The Highest Performance Strategy is Caring About People ft. Simon Sinek

17:01Brené Brown:And because they're afraid.

17:02Simon Sinek:And they're afraid. Yeah.

17:03Brené Brown:The minute you, even if you have possession of the ball, the minute you're afraid, you're on defense with possession of a ball, which makes you useless. Yeah. When I hear playing to lose, I think about the psychology of threat rigidity. Okay. Oh, I love this. I mean, the tunnel vision, the narrowing of, I'm just going to do the thing that I'm already good at. That's it. I'm not going to take any risks. I'm not going to experiment, Simon, to your point. I'm not going to innovate at all. And I think those leaders end up doing a ton of micromanaging because they focus on the little things they can control, not realizing in this sea of uncertainty, their job is actually to be macro managers, not micromanagers, to help people make sense of the change that's happening or at least be honest about the fact that they don't have the answers yet.

17:45And I think most leaders have not been trained in how to do that. Brene, I love your point about regulating a nervous system as a core leadership capability. Can you talk to us about how leaders can learn to do that? Because I see at least six dysregulated people in this room right now.

18:01Brené Brown:I would be one, so it would just be five of y 'all. It's a skill set. I mean, when I was doing the research for Strong Ground, I really wanted to come up with a cluster of skills that were, how do we future-ready people? And I was really hoping it would be a great number, like eight or ten. And it ended up being 38. And I divide - Nice round number. A nice round number. And you know, as a writer, that shit sucks. Like you're like, welcome to the impossible cluster of future ready leadership. The good thing is I use a lot of gym metaphors, like strength training metaphors. And I said, you know, this is 38, but we have five or six kettlebells that'll hit 15 of them at one time.

18:42Brené Brown:So we got it. But what I was surprised that emerged at the top, which I call the core, was five that I again did not want to be true. because they're the ones that we would have never been working in the 80s. The first one, self-awareness. The second, metacognition. Do you understand how you learn and how you think? Three, emotional regulation and emotional awareness. Four, mindfulness, which don't you hate saying it, though? Do you hate saying it? I don't use it. I don't use it either. Wait, you just did. I know, but what am I supposed to do? Like lie? It's the data. So I was going to call it paying attention because that's what the term I use.

19:24Brené Brown:But it's so funny because how many of you in here would love to have a lecture from someone come into your organization about mindfulness? Nobody. Like if I walked in and I saw that like up on a deck, I'd be like, dude, I got shit to do. I can't like, there's a butterfly and the grass is green.

19:42Simon Sinek:This is a failure. This is a failure of that market, right? Because when I started my work, I couldn't talk about purpose at work. That was hippy-dippy stuff. Purpose? No. When I started, if you use the term purpose at work, literally, there's a small percentage that were already converted. But if I wanted to move the needle, literally, like you said, I want to come and talk about purpose at your office, they'd be like, thanks, hippy. No. And so part of my journey - They thought you were selling drugs. Yeah. So part of my journey was language. And so the reason I called it the Y, the reason I called it the Y is because I went around and asked people who believed mission was preeminent or vision was preeminent or purpose was preeminent or brand was preeminent.

20:29Simon Sinek:We had all these different words, but nobody agreed on the definitions of these words. And I went to all the people who thought all of these things were the most important thing and asked them, what's the definition? And they all said, it's why we do what we do. It's why we get out of bed. It's why the company exists. I'm like, great, we'll call it the Y. We can all agree. and it was the term, the why, that allowed the concept to then come into work because people weren't afraid of talking about their company's why. They were afraid of talking about their company's purpose. And so I think the same thing goes for mindfulness, which is the problem is it sounds like hippy-dippy stuff.

20:55Simon Sinek:And so you have these people screaming and yelling from the treetop saying you have to do it, but they aren't doing marketing 101 and finding language for the thing that the people actually want, rather they're bringing the thing that they think is important. And so we do need new language for mindfulness. And then maybe in 10 years we can talk about mindfulness and it won't be a big deal. I don't know what that term is, but we do need more. We need different words.

21:18Brené Brown:Synonymous, it's synonymous with paying attention, right? I actually love the attention frame because we're all facing an attention crisis right now.

21:25Simon Sinek:Yeah. Yeah, being fully attentive, whatever word we use it, but I think attention is in the right ballpark for sure.

21:31Brené Brown:Yeah, I can't convert that. This is one of the words. I mean, I was successful in converting shame as a word. So, I mean, like in the beginning, people were like, can we call it shameh? I mean, how many of you follow sports, any sport? How many of you watch the French Open? You don't think those folks have very serious mindfulness trainers?

21:50Simon Sinek:Oh, I saw a thing about tennis. I can't remember the exact numbers, but something like of the 100 top players, it's always the top 15 or 20 that are always the top 15 or 20. It's not like other sports where it like bounces around. It's hard. It's narrow. It's a very narrow band of always the top. And so the question was asked, how is it the narrow band is always the narrow band when all the players have access to the same training, nutrition, coaches, it's an equal game for all of them. What is it about these top few? And I can't remember who did the research. I'm on brand. I can't remember who did the research, but what he found was that these top few, all of them had a different mindset than everybody else.

22:31Simon Sinek:And the mindset was absolute love and joy of the game. So if they won a point, they would say, oh, I love this game. and if they lost a point, they'd be like, lost this time, but wait for the next one. And what ended up happening by the end of the game after five sets, their stress levels were lower so they had more energy. And so they just played better at the end of the game than the other players. But it was this, it's all mindset and absolute joy versus the frustration and the anger which then sucks the energy out of you, which I found so interesting.

22:59Brené Brown:Okay, but you're such a good storyteller so you're so on brand. This is so important because having worked with athletes and probably some of the ones you're talking about in the band, that is not inherent.

23:13Simon Sinek:Did they learn it?

23:15Brené Brown:That's what CEOs need to understand. They don't naturally - They weren't born with it. They did not self-select into a top band of mindful, positive people. That is P equals P minus I. That is a book that I've read every year for 40 years. I read this book and now I teach it all the time to leaders, which is The Inner Game of Tennis. performance equals potential minus interference so so what ends up happening when you're working with high level athletes is performance equals potential so we push and push and push and drill the shit out of out of potential you know where your volleys where your baseline hits let's work on their shirt let's work on your return what about your ball toss and at some point you're not moving the needle there yeah then so you have to go back to it so performance equals potential We've drilled that to death, minus interference.

