Brené Brown on Leadership During Times of Uncertainty

0:00I think most incredible skills that we're going to need right now as leaders is the ability to create time where none exists. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Leadership Next, the podcast about the people and trends that are shaping the future of business. I'm Diane Brady. And I'm Kristen Stoller. And this week, we have one of my favorite thought leaders, Kristen. It's Brene Brown. Yes, we had a great conversation with her at our Most Powerful Women's Summit on stage in Washington, D.C. And it was really cool because I'd never gotten a chance to meet her before. And you have, right, Diane? I have. I mean, She's a transformational leader, really.

0:38And her book that really put her on the map was called The Gifts of Imperfection. It was all about being vulnerable, the power of empathy, which is something we maybe take for granted now. But I would say she was a real pioneer in putting that as a core leadership quality. I think so. And speaking of core, the new book is about core. It's called Strong Ground. She based it on she had a pickleball injury, needed to get a trainer to work on her physical core. use that as a metaphor kind of for CEOs and organizations and building up their own core in this time of fear, uncertainty, and a hard time to tell the truth, as she's recently said.

1:14And a hard time to be vulnerable. I mean, she really has not been out there speaking a lot in the past year. She does talk about why it's so hard to be human, you know, in this environment. And part of it's the politics, AI, and multiplicity of other factors. I find it fascinating because she really reminds us what does good leadership look like and what does it look like right now? She does. I think it was a great conversation and let's hear it. As technology and AI continue to reshape industries, hiring for technical skills remains important. But fostering creativity, curiosity and empathy are also essential for organizations to remain competitive and resilient.

1:54We're here with Jason Gerzadis, the CEO of Deloitte US and the sponsor of this podcast. Jason, always good to see you. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me, Diane. So Jason, how can organizations balance the development of human skills and technical skills to drive innovation? It is a tech-driven world, but still human skills matter. And I think it comes down to being intentional for leading organizations to still invest and have very directed strategies around building human skills. Curiosity, imagination, how to team. These are still critical ingredients to creating differentiation and competitive advantage.

2:39At Deloitte, we've committed to building those skills and have over time evolved our programming. Jason, could you say at Deloitte, what role really does apprenticeship play in fostering a culture of continuous learning and development? It's interesting. There was some, I think, time when people thought that apprenticeship and mentorship could maybe be digitized or entirely done remotely. And I think what we've learned is that that's not the case, that apprenticeship and mentorship need to continue to be a formal part of our culture, a part of our learning environment. Absolutely. Well, great insights, Jason.

3:18Thank you so much for sharing them with us. Brene, I want to start. Obviously, you consult with leaders around the world. One of the things I am fascinated with backstage, you said we're not neurobiologically wired for this moment. What do you mean by that? And hello and welcome. Hi, thanks. I'm super excited to be here. Hi, y 'all. I just think we are wired for certainty and we're wired to get to certainty as soon as possible. And the more uncertainty that there we're in, the more really hard feedback we get from our bodies. And so we're not wired for the kind of leadership I think we need right now.

4:06And I think there are, I get to work with a lot of great leaders and there are leaders who are really working on building that core strength to navigate this level of uncertainty. And there's those who believe they can plow through it with old skills, which I don't think is going to be effective. What do we need then? What is needed? I'm a solid C minus at this skill set. I was really surprised. I wrote this honking. It was probably the hardest chapter I've ever written in a book. I wanted to understand what is the collection of skill sets and mindsets that I think are going to future ready us.

4:43And it took me, first of all, one of the fastest crashes in Random House history. Like I turned this book in two and a half months ago. Wow. That's a quick turnaround. Yeah. And because of the relevance, I think for the world right now, they were like, let's crash it. I would not recommend that at all. But this chapter was very hard and I was very surprised to see, I don't know why I was surprised, but I was surprised to see the role that self-awareness plays, the role that nervous system management plays, the role that metacognition plays, understanding how we think and how we learn. Leaders with high levels of metacognition are much less vulnerable to cognitive biases, which are really ruling the business world right now.

5:35So I think, and then there's a unique set of skills that I, I'm a big sports person, so there are a lot of sports analogies in the new book. One of the, I think, most incredible skills that we're going to need right now as leaders is the ability to create time where none exists. The ability to slow down our thinking and slow down our decision-making and get really tethered to mission, strategy, and values before we make decisions. And that collection of skill sets, you are really not researched in management like they're researched in sports. So this is the analogy that I'm using right now. How many of you have ever watched five-year-olds play soccer?

6:26How many of you ever thought it was a good idea to sign your five-year-old up for soccer? Right. So if you've ever watched it, you get a really fast ball coming in at kind of head height. And what a five-year-old will do is respond by putting their foot up this high and kicking the ball, usually into another field where another group of five-year-olds are playing. My daughter will be sitting crisscross applesauce building like daisy chains. That's how leaders are behaving right now. Fast, hard balls are coming in at very high. And what a seasoned soccer player will do, any Liverpool fans, is will take a high ball into the chest, let the ball drop to the ground, keep her foot on the ball to maintain possession, because winning is all about possession.

