Brené Brown on the State of Leadership in America Today

I'm fixing to change your life.

Like,

your wife and your kids are going to be like new Kara.

Doubt it.

Hashtag Brene Brown saved us.

Okay.

Literally, same person since 1962, but go ahead, try.

Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.

My guest today is Brene Brown, a professor at the University of Houston and the University of Texas, the author of six number one New York Times bestsellers, and the host of the podcast, Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead.

Brene has a new book called Strong Ground that explores what courageous and collaborative leadership looks like during these turbulent times.

Her work is grounded in rigorous academic research and work she's done consulting Fortune 500 CEOs and leaders around the world.

And I'm excited to talk to her because I just love Brene Brown.

We met many years ago.

She was a fan of Pivot, and she contacted me.

We've done several interviews.

She's interviewed me, and I just think she's such a fresh thinker about a lot of things.

We disagree on a lot of things, including being vulnerable.

She thinks I am.

I disagree with her vehemently.

But before we get into our interview, On with Kara Swisher is nominated for a Signal Award in the news and politics category.

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The live tour runs November 8th through the 14th, and it hits Toronto, Boston, New York, DC, Chicago, San Francisco, and LA.

All right, let's get to the interview.

Our expert question comes from the other BB, Bobby Brown.

So stick around.

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Brene, thanks for coming on on.

Thanks for having me on on.

Anytime that I have the opportunity to get vulnerable with you, I'm in.

Oh, God.

You need to stop with the vulnerabilities.

I'm tough.

I'm resilient.

Have you ever watched yourself talk about your children?

I know, it's true.

I'm vulnerable about my children.

We're going to talk about Strong Ground, which is a book about leadership, which comes at a perfect time, actually, because what a leader is, is really changed.

And even if they're leading, they may not be good leaders, et cetera.

It's chaotic.

Social media has upended how we communicate.

AI is threatening to upend how we work.

And President Trump is reshaping both the presidency and the country in ways that can be very difficult to undo.

You could argue that we're in a leadership crisis and Trump is leading America down a treacherous path, and the country's most powerful CEOs line up to flatter him, presumably so that he doesn't regulate their products.

It happens every day.

It just happened the other day with Google in terms of payoffs.

It happens with pretty much everyone.

But talk about your assessment of the state of American leadership right now.

And you can go global if you want to.

Yeah,

I think when I think about leadership today,

the first word that comes comes to my mind is power.

And kind of Mary Parker Follett's work, she was an early mother of leadership and organizational development work.

And she talked about different types of power and how power on its own is fairly neutral, but the use of power kind of falls into different categories.

Power over,

power with and to, and within.

And I think politically around the world right now, what we're seeing is power over.

And power over operates from the belief that power is finite, like pizza.

So if I give you a slice, I only have seven left.

Power with and power to work from the idea that power is infinite and grows when shared.

I think

this is, I've written about this for probably 15 years, these types of power.

What I never really fully understood until right now was one of the tenets of power over

is

that that

keeping people afraid is very difficult because neurobiologically, we're not hardwired to stay in fear.

So, when you make us afraid, our nervous system reacts, we make terrible choices from fear, but then we settle in and we either hypernormalize or we kind of get complacent.

So, this is the part that has been shocking to me to watch

reality

completely mirror theory, which is in order to maintain power over, you have to engage in pretty consistent bouts of cruelty to remind people what's at stake.

Watch out.

Daddy is watching, as Saturday Night Live said this week.

Right.

Oh, God, that was, it was so good.

And I got to say, I'm such a bad bunny fan that like I'm already practicing my Spanish for the Super Bowl.

Yeah, so I think, again, and this doesn't have to just be on a political stage, even in an organization, if you want to maintain power over the team you're leading, occasionally you have to demonstrate a deep capacity for cruelty.

If you want that format of power.

If you want to maintain that format of power.

So I think

it's the coward's path because it requires very little discipline, very little accountability, and very little courage.

So listen, this is not a new thing.

This has gone on since the beginning of time.

So why is it sort of more powerful now, I guess?

Why is Largely because of Trump, correct?

Because that's how he practices scarcity, not or maybe not.

I don't think so.