24:08Brené Brown:What is your interference? And so what you're talking about is trained, and you can track any of the top 20 tennis players in the world. And if you track them from the juniors, you will see the 12 to 18 months where they learned that. You will see the difference. If you watch film, you will see the difference in their game. This reminds me, we were with Novak Djokovic last year. and I think he's an amazing example of this, but his emotional arc is different. He explained that he felt like when he entered tennis, the niche of the fan favorite was already filled. Federer and Nadal were kind of, they'd covered it, right?

24:48They had all the love and he needed to do something to activate his energy. And so he decided he was going to make himself the bad guy and get the crowd to hate him. And the booing was going to fire him up around the energy to prove them wrong. and say, okay, you all think I can't do this? I'm going to show you. And he said it actually took the pressure off because he felt like nobody expects anything of me anyway. Nobody believes I can do it. So I have nothing to lose and now I can play to win. And I think that can be just as powerful as I love the game.

25:19Brené Brown:I think it can too. But if you hear Djokovic talk about the mindfulness training he's done and his ability to, I mean, even, I think all of us do special force. We've all worked pretty closely with Special Forces military. The whole thing that when there's a mistake, it's one of the most common ones I hear from them is data received.

25:40Simon Sinek:Well, I think and I think you're touching upon the big mistake that happens in business consistently, which is we often talk about team performance. And people will interpret our work about high performing teams and apply to individuals.

25:52Brené Brown:Okay, wait, I want you to slow down and say that again, because it is like the number one infuriating, hard thing to get your head around.

25:59Simon Sinek:So what makes high-performing organizations is high-performing teams. And all three of us talk about what makes high-performing teams, and then people take our work and they try to apply it to individuals. That's exactly right. And that's not how it works. And even these analogies that we're using, we're using them to our detriment, which is we're talking about an individual player sport. And that's not what business is. Now, the analogy is that, hey, CEO, you're looking at this high-performing athlete. They learned this. You can learn it too. That's sort of where the metaphor ends. I look at, like, for example, I look at Mercedes F1 Grand Prix.

26:39Simon Sinek:the way that Toto Wolff runs that organization is, first of all, it's a no blame organization, right? Which I find fascinating, which is mistakes get made and a kid on the, you know, changing a tire could lose the whole race, right? Because of, so they recognize that no matter how good the driver, no matter how good the car, it's the team that wins. And so when things go wrong, nobody will say, you lost the race. They'll say, something went wrong. How do we fix it? It's a no-blame organization. And he cares more about consistency rather than best performance. So when the pit crew, they're not trying to go fastest, fastest, fastest, get it faster.

27:14Simon Sinek:He wants consistently 2.2 seconds. Doesn't need it to be quicker, doesn't want it slower. It's the consistency because that makes predictability and they train for consistency. But again, it's all about the unity of the team. Hal Levitt wrote a classic article half a century ago. It was called, suppose we took groups seriously. And his thesis was, if we really believed that excellence depended on having a great team, we would hire teams, intact teams that had already gotten to know each other and proven their ability to work together. We would promote successful teams. We would fire failed teams as opposed to placing all the responsibility on the individual.

27:52I don't know that I'm willing to go that far. I would be really interested in a model of what if we hired pairs? What if we promoted pairs? If we could find dyadic relationships where people were more than the some of their parts, that feels like a unit that's actually manageable.

28:06Simon Sinek:I mean, also the incentive structures. Most of the incentive structures in organizations are individual performance. Hit your numbers, you get the bonus, irrespective of how everybody else does. We changed it in our organization where the bonus structure is based on the company. And if the company hits its numbers, everybody gets a bonus. And if the company misses its numbers, nobody gets the bonus. That's how we do it, too. And if one group is struggling, like when we look, you know, we sort of review, we don't hold, same thing, which is, it's not like, whew, sucks to be them. You know, it's not like one of those, we'll turn to everybody else who's doing well and be like, what are you doing to help them?

28:38Simon Sinek:Like, if they're struggling, that means you aren't helping them. That means we're not helping them. And it's, and I have to say, I mean, we hold ourselves to higher standards, because, you know, we're out there preaching it, and we have to be able to do it ourselves. And we know too many people who don't practice what they preach. But I think one of the things I respect about you guys is that we all work very, very hard to practice what we preach. And so it's been an education for me also to learn what team performance looks like and how you create team performance, because individual performance is just much easier.

29:09Simon Sinek:It's easier to incentivize, it's easier to manage, it's easier to hire, it's easier to fire. Easier to measure. It's easier to measure. Team stuff is actually really difficult, which is one of the reasons we love the special operators is because, and I mean, you guys already know this. So getting to spend time with SEAL Team 6, and we talk about their courage and their amazingness and all of this, and their team ethic and their team ethos is so intense that it's not that they have raw courage and that they have no fear of dying. That's not what it is. It's that they fear letting down their team more than they fear dying.

29:45Simon Sinek:Think about that for a second. They fear letting down their team more than they fear dying. now translate that into business. We don't fear letting down our team. Can you imagine fearing letting down your team more than getting your bonus? That ethos. And by the way, these are the highest performing teams in the world. And this is what I don't understand, which is we're here. We have this amazing access to look at these organizations and say, hey, general world, look at what they're doing. You can do this too. And they don't.

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32:11Brené Brown:I had a really weird experience maybe five or six years ago when, no, no, it was longer than that. I'd been a decade now. Some new data had emerged from our research on courageous leadership, which was, and this will be interesting, and it's somewhat controversial, I think, but it was very clear in the data, that care for and connection with the people you lead is a non-negotiable prerequisite for leadership. If you do not care for, genuinely care for, and genuinely find yourself able to connect with the people you lead, you can't lead them well. And that's hard because I've led some people that I didn't feel connected to them at all.

32:52Brené Brown:And I actually, because of the research and trying to practice what we teach, I did end up moving their reporting lines, which is hard when you're the founder because it just feels like, But I'm like, we only have two options here. Yeah. And this move is going to be a better option for you.

33:09Simon Sinek:Can I share something that helped me solve for that? Yeah. Which was its narrative, right? So when you're having a meeting with a bunch of whoever's in the meeting, let's say the senior leaders in the meeting, and somebody's name comes up in the company and somebody will go, oh, such an idiot, right? And it happens. The lazy one, the underperformer, the Debbie death of a party, whoever it is, Debbie Downer. Donald Downer. Donald Downer.

33:38Brené Brown:I'm training Adam on the use of women's names and terrible things.