7:23Then look down the pitch, read the pitch, and kick the ball not to where the striker is standing, but where they know operationally in three seconds where the striker will be. And that is a set of skills, if you look at them, that include self-awareness, first of all, but anticipatory thinking, situational awareness, temporal awareness, very, you know, we think about athletes' ability to seemingly slow down play, but they're not slowing down play. Serena Williams is not slowing down a serve when she's receiving. What she's doing is drawing on a set a very sophisticated built serve, you know, skills, where she can prepare a split second earlier than her competitor.

8:20And that's what it's going to take to lead today. It's going to take skills that I don't hear being discussed very often, but where I witness people who are winning right now absolutely have a ton of. Can I follow up around? I think about the work you've done with empathy, vulnerability. I mean, going back to the women and shame and just all the bestsellers that you've done, do you feel those skill sets, are they still as important or are they somehow under threat? Because to be vulnerable today is also to put a target on your back, isn't it? It depends because let's get very clear about what the definition of vulnerability is from the data.

9:11So vulnerability is the emotion you experience in uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Is there anyone in this room that goes through a day at work without experiencing any uncertainty, risk, or exposure? I see those hands raised. And I spent a lot of time in my career trying to convince people what vulnerability was and wasn't until a very singular day at Fort Bragg, where I was working with special forces and I asked the troops a simple question. Give me an example of courage in your life that you've witnessed or in someone else's life that you've seen. Give me a singular example of courage that did not require uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

9:53Heads went down. People got quiet. Troops got teary. And so one kid stood up and said three tours. There is no courage without vulnerability. So it is extraordinarily difficult to be brave right now. for a lot of different reasons.

10:14Politics is one, but radically changing markets. A workforce that is, I'm going to tell you right now, people are not okay. If you're leading people, you probably know people are not okay. I mean, folks are still going into Costco with an automatic weapon because they're out of Cheez Whiz. People are emotionally dysregulated, distrustful, and disconnected. So you're leading a workforce that is increasingly struggling. You've got really massive instability geopolitically, changing markets, and AI, and tech. And I'll give you an example of what I see. I've never seen sales functions in organizations under pressure like they're under pressure right now no one is calling sales functions and saying give me three of SKU 44 25 and I'm going to compare your prices with your competitors and when can you deliver it people are calling and saying shit I don't know what we need what I'm looking for you from you I'm not looking for a product I'm looking for thought partnership from you.

11:34I'm looking for you to set up a team that works with my team. Now we're talking about cross-company collaboration. So you've got teams collaborating across companies. What is the very first thing that emerges in a cross-company collaboration? The very first issue that emerges, data governance, IP ownership. If you don't have people skilled the first day of that first meeting saying, we're excited to sit down with you. This is going to be great. Let's talk about what trust and distrust looks like for us. Let's talk about how we're going to work together and talk about how we're not going to work together.

12:12Those are vulnerability skills. Those are trust skills. Those are empathy skills. So when you talk about the core of a leadership or, you know, leadership team, a core of any team, you're talking about self-awareness, metacognition, emotional granularity, mindfulness and then one that I think is so lacking today that it's shocking which is deep complex understanding of systems theory if you don't understand that the world that we're operating in today is built of systems inextricably connected to other systems and that if you move one lego piece an inch over here you've got fallout over here you're not going to be able to win.

12:57And I want to ask about two themes in your book that I found, honestly, the most interesting. One was power, and the other was leading by fear and the theory of how some people that I won't name do that. But you wrote one sentence, which I really like, that said, leaders who are unwilling to talk about power are either actively abusing it or prefer to preserve the option of misusing it in the future, which I think is really interesting at this current time. So pissed off that day, I think. I don't take it back. I take it back. Oh, no, zero regrets. I mean. Yeah, but how are you advising CEOs right now?

13:37How do you say, you know, to people, I think you should speak out on X, but not on Y? What is the threshold for that?

13:50I think CEOs have very complex jobs and need to get very clear about what their jobs and responsibilities are and what their jobs and responsibilities are not.

14:05And short-term dodging a bullet does not equal long-term win for any of us sitting in this room. And so the thing about power, when we go in and do Dare to Lead transformations with organizations, we're looking very specifically at a couple of things. We're looking at building skills around courage and building skills, some of the skill sets that we've been talking about, situational awareness, critical awareness, systems thinking. We probably say yes to about 30 % of the people interested in working with us. Because right off the bat, How do you say no to the rest? Like, no. Just no, thank you.