I think,

you know, I'm big, I'm an avid listener of your podcast and your podcast with Scott.

And sometimes I find myself just violently agreeing.

And sometimes I want to come through my headphones and be like, I don't think so.

I think

we're susceptible to power over right now uniquely because we're in uncertainty and pain.

And so

I think when you have a citizenry who's lonely,

economically instable,

and

riddled with uncertainty because of technology and social media, you bait, I mean, it's, I could never get into the chicken egg argument.

I'd be curious, what do you think?

Do you think

driving power over,

no, no, I don't actually think it comes first.

I think what comes first is

geopolitical instability, uncertainty, social media, AI,

and income inequality.

Right.

I think it's always attractive.

I think a strong man is always attractive, even if you didn't have those things.

And when you're in a vulnerable position,

it's more attractive because it has answers to very complex questions.

And

you know what I mean?

Like that's, I think it's just easier if someone tells you, you know, like Bill Clinton said, when people are insecure, they would rather have strong and wrong than weak and right, right?

That's better.

Right.

And here's, here's what's really interesting.

We're not wired in our DNA, in our brains, to handle nuance and paradox,

even though intellectually we know it's right.

We know the ability to hold two competing ideas at one time and straddle that tension.

until something clearer emerges is the right path.

When we're in fear, worn down, can't pay our rent, have a kid who's, you know, struggling with addiction, opioid addiction, you're like, fuck the paradox.

Right.

Let them take over.

Just

tell me the next thing.

And give me.

Or I don't want to think about it.

Right.

Or give me an enemy to blame for my pain, preferably someone who doesn't look like me.

Right, right.

Which is classic.

So your book is about leadership, though.

It tells leaders to slow down and do the work to ensure their personal foundation is strong, and only then they can transform their organizations by having a courage and clarity to break down old systems that don't work while remaining true to their core values.

Talk about how you think about where executives are right now, if they're in the leadership positions in corporations or any organizations, political or otherwise.

I think what's helpful for me is I'm surrounded by great leaders.

I work with great leaders in organizations all over the world right now, and I people

who are showing up despite what the Zeitgeist says is popular in terms of leadership and doing the next right thing every day, even when it's tough.

And I think that's so hard right now because

I let me look.

Can I ask you a question?

This is always my favorite part when we talk when I turn it on you.

How do I balance the paradox of being a tech optimist and feeling completely hateful about what's happening right now with

tech leaders, social media.

I mean, I really think this stuff is the devil.

How do I straddle that?

Well, let me use a different technology, a knife.

You can really like a knife.

It cuts an apple really great.

It does all kinds of things.

It'll help you throughout your life as a tool.

And you can also say, I hate those fuckers holding that knife, shoving it into my ribs and killing me and cutting off my head.

And da-da.

I think the issue is that the people who are in control of it without any ability for you to control it have no responsibility and are the first to take a dive from a leadership perspective when things get going and they use excuses like shareholder value, et cetera, because they don't have any core values of their own.

I mean,

that's the thing.

But let's talk about some of these key leadership concepts that you identify in Strongground.

The first is vulnerability.

You spent your career researching it.

You call it a source code for courage because the word sounds touchy-feely.

It can cause people, especially men's eyes to glaze over, and mine too.

So explain what you mean by vulnerability and why it's so fundamental for your understanding of leadership.

I mean, vulnerability has a really, we have millions of pieces of data at this point, and the definition holds.

Vulnerability is the emotion we experience when we're in uncertainty.

risk and emotional exposure, which is every day when we wake up, we're in uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

And I had to spend a lot of time convincing people about the relationship between courage and vulnerability until a singular day when I was at Fort Bragg working with Special Forces troops.

And I asked the soldiers a simple question.

Give me an example of courage from your life.

One example that you either did yourself or you witnessed, one example.

of courage that did not require uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

And this heavy silence fell over the room and people started putting their heads down and then hands came up.

And then finally one soldier actually stood up and said,

there is no example of courage that doesn't require vulnerability.

Three tours.

Right, but they didn't want to use that word.

And then a week later, I was with Pete Carroll and the Seahawks.

I asked the team the same question.

Give me an example of courage that doesn't require vulnerability.