33:44Simon Sinek:Fair point. But we do. We create narratives. And what happens is even people who don't work with them, that's the narrative they have of that person now. So when they do interact with them, they're going to start treating them based on the narrative. And by the way, it happens everywhere. Like it happens when people are talking about their leaders. They're like, oh, you know, they're clueless. They're stupid. They don't get us, right? Whatever it is. And so I realized that we were doing it, right? And so new rule. I said, you know, we're human. We vent. It's fine. But if you're in a meeting where somebody is creating a narrative about somebody else, it is the responsibility of everybody else in the meeting to interrupt that narrative and simply say, hey, they may be lazy.

34:23Simon Sinek:They may also be stressed. They may also have stuff going on at home that we don't know about. We may have put them in the wrong job. They may be under-trained. They may be overworked. Or they may be lazy. It could be one of those things. And just by giving grace and allowing for more things to be on the list, we change the narratives. And once we started doing it as a senior team, because it became sort of a new rule, then I went to the whole organization and said, now this is a rule for the whole organization. If anybody creates narrative about anybody else, it's the responsibility of everybody else in that meeting to interrupt the narrative.

34:54Simon Sinek:And it helped tremendously because what it allowed for was when you have that tension with somebody and you just sometimes you just have personality clashes, even with people in your own team. It allows you instead of to form narrative about them to offer grace and be like, you know what, we just don't get along. It's probably me. But why don't I'm going to let you manage this issue with them because I'm going to get it wrong just for personality reasons. And it just offers this magical grace. And it's so easy to implement. And it has such disproportionate positive impact on the performance of the team.

35:26Brené Brown:I like it because when you adopt a courageous system, as opposed to asking some individuals to do that, you normalize it so the person that gets interrupted with it doesn't feel targeted. They're like, oh, shit, this is what we do. We just stop each other.

35:39Simon Sinek:It just becomes acculturated, yeah.

35:41Brené Brown:Yeah, and I think it's, yeah, so the care for and connected with, I didn't believe it at first, but then I saw it. And then I ended up on an Air Force base working with a squadron of fighter pilots. And I went to the general, who was this very, very serious guy. And I said, listen, I just want to let you know that I'm going to have to talk about care for and connection with as a prerequisite for leadership. And he said, why are you telling me this, ma 'am? And I said, I'm a little concerned. I'm not concerned. I just want to make sure you know that this is coming. And he said, that is a very low bar for us.

36:17Brené Brown:And I said, what do you mean? And he said, we don't require care for and connection with, we require deep appreciation and deep loving relationship for the people you lead. And I said, say more. And he said, that's how we stay alive. and I was I thought to myself I have never I can't even get care for and connection with love I can't even get that by are through the corporate sector

36:46Simon Sinek:this is what the corporate world doesn't understand I was hanging out with marines and talking to a general who's responsible of all marine corps training officer and enlisted and he's a warrior he's infantry he's been deployed multiple times over the course of his career You know, he's a hardened dude. And I said, what is the secret to the Marine Corps? Why are you guys so good at what you do? And he said, love. Love of country, love of Corps, love of your fellow Marine. And the Marines are constantly referring to the intangibles. And what they mean is all this mushy, mushy stuff that they, you know, loyalty, love, and these, and they just call them the intangibles because they're just hard to measure.

37:27Simon Sinek:He was unabashed about saying love was the secret sauce of the Marine Corps. I think there's a nuance here that often gets overlooked, which is you can dislike people and still care about them. I think that's true. 100%. It's one of the most important lessons I've learned as a teacher. I will never forget one day our daughter Elena, I think she was eight or nine. She came and she said, I wonder if I'm my teacher's favorite. And I said, Elena, teachers do not have favorites. Your job is to like every student, just like you wouldn't have a favorite parent. And she looked at me and she said, or would I?

38:03and it was hilarious but it also really got me thinking and it was it was an uncomfortably honest moment for me where I realized you know what there are students I like more than others of course like the student who comes prepared to class who raises their hand enthusiastically who challenges constructively as opposed to you know just complaining about every idea that that they don't like um those students obviously are easier to like but my job is to care about every one of them and try to help them grow and succeed. And the effort that it takes to figure out, okay, what is it about that student that is worthy of support?

38:41What can I do to help that student become better? Inevitably leads to something that makes them less dislikable.

38:48Simon Sinek:I think this is a, I love this because what you're talking about is the dichotomy of two different things. It's kind of like joy and happiness, you know, or fulfillment and happiness, you know, where happiness is, you know, is fleeting. You have a nice meal, you see a good movie, happy, you know, and it comes and goes. But joy and fulfillment can be more of a constant even on bad days. You know, it's like you love your kids every day. You don't like your kids every day. And so I think people think of these things as interchangeable where they're not, you know, and you, to your point, like you can like people more.

39:19Simon Sinek:That's okay. You definitely like some people more than others, but you can care for

39:22Brené Brown:everybody at the same time.

39:24Simon Sinek:Like they can coexist, these two lines. And I think it's really important to make those distinctions because people think they have to choose one over the other. I think romantic relationships are the best example of this. How many of you like your partner every day? Those of you who have a partner. Okay. Pierre, your partner's in the room. Where's Eve's? Very, very few people would honestly raise their hand on that.

39:49Brené Brown:I've been with Steve for 40 years. Like, no. I mean, yeah, we don't. We love each other deeply every day. But do we like each other? No, we frustrate each other immensely sometimes. I mean, I don't frustrate him, but like. I have a friend, Jared, who said you just have to win the week. Like, just be liked four out of seven days, and that's a successful relationship.

40:15Simon Sinek:So here's a question for you. I'm changing. you just sort of spurred a thought. Do you want to win or do you fear losing? Like, do you like to win or do you fear losing? In what domain? Just as a motivator, as a personality. Yes. I think it's different. Some people like hate losing and some people love winning. Do you know which one you are?

40:37Brené Brown:Oh, you know what? I am driven almost solely by mastery on the court. And so for me, I'd rather lose a game where I learned than win a game that was easy.

40:54Simon Sinek:Different conversation.

40:56Brené Brown:Maybe it's so foreign to me, this idea that you're -

40:59Simon Sinek:No, but do you get more excited by the win and you're like, okay, well, I lost? Or do you hate losing, but when you win, you're like, I won. Oh, no.

41:09Brené Brown:I like to win.

41:11Simon Sinek:So you love the win.

41:11Brené Brown:I love the win. I mean, I'm going to tell you this. I was playing pickleball. This was a couple months ago. And it was open play. So you just stack your paddles and you go on with a random doubles partner. And I'm playing and we're down like 6-0. And this kid is like 30. And I look at him. I'm like, son, you need to lock in. And he was like, I'm sorry. I said, I need you to lock in. Focus. And he said, ma 'am, it's a game. It's fun. And I was like, no, winning is fun. and he's like okay and I said another thing if you're gonna come across and get my ball that's great I love that move make sure you make it otherwise I got the ball on this side and he was like got it lock in stay on my side unless I can make it and he's like okay so they never scored again and we ended up winning 11-6 and then we went back I was like let's stack our paddles together and he's like I don't think so so I was like wait what I'm learning now we already concluded we can't play against each other we can't play on the same team either it depends on your game.

