the person, I'm actually afraid to have this conversation with you. And I've found that enormously helpful in lowering their defenses, and I'd love to hear your explanation of why. It's like walking in, hey, good to see you, vulnerability card. I'm a little interested about talking to you about the this, but you're important to me and this is important to me. And I think it's honest and authentic and it's showing you're leading with your humanity. You're not leading with your prosecutor. You know, you're not leading with any of your friends, right? You're just leading with

community. That tracks for me. I think the other thing that sometimes happens is the other person immediately wants to disown being terrifying. Yeah. You can't, you shouldn't be afraid of me. You can tell me anything. Yeah, yeah, right, right. And they actually have to prove that they're open, even if they weren't before.

That kind of gets a little trickier, yeah. Yeah, and then I'm like, wait, no, no, I don't want this to be manipulative. I'm just trying to, I'm trying to level with you that this is a hard conversation for me to have. Yes, that's why I love the story I'm telling myself right now, or to say, I'm anxious about having this conversation with you, but it's important to me.

if you say scared, you could push a certain personality type into defensiveness. Because what they could go is, Jesus, you think I'm an asshole? And they could just derail you. So I think part of this is the self-awareness and the relational awareness of knowing what is your relationship with this person. That's helpful. Thank you. Okay. I want to follow up on one other thing that struck me as you were talking about turning values into behaviors.

Yeah. which is, I think you've just given us a clue to a different way of living our values than I've always thought about it. I've always had people, like, I've seen people make a list of their values, and then, okay, let's write down and talk through. What does it look like to uphold them? What does it look like to violate them? And there's something both overly cerebral about that and also it's undergrounded in people's day-to-day experience. And I think what I just heard you tell me is you just, you kind of do a mini-reliable. qualitative study of yourself. You observe, take the next week or two, and think about the

moments where you felt like that wasn't me. Yes. Or I failed at courage today. Yeah. And then build the list from the ground up. Yes. I love this idea. Yes, because we asked two questions. Share a time when you were outside of your values and what it felt like in your body. Share a time when you were in your values and what it felt like in your body. And so one of the that's really interesting is the whole disembodiment thing that we are just not connected to our bodies is also part of strong ground like we got to get reconnected if i was hiring for one quality it would be self-awareness and i don't think you can have deep self-awareness if you're disembodied because a lot of your self-awareness comes from your body like they call them feelings because

that's where they happen first right we feel them and one thing that we see a lot of We see a lot after we take people through Dear to Lead and they talk about all the exercises. Is, and this is like, I would not say this is empirical. I would just say this is anecdotal. Is in my values very difficult, but in some way energy giving, outside of my values, on the surface easier, but absolutely depleting. Does that make sense to you? The paradox of this was easier to piss and moan about somebody. than to talk to them that left me feeling hollowed out versus I had to have a hard conversation.

I had to practice it for two hours with my coach. I didn't sleep the night before. But when it was done, I had more energy. And I think that's about alignment. Okay, you're ready for a lightning round? Yeah, yeah. All right. Who's at your dream dinner party, alive or dead?

My mom, my grandmother, and my immediate family. Wow. Everyone always picks celebrities. Oh, don't give a shit. No. All right. Worst career advice you've ever gotten. I'm going to talk about a subject we both hate.

Executive presence. I don't like executive presence because I don't know what it means. The research feels unclear. And there are a lot of people in Navy suits with red ties that command attention are saying jack shit. Or worse. And there are a lot of really quiet. people who don't look like a lot of the people in navy suits with red ties whose brilliance we all need. And so I texted you and I said, I'm getting ready to take on executive presence in this

book. Should I do it or not? I got the three dots on the iPhone. And then what did you text back? I think I texted back something to the effect of yes, can you do a smackdown of charisma too? because they're both cover for discriminating against women and introverts. Yeah. And I was like, let's go. As the only woman at the table for a long time early in my career, I have zero interest in looking, acting, behaving like the people who built the tables that I'm not supposed to be at.

Yeah, none. What is something you've changed your mind about lately? I can get really ramped up about my founder energy and get really proud of it. Like, yeah, fuck you, I'm going to pick all the fonts. I'm going to check all the emails. And then I'm going to cry for six hours, getting a fight with my husband and not get out of bed.

Because I'm going to check all the emails and pick all the fonts. And so I'm really changing my mind about where those lines exist. It sounds like you should read a book called The Gifts of Imperfection. And then I'm going to rethink our function. Ouch! No, I actually think it needs a sequel

about delegation and micromanagement and control, which I think is an extension of perfectionism. It is, and the thing that I wrote myself, like, have you ever written anything? And then you're like, eat the page yourself, dumbass. Like, tear this page out. and just eat the page you wrote.