They huddled up.

They came back and they were like, not on the field or off the field.

If you want to be brave, you're going to have to be vulnerable.

So look, I'm not advocating for taking pleasure in vulnerability or seeking vulnerability.

What I'm saying is that if you think you're being brave in your life or your work and there's no uncertainty and no risk and no exposure, you're not being brave.

If you know how it's going to turn out,

that's not courage.

No, and it doesn't require courage because you know the outcome, correct?

I mean, you know the outcome.

You also don't take a risk, you're risk, right?

If you're not, if you're not, you tend to play it safe.

That tends to be when you're like that, when you're playing it safe, you don't get the rewards, the risk-reward profile, presumably, as a business leader.

And what I see right now is that not just as a catchphrase or, you know, the leadership theme of the moment, we're backsliding

on vulnerability.

We're backsliding on courage because of the level of complexity and uncertainty.

This tech super cycle has everyone panicked.

I mean, we're seeing from MIT Sloan and some other researchers that 90% of early investments made in the Q4 of 2023, first couple of quarters of 2024, 90% of the ROI has been negative on AI investments in companies.

Why?

It's very simple.

Because people are not settling the ball.

Have any of your kids played soccer like at five?

Yes, I was a soccer coach.

Okay.

Renee.

Okay, great.

Walk me through this metaphor.

Let's go.

It was like hurting cats, but go ahead.

It's so fun, though.

I would, I would look for Ellen.

I couldn't find her, and she'd be sitting crisscross crisscross applesauce making a daisy chain on the field next to where we were playing.

It was so great.

But here's what, here's the leadership metaphor for right now with AI and courage.

It sounds a lot like this because I work predominantly with C-suites and then their level of direct report leaders.

Kara, get me an AI strategy.

I want it on my desk next week.

Okay, Brene, what do you want it to do?

I don't give a shit what it does.

Just get me one.

You know, that's so

when five-year-olds are playing soccer, the ball comes in at head height.

Right.

The kid receiving the ball puts their foot up to head height and tries to kick the ball.

A good soccer player, a skilled soccer player, takes the ball into the chest, lets the ball hit the ground, puts their foot on the ball to maintain possession, settles the ball, looks down the pitch, understands what play they're running, and then kicks.

the ball to where the striker is going to be, not where the striker is.

So if you take that set of skill sets that I just talked about and you translate them to leadership skills, here's what we're talking about: leaders today, anticipatory awareness, situational awareness, temporal awareness, self-awareness, strategic thinking, systems thinking.

These are the skill sets.

This is the collection of skill sets that emerge from our data as necessary today.

It is no joke.

It will require massive relearning and unlearning.

And so what do we do when we're faced with not having the answers?

We just kick the ball.

We just kicked the ball.

We just, wherever.

Wherever.

Right, right.

And so like a bunch of five-year-olds.

That's right.

Yeah.

Let's just give me the ball.

Give me the ball.

Give me the ball.

Yeah.

And you know where it's going.

Yeah.

I mean, and just think about that.

Like

if you coach soccer, what age do you think a player would have to be to take a high ball into the chest, settle it, put their foot on it, and look down the field and guess where it's going.

Over seven.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're going to have to have a lot of

new cognitive skills.

Right.

We don't have them today, Kara.

In the C-suite,

very few leaders paradoxical thinking that we start our conversation with.

The ability to hold competing ideas and not tap out because it's uncomfortable.

Well, a lot of that is fear, obviously, because there's a fearfulness, not just from Trump, but fearfulness of missing out, the whole, all this.

It's an inescapable emotion for all leaders.

But according to your book, the goal shouldn't be avoiding fear or even overcoming it.

It's just the self-awareness to recognize it when they're afraid and make rational decisions.

Because then, if not, fear hijacks judgment and makes decisions emotional without even realizing, get me an AI strategy.

And you call this the above-below-the-line practice.

Talk about how that works and how anger intersects with fear.

I'm fixing to change your life.

Like,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like your wife and your kids are going to be like, new Kara.

Doubt it.

Hashtag Brene Brown saved us.

Okay.

Literally same person since 1962, but go ahead.

Okay.