42:10Simon Sinek:So do you like to win or do you hate to lose? I think I hate to lose more. Yeah. You? I think I hate to lose more. Really? Yeah.

42:21Brené Brown:Oh, I don't mind losing. If it's a good fight, I love it. I just want a good fight.

42:27Simon Sinek:Trying to think. Because I'm not, I'm more competitive against myself than I am against other people.

42:33Brené Brown:Yeah.

42:33Simon Sinek:And so if I do well, I'm like, all right, on to the next. Like, there we go.

42:39Brené Brown:like okay oh no i got sellies for everything i'm like let's go you want to pet that dog i'm like i've got all i've got a selly i don't know every move i don't have any of that you know i get the

42:49Simon Sinek:rush of course i get the dopamine rush of a win of course but it doesn't last very long and then i go home let's go yeah like don't care about trophies or medals or anything about that no i

42:57Brené Brown:don't care about those yeah i just care about the shit the shit talk yeah yeah that's my that's my love language my love language is uh sports trash talk yeah i'm gonna sit next to me at ut football baby.

43:08Simon Sinek:And the reason I hate to lose is because if it's on me, right, I'm like, I could have done better. But if I lose to somebody who genuinely played a great game and bested me, then there's lessons and I'm good with it. But because I'm pushing myself, I hate to lose. You're the same, you hate to lose? I think you're, yeah.

43:23Brené Brown:What are y 'all, raise your hand if you're a love to win, driven by the love of winning. And then raise your hand if you're a hate to lose person.

43:30Simon Sinek:It's about 50-50.

43:32Brené Brown:Wait, just do that again. I just want to do a quick analysis. Raise your hand if you're a love to win, hold them up. Okay, nevermind. Okay. You're my people, first of all, but secondly, there's not a gender divide. But I do want to get a click real quick one more time about if I'm looking for like a paddle or pickleball partner, who I'm picking the winners. I don't know. I will say there are two personality traits that predict where people stand on this. Introversion, extroversion is one, and then emotional reactivity, stability is the other. Oh, shit. So, no, I think... Because we're both introverts.

44:08Are you an introvert too? Oh, yeah.

44:09Brené Brown:I test author charts and introversion. Like, this is fun, but don't come up and talk to me afterwards if I don't know you because I'll get really anxious. And I'm happy to talk to you afterward, but definitely not before because I don't know what we're going to talk about.

44:22Simon Sinek:And I'm happy to talk to you, but not as a group, just one-on-one. We have a lot of rules around social interaction here. No, I just hate groups. Like, I went to a party last night. You should probably study them. I know. I went to a party last night, and I very quickly left when I realized there were a lot of people there. I mean. I've never been to an after party in my life. You and I had that interaction last year. You just walked out. There was a party, and then there was an after party. And Adam was getting ready to go to the after party. And I went up to him and said, hey, I'm going back to the hotel.

44:53Simon Sinek:Good night. Good to see you. And he's like, you're not going to the after party? I'm like, no, no, never going to the after parties. And he says, how do you just leave? I went, just leave. I have, yeah. And you went. I felt like I was going to let my team down otherwise. I told people I was going. They probably don't care if I should.

45:09Brené Brown:No, it's really funny because when I'd go do events, you know how they'll say the list of things that they'd like for you to do? And we have a standing policy. Brene doesn't do dinners. And then some people will push back and say, does she eat? We had a new person we hired right at the college who returned an email. It was like a Fortune 20 company. And it was directly in the CEO's office. And she just put, yes, but not with y 'all. I was like, so that's not how we answer that. But I do think it's like a social, like this is fun for me and we could talk about a lot of -

45:45Simon Sinek:But you and I are cheating because we're like, there's a, like it's, I mean, it's the three of us chatting, which we like.

45:51Brené Brown:Oh no, I do love that. And I can talk about work stuff all day long with people. But like if a disco ball came down and people started drinking, I'd be like -

46:00Simon Sinek:It's not that I can't do it. It just drains the social battery much quicker. Like one-on-one I can go for quite a while. But if there's a group of people, like a dinner table or a room full of people, and I have to speak louder, especially because it's noisy and loud, and it just drains the social battery a lot quicker. So I'll just have to go home sooner. So introverts get overstimulated faster than extroverts. And one of the greatest stimulants in life is eye contact, just having other people look at you.

46:24Brené Brown:Really? Really. I'm exhausted. I'm dysregulated. But I'm trying to be mindful.

46:35Can we go back to one thing that I've been thinking about for at least 20 minutes now? Simon, you were saying we study these elite organizations that teach us how to do things like care and build connection and how critical that is to performance. Why don't other organizations listen? And this has been a frustration for me for two decades. My current hypothesis, and I would love to hear your reactions and yours, is a lot of them are falling victim to organizational uniqueness bias. They hear Navy SEALs, or they hear Pixar, or they hear pick your favorite extreme case. And they think, well, we're not like them.

47:15We can't do that. They have a special culture. They hire special people. That doesn't apply to us. Not realizing, it's kind of like saying, well, I can't learn anything from an Olympic athlete about how to improve my workout. That is the person you want to learn from, and then you have to tailor it to you. I wonder, how does that track with what you see? What are the barriers? How do you overcome that bias?

47:38Simon Sinek:I think it's simpler. I just think it's misaligned incentives. I think it goes back to the Charlie Munger, show me how someone's paid and I'll show you how they behave. I think incentive structures are so screwed up, good intentions, bad intentions, biases. I don't think any of it matters. they'll do what they're incentivized to do.

48:00Brené Brown:I think it's a greedy quarter issue. I think it's interesting because what we do specifically is we don't do adaptive change or incremental change. If I'm going into an organization, we've assessed them for a long time and they're ready for transformation and they want transformation. What people don't understand about transformation is you will break some shit if you're trans. That is the definition of transformation. You are going to assess existing systems and break the ones that do not serve and desperately protect the ones that serve. And no one, even in your immediate team at the C-suite level, will agree what systems need to be broken and which ones you need to keep.