14:43No time. Don't like you. Don't think I can fix it. No, I'm sorry. No, I think, I mean, how many of you are leading an organization in transformation right now? Right. I think the word's overused. If you're looking for incremental change, if you're looking for small strategic change, that's not the work we do. If you want to break some things, break systems that are no longer serving growth, no longer serving revenue, no longer serving mission, and you're willing to look rigorously at what is happening, we might be a good fit. But the power question is something we ask all the time, which is power is important.

15:19And to feel powerless is the worst human experience, I think, that exists. But power is neutral. You know, it's how power is used. I like MLK Juniors, like definition, power is the ability to affect change and achieve purpose. There's not a person sitting in this room that doesn't want power. The question is, what kind of power are you using? Are you using power with, power to, power within? Great. Are you using power over? That's very complicated. That's not something we're going to do because the thing about power over, and I'm going back to Mary Parker Follett's work, early mother of leadership and organizational development work in the early 1900s.

16:03Power over operates from the belief that power is finite. And in order to share it, you lose it. It's like pizza. I have eight slices. I give you one, I have seven. And this is not, take this for what it is, but this has been in the literature for, you know, 90 years, so it's not a current reflection on anything, but if the shoe fits. In order to maintain power over, without exception, you must occasionally engage in very serious acts of cruelty toward vulnerable populations for a very simple reason. Fear has a short shelf life. You cannot keep us afraid for long periods of time. It's not how our biology works.

16:51If we're afraid, what will one of two things will happen? will either kind of become numb to it or will hyper-normalize the feeling. So there has to be a periodic reminder of capacity for cruelty in order to maintain power over. So if we go into an organization and I'm meeting with the C-suite and I say, look, we're interested in doing this work. We think you're a great candidate. We think we can help you win. Because we measure our work firstly by performance, secondly by culture change. I want to talk to people in your organization about how power is used and what their experiences are for a very simple reason.

17:33The greatest barrier to courageous leadership is not fear. We're all afraid every day. How many of you wake up afraid, deal with fear, go to bed afraid? Like That's human. And if you're not, you know, if you're not afraid, go outside, like watch the news. So it's not fear that keeps us from being courageous in our decision making. It's armor. It's how we choose to self-protect when we're in fear. So for me, I know my armor. When I'm afraid, I micromanage my team. I get perfectionistic and I get overly decisive. I mean, this is a real example. I can say, I can sit down, you're my team, and I'll say, we're not doing that shit.

18:25Pull that, we're not doing it. No, move that funding. She needs to move. This is what's going to happen here. She'll need to lead this team, and this is the performance metric. There's a KPI here, and I'll go, oh my God. You just became your own worst nightmare. Well, yeah, I'm like, I think I'm under the line. Let me just take a step back. Don't forget everything I just said. And to which, literally, two weeks ago, someone on my team said, we don't ever write anything down when you're acting like this. Oh, well, that's good. I mean, good for them. But not many people do that, especially in this current climate.

18:59No, I was like, a lot. I've heard a number of people say the more complex the external environment, the more the need for simplicity internally. And I want to get to something that I've heard you talk about in terms of the number of core values, decisions that leaders should focus on to get things done. You've said when it comes to great leaders, it's maybe one, maybe two that they're pursuing. Is that right? Maybe explain a bit more about that because there are so many decisions we have to make right now. I think that move towards simplicity is actually a powerful one. yeah I think Adam and I are doing this six series Adam Grant and I are doing this six series podcast right now and man it has been such tough sledding it's like it's like he's my little brother I just want to like punch him in the throat sometimes Adam Grant and you want to punch him in the face sometimes I think we feel this way about each other but we just if you ever watch Phineas and Ferb Candace and the little brothers I'm like Candace I'm like mom Adam's messing with my values exercise but I do we did find our research early on that really some of the most I love the James March quote leadership is plumbing and poetry you have to be able a good leader is poetic enough to set a vision that people want to follow but they can also build the systems to deliver against that the most poetic plumbers I think in our research that we have found really talk specifically about one or two core values.

20:35Not five or ten, but one or two. And so we've reverse engineered that into an exercise where people can start by circling all the ones they want, which is usually about 15. But then we get to a place where we say, if you look at these 15 values, what are the one or two where all of them are forged? So a great example for me personally is family. is the most important thing in my life. My kids, Steve, my husband. But it's not one of my top two values because for my whole career, what it took for me to be the partner and mother that I wanted to be while having a really big job was courage. It took courage to say no to some things, to say yes to some things, to miss some things, to be at other things that I thought were important.

21:26so I do think clarity of values mission I mean mission clarity I love this story I was at St. Jude's I don't know a decade ago and I went early because they said do you want to come I was meeting with the leadership and they said do you want to come early and get a tour and I said sure so I got there an hour early and I got in the elevator to go to the second floor to meet the docent who was going to show me around and there was a 60 year old woman pushing a double-decker trolley filled with desserts wrapped in cellophane. And I said, what do you do here at St. Jude's? And she said, I cure cancer.