Try.

So I get on the phone with my coach after a particularly shitty meeting.

And I was like, oh my God, Courtney, I was such an asshole.

I mean, I was so out of my integrity that I don't like circle back and apologizing from my first book is not going to cut it.

Like I am embarrassed by my behavior.

And she said, It sounds like you are really under the line.

And I said, What does it mean?

And she said, The line is fear.

And we're in fear all the time, every day.

And she said, When you're above the line in fear, you know you're in fear.

You can name you're in fear, but you're driving.

You're driving.

Right.

You're making good decisions.

You're okay.

You're okay.

When you're under the line,

she didn't say this because very Texan, but I think of it as fear is driving.

You're not riding a shotgun.

You're hogtied in the trunk.

Oh, yeah.

Like Texan.

I mean, fifth generation.

What can I do?

Since 1965.

Yeah.

So I said, how do you know when you're under the line?

And she said,

listen to your language and look for one of three characters that emerges from you.

The hero, the victim, and the villain.

Ah.

And I said, what does that sound like?

And she said, well, a lot of times what I hear you say when you're under the line is,

Fuck it, I'll do it myself.

The hero.

Or I'll say, no one gets how hard this is on me.

Like my name's out there, you know,

the victim.

Or I don't care if everybody hates me.

This is what we're going to do.

Oh, the villain.

And she said, when you're above the line, and this actually tracks to the drama triangle.

When you're above the line, there are three different kind of personas, not personas, but three different actions you take on.

Coaching.

co-creating and challenging productively.

All right.

So what do those sound like?

Because right now I'm the villain just all the time, but go ahead.

I don't know, but

when I see, like I see dead people, I see squishy Kira.

Like I see mom.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

But what is the three of the positive above the line?

What do they sound like?

Can we figure this out together, co-creation or coaching?

You know what, Kira?

You worked your butt off on this.

It's slightly off.

I don't think I set you up for success.

Let's talk about how we get there.

Oh, you know, co-creating, coaching, and then challenging.

I'm not tracking, but you seem sure.

Can you help me get there?

So productive challenging.

Oh, I see.

And so now it's really interesting because when Steve and I will get into

a crunchy place,

especially about our kids, because I can get panicked really easy.

I don't think you do this.

You're not fearful about your kids as much, right?

I'm not.

No.

But I'm always like, oh my God, is that dangerous?

What's going to happen?

Oh, yeah, that's my wife.

Yeah, yeah.

That's my my wife.

Yeah, there's usually one.

Yeah.

And so he'll say, well,

I can be anxious.

I just don't know that I have enough information or that I'm taking from the information we have enough to panic.

And I'll be, and I'll say, am I under the line?

He's like, maybe.

You know, and so now

I bet five times a day, I'll be in a meeting with my leadership team and someone will say, you know what?

I'm under the line.

Oh, okay.

And then we'll just take a 10-minute break and come back and I'll say, thanks, Kara, for calling the time out.

Do you want to talk about how you got under the line?

And the last time I did that, the person said, yeah, I can tell you how I got under the line.

Is there any plus in leadership to say, fuck it, I'll do it myself?

Like, that's a hero and a villain.

Villain is hero, essentially, right?

Oh, it is.

It's like, it's, it's like the best.

It's like the best Voltimore that we have.

Yeah, I'll do it myself.

What if you're actually better at doing it yourself?

Well, I think that's great as long as you want a tiny little impact in a tiny little company where you can do all the tiny little shit, your tiny little self.

Right, got it.

Okay, that's why I'm asking for a leader.

Cause a lot of leaders do have, exhibit that, right?

That's a very classic, both of those things are classic.

Well, you know who they're classic for?

What?

They're classic for founders.

Founders, right, yeah.

Founders.

That's right.

You're right.

You're correct.

I am going to check your email.

I am going to pick the fonts.

I, you know, this is my company.

Right.

Yeah.

They are.

That's exactly right.

And the victim one is very classic now for tech people.

They always feel that they are being victimized as leaders and therefore they react to everything in that way.

Yeah.

We'll be back in a minute.