48:42Brené Brown:And then you're going to go through a very rigorous three-year... The poet David White has this great definition of, and I might get it wrong, but it's the great definition of transformation, to hit the wall at full velocity and watch things fall apart. That's how he defines transformation. And that's what happens in organizations. It's not unusual in a transformation for there to be a 30 to 60 % churn of leaders that report up to the C-suite. Because what's happening, I think, and this goes to your question, it's systems theory, which was the fifth of the core, the top when we were talking about the five top leadership skills.

49:20Brené Brown:If you are not engaged deeply in systems thinking right now, I don't think you can play to win. And if you were a systems thinker and you got away from it, you need to revisit the scholarship on systems thinking. But one of the biggest things I think that helps with systems thinking is this iceberg model of problem identification, that above the water we see a problem, and this is where as leaders we attack. We attack what we see. But underneath the iceberg are several other layers. One is behavior. The next one is structures and systems. The deeper you go for change, the more leverage and lasting and meaningful the change.

49:57The bottom layer is mental models.

50:00Brené Brown:What is the mental model from which people work? And a mental model, when I go in and I'm talking to a CEO about a potential transformation and we go through this assessment and the second I hear that a mental model has to change in a group of people, I'm like, this is going to take three years. It's going to be very difficult transformation because a mental model is the way we make sense of the world and it's how we assess our value in a corporation or in any organization. To change mental models is absolutely, to excavate them to begin with is hard, but then to change them is very hard.

50:38Simon Sinek:You're touching upon something that I think is also essential because you're talking about three-year as the timeframe, which is ish, right? It should happen within three years. But I think the insight there for me is the letting go of I can't predict when. I mean, most companies don't implement my work. And the reason is is because I can't tell you when it's going to work. I know 100 % it works. Like if I know that if you work out every single day for 20 minutes, 100 % of people will get into shape. Can't tell you when and neither can any doctor. And you just have to sort of, you have the discipline and you stick to it and you can have good days and bad days and can take days off, but it will work.

51:16Simon Sinek:And so when we go through these, these transformations that we're able to sort of guide people through or guide organizations through, the big challenge they have is they want or need it to work by the end of the calendar year, the end of the fiscal year. and so it might but I can't promise that it will and because I can't promise that it will then they want a model that that will at least appear that the change has been made on their time frame and that's like saying it's like going on a first date and saying on this date on the calendar you and I will be in love it's like it may happen that way but I can't predict that it will all of the things that you and the three of us talk about we talk about process and discipline and sticking to it.

51:56Simon Sinek:Good days and bad days are allowed. Like you can have chocolate cake even when you're on a diet, just don't do it every day. And the minute you can let go of when it has to happen and just stick to the process, invariably it almost always happens.

52:10Brené Brown:And I'll tell you that, I mean, you cannot predict it. And this is -

52:13Simon Sinek:But most people can't let go of that.

52:15Brené Brown:They can't let go of it. That's a failed mental model. It's a failed mental model. I need to know within 90 days or six months that this is gonna work.

52:21Simon Sinek:This has to work in 12 months, otherwise I've wasted my money. It was like, well, it might, but I don't know.

52:26Brené Brown:Here's what's shocking to us. When we do a Dare to Lead transformation, we only measure for 18 months on performance metrics, no cultural metrics. We're everything from organic growth, stock price, and we start to see them within six to nine months on those metrics. Cultural metrics are like the falling in love. That takes a lot longer, but we measure performance metrics right off the bat, and those we can see change because we're teaching people how to have hard conversations. We're teaching people how to - You're starting to see the evidence towards -

52:53Simon Sinek:Very quickly. Those performance metrics are evidence towards the cultural change. But they're not the change themselves. And the problem is because you can measure those in the short term, too many organizations will only measure those in the short term, declare success, end the process, and the whole thing collapses. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's, I'm telling you, it's...

53:10Brené Brown:This is infinite thinking. It's infinite thinking. Yeah.

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54:46Brené Brown:All right, let's take some questions. We will cold call if we have to. I will not, but... I will. Yeah, he will. Yes. I have a question regarding shame and talking about it and getting people to think about it and stuff, which I find very, very helpful when it comes to leading organizations. My question is, how do I talk about it with kids? Okay. Renee, how do we talk about shame with kids? So the question is, I find the work interesting about shame and how it applies to leadership and talking about it in organizations. How do we talk about it with kids? Did I play that back correctly? Okay. So one of the things that's really important just right now I will say about shame in organizations, you have to remember, I don't have to do anything, but I would suggest it's really important to hold in mind right now that the number one shame trigger professionally for us is the fear of shame.

55:43Brené Brown:fear of irrelevance. So imagine the levels of shame in organizations right now. And it's not just about AI. It is about everything that's happening at one time and people not understanding. I will tell you this. This is one of the questions I had was, what are you seeing for the first time that you've never seen before? And my answer is for the first time in over 25 years of doing this work, I am seeing the C-suite more frustrated with the level, the leaders that report directly to them than any other level of leaders in the organization. Not the frozen middle, not the folks that report up to the senior leaders underneath, but those senior leaders and why.

56:27Brené Brown:Because they are really the mental model of the senior leadership right now is the most painful to excavate because they put their value on being knowers, not on being learners. And their learning agility is lower right now than any other level in an organization.

56:47Simon Sinek:That's good.

56:48Brené Brown:100%. And so it's a really scary time for very senior people. With kids, I think the most important thing is to not mystify it. Just to say, I was at a conference and I talked to this woman who studies shame, and this is what I'm learning. I think it's interesting. Shame is, I think the easiest way to talk to kids is the basics. It's the same way I talk to adults, really. Shame is I am bad. Guilt is I did something bad. Shame is a focus on ourselves. Guilt is a focus on behavior. So if you get a bad grade, you get a paperback and you look at it and you got a D and you say, God, I'm so stupid. That's shame.

57:29Brené Brown:If you get the paperback and you get a D and you're like, wow, going out last night and not studying for this test was really stupid, that's a focus on behavior and that's guilt. Why is it important in parenting? Because in the first longitudinal nested cohort studies of kids, we see that shame-bound kids are more likely to have significant struggles with alcohol, drugs, sexual irresponsibility, aggression, depression, suicidal attempts, I mean, across the board. guilt-prone kids, this is what the crazy part of the study is, even less likely to engage in those behaviors than the general population.

58:16Brené Brown:So the way we measure shame and guilt is by self-talk. When something goes wrong, how do I talk to myself? We believe that the number one variable that presented, that predicted self-talk was parenting style. So your kid does something and you say, God, you're so stupid versus riding your bike up that ramp with your friends was a really stupid thing to do. Very big difference. Today, I think we're beginning to question whether the parenting style is the big predictor of the only one because we can have siblings within one family that are wired different for it.