22:04And I said, tell me more. And she said, physicians, nurses, families, patients don't eat. We can't cure cancer. It's really tough work. I get upstairs, I meet the docent. I said, how long have you been here? And she said, man, I think I've been curing cancer for maybe 18 months. And it always stuck to me because especially during this level of uncertainty where I have not met with the CEO in the last nine months that was not concerned about a waning sense of agency in their employees. The question I have is how much mission clarity does every employee have about what they do every day and how that's connected to bigger strategy.

22:50Can your junior social media manager say, oh, so what do you do here? Oh, I'm social. I do the social media manager, you know, for this thing. And that's connected to our larger mission because this is our mission and this is how we can't achieve that without what I'm doing every day. And so when we want a sense of agency in our employees, values clarity, mission clarity, super critical, especially right now. That makes a lot of sense. Brene, you mentioned earlier AI. I wanted to go back to that because I thought it was so interesting. In your book, you have this critique about AI and the pace of change, and you say what makes us human will ensure our relevance, but you say we aren't really good at being human right now.

23:31How do we fix this? How do we become humans again? Yeah, it's my least favorite platitude about AI. You know, what makes us human our deeply human skills will keep us relevant. We're shit at being deeply human right now. We can't stand each other.

23:49Everything that, you know, there are so many skills that are not replicable. I mean, and I'm a tech optimist, but there are so many skills that are so inherently human. Pursuit of mastery, sense of purpose and meaning. The skill sets that we're talking about, emotional granularity, trust building, connection, but we're not good at them and we're not good at them for a very serious reason. Welchian management taught us that everything that made us... Welchian being Jack Welch? Being Jack Welch, yeah. That whole approach to leadership basically taught us what makes us human makes us a liability to performance.

24:34And that's not true right now. And I will tell you that when we were writing this book, I had a research team and an AI team. We did the literature review, both, 100%. We did a lit review through AI for the whole book, and we had an academic research team. When we were done, we compared. We actually hired college interns. We called them the hallucination hunters. Love that name. 70 % of the entries in the literature review were non-existent. 70%. Have you seen the new research on work slop? Yeah. Right. 70%. And I mean, it was serious too. It would say like Brown, B, Grant, A, 2023, HBR, MIT Sloan.

25:28This was the name of the article? Non-existent. That's God saying, she's right. Don't give up on people. You're all you really have. It's funny because it felt like that was coming from my body and I thought that's very exciting. You know what? My kids can reach me anytime, including biologically, I'm sure. You know, I'd be remiss. I do think of when I first became familiar with your work, so much of it was focused on women and leadership and the powers that we have and how we apply them in the workplace. This is a gathering about business for women. I'd like to give you some final thoughts you may have for this particular audience in this particular time that we're in right now.

26:26I think our job, I think we have an advantage, to be honest with you. I am not, just to be very frank, I'm not someone who's ever distinguished between women leadership and male leadership. I don't know that I understand that completely or necessarily subscribe to it. What I do believe is if there's a group of people on the earth that have had to make time where no time existed, who had to stop and settle the ball and look down the pitch and be very anticipatory, it's the women in my life. And I think we need urgency, but we need productive urgency. What we're seeing right now is very reactive action over impact.

27:34the ability to take a deep breath, settle the ball. I think, again, the women in my life have taught me how to do that. I think we need risk-taking, but I think we need strategic risk-taking. What I don't like, in fact, I was just interviewing someone, and she said, I've got a lot of GSD energy, you know, get shit done. And I said, I don't need that. I need GSSD energy, get strategic shit done. Like, I need you to think, take a deep breath, play the movie to the end. Think about what you're doing in terms of systems within our organizations and systems outside of our organizations. And I think because we have a long history of both paid and unpaid labor.

28:28We have had to do some very heroic work, which I'm not a fan of, but I think it makes us ready for this moment in unique ways. I don't think women will be the only ones, but I think we have to stop contorting ourselves to fit at tables that were not built for us. This is a time when all bets are off about what tables are going to work and not work. And I think we have some really good insight about how to, I'll close with this quote. Don't email me about the attribution. We've spent two years trying to find it. Or ask AI, maybe, see if they're right. Say again? Ask AI, see if it'll... Yeah, no, don't ask AI.

29:19But there's that quote, Kovey's been, Viktor Frankl, we've talked to everybody on their teams. It doesn't come from either one. But it is an amazing quote. I have a tattoo here. There is a space between stimulus and response. And in that space is the freedom of choice. And in our choice is our liberation and our growth. I think our job as leaders is to run like hell for that elevator when it's closing and put our really great boot in there and create space between stimulus and response where it doesn't exist. And to try to really quiet the voices that are saying, I'm working with a CEO right now who has not had an AI strategy.