No, I've never thought about it that way. But in tech, they call it eating your own dog food, right? Is that? I don't know. Yeah. You have to use the program that you code it and then see if it works. Oh, got it. Okay, yeah. That productive challenge is a function of trust. Micromanagement is a function of distrust.

And I'm rethinking where I'm being productive in my challenging with my team. and where I'm not trusting. And what I'm learning is I'm not trusting because I am not doing a good job painfully pulling the context that people need to do their jobs out of my brain because it's really exhausting for me. I have a thousand things in my brain

about right now, tomorrow, five years, three years. I have all this crazy stuff in my brain as a founder. And then I don't share the context of it. I should eat a chapter because there's a whole chapter called mission critical question mark and the answer is mission clarity. And that means everybody on your team in your organization should be able to draw a straight line from what they're doing to the larger context in the organization they can't see every day. And that's time and discipline. It also sounds like, I mean, this is a classic founder challenge, right? you're blurring the line between founder and owner.

Say more. Just because you're a founder doesn't mean you have to own everything. Like, it's not even computing. I mean, you can create something and then just hand it off to other people, right? I mean, I need my team in the audience to break eye contact. Yes, I can do that. Yes, I do that. Yes, I have very capable people.

I am not good in fear. And I'm not a good public person. I never wanted to be a public person. And so I can get very fearful and scarcity-based. Yeah. And then I'm not good in those places. Welcome to the club. Yeah.

All right. If you were dropped back to your freshman year of college, with all the knowledge and wisdom you've accumulated since then, what would be the first thing you would change? I would just tell myself that there's no shame in this traditional path not being my path. Because I graduated with my undergrad at 29. You know, I got kicked out of school three times. I hitchhiked.

I bartended. I did a lot of things where I learned way more about empathy than studying it. And I think I would just look back and say, nothing wasted. Wow. Yeah. How do you balance setting boundaries versus always being there for a friend or even someone who takes advantage of your kindness? I think there's two different groups of people,

because I don't think friends take advantage of our kindness. And I think you really have to start with themselves at examination. But I think for a long time, I thought the only value I brought to relationships was the problem solver, the fixer, the taking care of things. I'm the oldest daughter of four. You know, like I have all that setup. And so I think it starts with,

it's really good despite what a lot of weird people are saying right now, it's really good to be an empathetic person. One, make sure that that's cognitive empathy, not affective empathy, meaning you don't want to feel what everyone feels. That's a recipe for disaster and burnout. And it's also the word that I would call it as someone, I've been sober for 28 years. We would call it enmeshment. This is not empathy.

Because I don't know where I am. and you begin. So I would really do a lot of self-reflecting around a relationship, a good friendship, love, friendship, whatever, is reciprocal. And if you primarily play a role where you're caregiving and taking care of folks, then that's not about the people you're hanging out with. That's hanging out with yourself a little bit and figuring out that's not the only value you bring. All right, I have some more audience questions for you. Okay, let's do it. This one I'm going to edit a little bit. The question says, the concept of vulnerability. has become increasingly popular in the business world.

I will say, because of you, Brunet, you have popularized vulnerability. And the question is, do you find that there's an evolving meaning of it? Has it changed since you gave your first TED talk? I don't, I don't, it's, look, just because the concept is more popular doesn't mean the behavior is more popular. Let's start there. Everybody's afraid. We're all afraid all the time.

And fear can be a helpful thing, right? What gets in the way of courage is armor. How do we self-protect when we're in fear? What do we turn to? What armor do we put on? I've already said, like for me, micromanaging, perfectionism, I get overly decisive.

No, close that down, shut that, move her over here. No, uh-uh, hire him. And then I'm like, oh, shit, I think I'm scared. And then I'm like, let's not do those things. And my team's like, we don't write anything down when you're like this. And you can get good performance using fear and shitty behavior for a very short amount of time.

But then fear has a very short shelf life because our nervous systems can't handle it for a long period of time. Right. So to me, vulnerability hasn't changed. There are more people talking about it, growing people, a growing number of people working at it, and an increased number of people giving it lip service because it has some popularity, which takes five seconds to see through. Like, I see dead people.

Like, I see your fake vulnerability. Renee, thank you. It's always a joy to learn from you. Thank you, thank y'all. Thank you. Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Graham. The show is produced by TED with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glazer.

Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winnick, and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Highlash, Ban Ben-Banchang, Julia Dickerson, Tonsica Sung Monivong,

and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hansdale Sue and Allison Layton Brown. All right, y'all, thanks for listening. Again, we are on break, and we are giving you some of our favorite podcast and conversations that you've not heard yet. And we'll be back on July 30th

with brand new episodes. The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brunay Brown Education and Research Group and Granted Productions. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows

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