58:57Simon Sinek:There's a great leadership lesson here as well. it's a it's a military story um there was um on base a bunch of young officers who were in an elite school um went out partying and they took a a junior enlisted with them and um they came back on base and one of the young officers was driving the car and was afraid of getting stopped by the cops on base for drunk driving so they told the junior enlisted you drive and so she took the wheel. They got pulled over by the cops. She got breathalyzed. She was over the limit. She got arrested. And it turned out also later on that the officer, one of the officers and the enlisted were dating, which is forbidden military code.

59:37Brené Brown:This just keeps getting worse. Right.

59:38Simon Sinek:So as a result of all of this happening, these young officers were ejected from this elite program and their senior officer had to sit down with them and, you know, they got in trouble. And you think about sort of how people get in trouble from their parents or people get in trouble from their bosses at work. We say things like, how can you be so stupid? You have destroyed your career. What were you thinking? Right? We say things like that. We do. And what I found was so amazing when I heard this story was these wonderful human beings are driven by service, giving of themselves to others and the pride of sacrifice for others.

1:00:17Simon Sinek:And that same mentality works the other way. and the way they got in trouble the senior officer sat down with them and said do you have any idea how many people you've let down you've let down your parents for believing in you you've let down your team members for believing in you you've let down me like do you realize how many people you've let down because of your actions and this idea of like you take risks to support the team but you manage your behavior because you'll let down the team as opposed to how can you be so stupid and And the idea of connecting it to the greater good, I thought was way more powerful, so intense to hear that.

1:00:53Simon Sinek:And to your point, which is the idea of guilt is more likely to regulate the behavior rather than calling you stupid or calling you this or calling you that. I find it so fascinating.

1:01:03Brené Brown:So what's interesting there is how that message hits. So if that message hits, I've engaged in a series of behaviors that let down people that are important to me. that's probably an indicator of behavior change. If that message, which is as likely hits as, I am a disappointment to the people I care about most, that is a super detrimental trauma-based response. So it really depends on, that's why the parenting piece is really important because by the time you're this person and you're probably in your early twenties,

1:01:40Simon Sinek:They're probably in their early 30s.

1:01:41Brené Brown:Early 30s. Yeah. You're going to have a filing system internally for whether you're going to accept that is, I made some decisions that disappointed a lot of people or I am a disappointment.

1:01:52Simon Sinek:Yeah.

1:01:53Brené Brown:And that, how do you change what you inherently are?

1:01:56Simon Sinek:But we know this, like when there's somebody that we admire, like, you know, when we look up to our boss or to a friend and they say, I'm so disappointed, you know, like that, when we want to do right by people, like that hurts more than you're a disappointment or you're an idiot, you know? I have to drop in a study here. Do you know the study by the sociologist O 'Linner and O 'Linner on Holocaust rescuers? Oh, I love this study. So this husband and wife sociology team, they look at hundreds of non-Jews who rescued Jews sticking their own necks out and putting their lives on the line during the Holocaust and compared them with bystanders who are in the same towns and did nothing.

1:02:34And the question was, what differentiated the people who were willing to engage in these potentially self-sacrificing heroic acts from their peers? And many, many hypotheses not supported. Basically, the adults were similar in many more ways than they were different. One of the differences was when you looked at the parenting that they'd been exposed to as kids, the rescuers were punished at lower rates for misbehavior than the bystanders. But the parents didn't do nothing. When the rescuers did something disappointing, the parents highlighted the consequences of the behavior for others. It's exactly the point you're making.

1:03:09They said, hey, when you stayed out late, I was really worried. And I didn't know where you were. And I didn't know if you were safe. And I didn't know if I could reach you. And they taught the kids to reflect on the impact of their behavior on others and realize, wow, every action I take has consequences for other people. and you fast forward the clock 20, 30 years and you see someone who's being persecuted and that message sticks.

1:03:35Brené Brown:There's gotta be some kind of confounding variable of empathy in there too. Because I mean, one of the things we teach kids around what you do can affect other people. Like that's a really big part of how we teach empathy, which by the way, is the antidote to shame. So if you put empathy in a Petri dish, I mean, if you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially judgment secrecy and silence but if you put shame in a petri dish and you douse it with empathy you've created a hostile environment for shame shame cannot survive empathy so that that kind of connection and disappointment it

1:04:11Simon Sinek:teaches it teaches everything we're talking about in this entire podcast which is we're talking about service we're talking about that your actions have repercussions for others you know good and bad we're talking about connection we're talking about that this is a team sport you know Business is a team sport. Life is a team sport. It's a beautiful, it sort of ties a nice little bow in it. We should take some more audience questions and also give shorter answers.

1:04:32Brené Brown:Here and then here. Really quick, you just talked about empathy is the antithesis to shame. What about a human that has deep, deep empathy, but the self-talk is always shame oriented? So in the same body, you have deep empathy, a deep feeler, but also someone who is very, very self-critical. So let me play back the question to make sure that I've got it right. You are asking, what about someone who has a deep capacity for empathy, but also has kind of internal shaming messaging? Empathy almost to a fault. So empathy to a fault often stops being empathy. So empathy to a fault almost becomes enmeshment and taking care of others.

1:05:24And that's really quickly a very short walk to shame.

1:05:29Brené Brown:Does that make sense? So I am no longer, Simon calls me. And so this is really, this is one of the things we talk, Adam and I talk about a lot because there's a big attack on empathy right now, especially in the US, which would make perfect sense politically. I mean, it'd be easier to get away with the bullshit if no one cared for anybody else. So I understand the attack on empathy personally, not speaking for my co-hosts. But empathy, there's two types of empathy. And when you hear people attacking empathy, they use a type of empathy that is actually fairly detrimental. And the types of empathy are cognitive empathy and affective empathy.

1:06:09Brené Brown:So cognitive empathy is you call me and you say, shit, do you have a minute? I'm like, yeah, what's going on? And you tell me something really hard and I'm like, oh God, what a shit show. I'm so sorry that happened. I'm unloading the dishwasher when you call. I am not feeling what you're saying. Affective empathy is taking on the feelings of another person. I'm not like if you're, if you are calling me with a sense of despair, I am not all of a sudden in my kitchen unloading the dishwasher, putting myself awash in despair so I can connect with you. I am cognitively connecting to my understanding of what despair is.

1:06:48Brené Brown:And I'm going to be there with you and for you, but I'm not taking on your emotion. So that is cognitive empathy. What leads to burnout and compassion fatigue is affective empathy. I'm going to feel what everyone's feeling. So when you say really, you know, so it's affective empathy. Then what happens is you call me, you're in despair. I'm labeling that as an emotion because it's a hard one. I take on your despair. And now I'm filling myself with shame self-talk because I can't fix you. You called me from a dark, deep hole. My job is not to jump in it with you. My job is to say, I see you. Let me really see you.

1:07:36Brené Brown:I take a ladder out of my backpack. I put it in the hole. I go down. I see you. I say, I care about you. I say, you're not alone. And then I get back on my ladder and I go. Otherwise, we just have two suckers in a dark hole. So that's how shame is related to over to enmeshment or what I would say is taking on the emotions of other people.

1:07:59Simon Sinek:A little red flag here. I've seen this in businesses and companies where we had somebody quit. And one of our great, like we loved her, we were like amazing, amazing, amazing human being. And she quit and we were like, what's the reason you're quitting? She says, I'm burnt out. And we're like, we know your workload. Like, what? You know, like, well, how's burnout? And what we discovered when we sort of like went and sort of investigated is she's an empath. And when other members of the team discovered she was an empath, they all went to her with their problems. and so she was taking on everybody's problems and everybody loved to go and dump their personal problems.

1:08:33Simon Sinek:I've had a fight with my parents. I'm having a fight with my spouse, whatever it was. And she took on everybody to the point where she couldn't hack it anymore and she left. And I've talked about it publicly and people have come up to me and said, oh my God, I go to somebody. I take advantage of them. I'm dumping all my problems on them and it's creating burnout in companies even though it has nothing to do with their workload. Peter, oh, sorry.

1:08:53Brené Brown:You go ahead, no. Peter Frost studied this. He called it being a toxin handler and found that that role is critical for an organization, but if it gets located in one person, that person is going to burn out. It reminds me, what was the series that, I might be aging myself here for sure, I'm aging myself. What was the weird? No, but no, of that genre, you're right. Hey, I love Bonanza. I love Bonanza too. Okay, watch it. I can hum the theme. I can hum the theme too. I love Bonanza. No, but it's of that black and white television, kind of weird and freaky things would happen.

1:09:24Simon Sinek:Twilight Zone. Twilight Zone.

1:09:26Brené Brown:there's an episode of the Twilight Zone where there's a character called the Sin Eater. And he just goes from village to village eating the sad stories of the village. And I always think about that when I think about the wrong use of empathy. Okay, next question. Can we just send a ladder down to the person so they can climb out ever? Because that's what I always want to do.

1:09:50Simon Sinek:No. I mean, you have to ask them. This is the thing that I've learned about like doing the right thing for somebody in the time that they need it. And, and, and like the, the thing that I found remarkable is a people know what they need and B you can adjust in the middle. So I remember I was in a, I was in a bad place. I called a friend. I'm like, Hey, do you have a minute? Can I just talk it through with you? And she started fixing. And I said, I don't need you to fix it right now. I just need you to like, shut up and listen. I just need to, and she, and, and, and the adjustment was made. I was good.

1:10:19Simon Sinek:Or if she couldn't, then I had to get off the phone. But, and, and I've now learned that. So when somebody comes to me and says, blah, blah, blah, blah, I need to talk. I go, do you want me to fix or do you want me to hold space? And they go, uh, I need you to hold space. And so they, I find that it's, we don't have to guess. Like people know what they want in the time and you can just ask.

1:10:37Brené Brown:Huge. But I only see this in organizations or on teams where there's high levels of trust. Yeah. Like I have sisters. So it'll be, my sister will call and be like, Hey, do you have a second? And I'm like, yeah. And she goes, I'm, I'm really upset. And I was like, listen fix or bury a body she goes man grab a shovel I'm like on my way I don't even need to know who you killed or where we're going I got the shovel and a big trunk you know like but that requires or sometimes my sisters will call and say do you have a minute I'm like yeah this is gonna be hard and I said okay I'm gonna tell you what's going on and I'm gonna hang up and don't you fucking call me back and I'm like well what do you want me to do just listen to it and I'll call you back when I want to talk to you, but I just need to say it out loud.

1:11:17Brené Brown:I'm like, go. Then I'm like, and then she's gone. So, so I think asking. It's so, it's such a magical thing and people know what they need. And it's a trust earner. And they can change.

1:11:30Simon Sinek:They can change. Like, okay, I've now said it. Now, can you give me some fixings?

1:11:33Brené Brown:You did this the other day. I called you. Yeah. I called you and I was like, I'm so upset. And you're like, what would be helpful right now? And I said, call me back when you're ready for a ladder. No, and I think I, you know, my husband's a pediatrician. It's really interesting because he said he has to ask because even with the same patient and the same 10 minutes, a parent will be like, I just, I like it when you just listen and you're, you know, and then sometimes he'll just say, I'm just going to listen. They'll be like, is this why I'm here? I'm paying you for just listening. What's the answer?

1:12:03Brené Brown:And he's like, oh shit, have we moved on from the just listening empathy? He's like, yeah, we're in the God-like doctor state now. How are you going to fix this? He's like, shifting gears. Question. I have a question regarding your view on the impact of AI. Earlier you said about, you know, AI is not going to replace your job by somebody using AI. And I think a couple of weeks ago, at a conference in Palo Alto, where the main investors and leaders in the space were talking about it in a very different opinion. And James Suhuan was interesting because he said it's more about purpose of a job versus the task of a job.

1:12:41You named the example of a radiologist, which the task can be tightly replaced by an analytical part, which takes most of the time. But the purpose of the job, like healing disease, is elevated to now that more radiologists than ever before. So I was just wondering about your view on the impact of communications. Okay, so the question is, how is AI going to affect our jobs? I think that Jensen is onto something. We were with him not too long ago. And I think, look, I've been studying job design for 25 years. Most leaders define a job as a collection of tasks. And that's only half of the puzzle.

1:13:28Jobs are also collections of relationships. And so when we map what somebody is supposed to do at work, We have to think about what is each project and assignment that needs to get done, but also what is all the communication and coordination that needs to happen? I think the radiologist's job is such an interesting example of this because what I think even three years ago, as soon as generative AI burst onto the scene, people said radiologists are going to cease to exist. And it is true that a large language model can substitute for some of the tasks that a radiologist does. But there are other tasks that still require human judgment.

1:14:02I know I would not go to an AI radiologist solely, right? I want a human to look over it, just like I want a human in the cockpit, even though autopilot is doing most of the work on a plane. But also there's a whole collection of relationships that really matter there. There's the radiologist seeking a second opinion from another radiologist. There's the coordination with a whole team of experts. There's the interaction with the patient. I don't think we're ready to outsource that. And so I think that's an evolution of a job to maybe subtract a task or two and add a task or two and maybe increase the interaction complexity as part of it.

1:14:34And I think that's probably where jobs are going, but I don't have a crystal ball and anyone who says they do is lying to you or themselves.

1:14:41Simon Sinek:Or they have a vested interest. Yeah.

1:14:44Brené Brown:I mean, you were in the mothership. I agree 100 % with everything you said. I think that I'm a tech optimist and an early AI user. So I interact with AI. I mean, I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is I get a four-page brief from an agent that knows me better than I know myself. Sometimes it was weird that I get a four-page brief from an AI every morning that gives me the geopolitical impact on all the organizations I'm working with, any news that I need to understand, stock analysis of investor calls, things that I need to know for my job. and I've used it for a while. I also have an agent, like a personal agent that I'll say, is it true I saw on Instagram that I can stop using retinol if I eat more carrots?

1:15:33Brené Brown:And then it'll come back and say, sometimes it's hard for me to believe you're a social scientist. You are the biggest sucker. Stay off social media and keep using the stack we put together a year ago. Like that's what it'll say to me. Or I'll say, there's a new paddle out. I need to buy it. and they'll say, you need to work on your game. You don't like drilling. So I'm a fan and I use it for things. What it will never replace, at least not, I don't think, I don't think you'll ever replace this, is discernment, is deep discernment. And so the radiologist is really interesting because let's say you have a film that is alarming and it can give you percentages and predictions about that film.

1:16:17Brené Brown:But what I need is that radiologist talking to my primary care doctor, who's also talking to my cardiologist, who's also talking to this person in a consult about the real, not just statistics of what we can do and what different protocol outcomes are, but here's what's important to Brene. She talks in terms of healthspan more than lifespan. She's on a court six days a week. This is what makes sense for her. That I don't think we'll ever be able to replace. The thing that I think is most alarming to me is that people say, and this goes back to our very beginning, people say over and over, we don't need to worry because what will save us from AI taking over our world and our jobs is what makes us human.

1:17:07Brené Brown:But we are shit at what makes us human. the welchian era brought in a deep-seated belief you and i've talked about this before that actually what makes us human is a detriment to performance and that has that has turned out to be wholly false across all of the research studies which is why there are more radiologists

1:17:30Simon Sinek:today than there were pre-ai right technologists um god bless them always leave the people out you know when the rise of internet and we're all old enough to remember this you know they were saying it's the death of bricks and mortar but they forgot that human beings like to hunt and gather and we like to go shopping you know and so the business model of bricks and mortar is different that's a that's a numbers game but we like to go shopping and you saw these stores that amazon put up that are now going away because there's no people in them and like we would rather go to a supermarket and ask the kid who's stocking the shells like hey where's the mustard than we would just like pull out our phone and look up mustard.

1:18:07Simon Sinek:We want that human interaction. You know, Whole Foods had a thing where you could do a palm reader, like at the checkout. And all you do is do your palm. It connects to your Amazon account, gives you your discounts that you're supposed to get, connects with your credit card, and you just pay. And it's great and wonderful. And they got rid of all of them because of low adoption. And people still stand in line for a human being checkout where we could all just go to the auto checkout, but we don't. We don't. We like human interaction. And going back to the radiologist, medicine is not just about data.

1:18:34Simon Sinek:Medicine is human. That's my life you're talking about. And we always complain about the doctor that has a terrible bedside manner. Well, imagine having a doctor with no bedside manner, right? Where here's the data, here's the prescription go. You know, you want the compassion. You want the doctor that cares. You know, you want the customer service agent that cares. You want to feel that somebody cares about you. A human being cares about me. I feel seen and heard. And that is irreplaceable by technology. So technology living alongside the human being, we all love that. But these grand prediction of replacement, none of us want that.

1:19:12Simon Sinek:That leads, if you want any prediction, I'll make one prediction about the adoption of AI. If it goes according to what the technologists and the AI zealots say, my prediction is you will see massive increases over the course of the next 10 years of depression, anxiety, and suicide. Massive rates of suicide going up. Why? Because you took the people away from social animals. And we're completely forgetting that it's not making our lives easy. What it's doing is making us more productive, which means there's going to be greater demands in our time. So I have a friend who's a photographer. So when she does a photo shoot, then she does retouching for the client.

1:19:46Simon Sinek:She's using AI. Photoshop has amazing AI tools. She can do massive amounts more, much quicker, much better, much easier. I said, do you have more time? Isn't it better, don't you live AI? She said, absolutely not. Now my clients want their deadlines shorter and they want more work. And now there's just an expectation. Instead of doing 10 photographs in a week, I have to do 100 photographs in a week. So all it does is change the bar of expectation. But her workload, she's working exactly the same amount. She's just producing more. So I think the one thing I would just be cautious of is human beings want human beings in our lives.

1:20:20Simon Sinek:And it's totally fine to have technology help us, but it's not going to replace us. We will rebel against it or watch that suicide number go up.

1:20:29Brené Brown:And we're rebelling now. Look at the commencement addresses in the United States.

1:20:32Simon Sinek:Oh yeah, yeah. Booing.

1:20:33Brené Brown:Where technologists took the stage and got booed by students who we did our last podcast on it. Like why? I mean, we've been college professors. I'm going on year 30. Like what people want is moral imagination.

1:20:48Simon Sinek:What connection and belonging. Yeah. And love. You want to feel seen and understood and everything we're talking about. But, you know, it's so funny when you're talking about it in a business context, people are like, that's mushy. That's not productive. But as soon as you take it out of a business context, everyone's like, that's what I want, you know?

1:21:03Brené Brown:This is a good place to end. Thank you all for coming. And Simon, thanks for joining the Curiosity Shop. Thank you all.

1:21:10Simon Sinek:Good time.

1:21:12Brené Brown:I loved our conversation. It was fun. And I love the conversation from the folks in the room. What do you think, Adam? Yeah, I'm still thinking about a few of the questions. We might have to do a follow-up. Oh, we should. That would be great. Just a reminder to y 'all that we're going on a hiatus, but stay on because we're going to give you five of our best kind of Adam and I together. Another one with me, Adam and Simon. So stay on the feed. We'll be back July 30th. And if you want more information about Simon, including where you can find him, where you can follow him, where you can learn more, go to thecuriosityshop.com, our podcast website, and we will see you.

1:21:55Brené Brown:Have a wonderful five-week summer, and we'll be back. Can't wait. The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brene 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 at podcast.voxmedia.com. Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.

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