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So you zero in what you call the tenacity of paradox, and you write the quote, paradoxes embrace ambiguity, expose our intolerance for uncertainty, push our boundaries, and if we hang on long enough, often force us to deny the comfort of our ideologies for a deeper wisdom that is more honest reflection of the human experience and the human spirit.

Talk about this in a practical sense.

How can leaders embrace paradoxical thinking when they're constantly faced with the binary, the zero-sum, this or this, budget priorities, spending money, giving in to Trump?

You know, everything feels binary in a paradoxical world.

Right.

So what's interesting is

I'm going to use your metaphor to talk about this.

So the knife that you talked about.

I need this knife.

It's a tool for my life.

It can keep me alive.

I can cut food.

I can do, you know, I need this knife.

This knife is getting shoved

into my stomach by people.

So if you can hold on to a knife is a tool, it's being misused.

A knife is a tool.

It's being misused.

What people, how we tap out is we say, oh, it's good and bad.

That's that, that's the tap out.

Hold on longer, hold on longer.

Oh,

it's a tool,

it's being used to hurt people.

We've got a knife holder issue, right?

Exactly.

But you have to hold on to that paradox long enough to know it's like fire.

You can keep yourself warm or burn down the barn.

Right.

And so

I think I would say this

with the most senior leaders that I'm around today all over the world, if there were two,

maybe three things that I say that they have that a lot of leaders are struggling with right now,

the ability to hold paradox until something new emerges,

systems thinking.

Which I don't know how systems thinking fell out of favor, but now given the complexity inside and outside of organizations, if you can't see things in terms of systems that are connected in inescapable ways, you're going to fail.

Right.

And then the third one,

which I'd be interested in your take on this,

self-awareness.

Well, yes.

That's, that is,

yeah.

That was ominous.

I often, I often, just recently I was with some tech people and they started saying things.

I went, huh?

And they're like, what?

I go, are you even listening to yourself?

Do you have any amount of self-awareness, like victim, victim, victim mentality?

And I was like, you don't look like a victim to me.

You could have me disappeared in five minutes if you really, you know, put your mind to it.

And it was, it was really interesting.

The second one, though, I think is systems thinking.

You're right.

They don't see beyond the bigger picture or that things can be confusing and wait.

The sort of lack of ability to wait for things.

And I think that's hard.

I mean, I actually think I do this very well when people are like, what's going to happen?

I'm like, I don't know yet.

I got to think about it.

Like, it's very complex.

But when you think about that, why are there fewer people doing that?

What has happened into our brains that, because a lot of the famous business leaders, that was part of it, is seeing a network,

seeing the bigger picture, I guess.

That's sort of the old version of it.

Here's how I think this is going to play out.

And this is why I'm optimistic for those of us who want something different and want more power with to and within.

Systems in order to survive, whether they're cellular systems or organizational systems, team systems, have to have permeable boundaries.

And they need permeable boundaries for feedback to flow in and out.

Sure.

When boundaries become impermeable, which you're seeing across the tech world, especially right now, systems become self-referencing.

Like

we just are

by ourselves.

Right.

Or with enablers that agree, violently agree with us.

Right.

Right, right.

Right.

Which is tech people to a T.

Right.

And so impermeable systems that are self-referencing yeah are we great i think we are great well i think we're great too those

impermeable boundaries the step after self-referencing becomes atrophy

right but you call it armor you said the various defense mechanisms that leaders use to avoid doing that so according to your research it's the main impediment to strong and effective leadership people who are hardwired to self-protect it's very difficult to let go of armor and you've talked to a lot of leaders.

How do you get them to put down their armor?

It's really interesting.

I hypothesized early when we started this research on leadership 17, 18 years ago that the biggest barrier to courageous leadership was fear.

I was wrong.

And in fact, some of the most courageous leaders that we interviewed, political leaders, NGO leaders, corporate leaders, when I said, here's my hypothesis, they said, listen, if you're going to put together a list of daring leaders who are not afraid, don't put me on it because I wake up afraid.

I go to bed afraid.

I'm afraid every day.

And I was like, but what I learned is it's not fear that gets in the way of being brave.

It's armor.

When we're afraid, what armor do we put on to self-protect?

And so the way we help, you know, over the last six years, we've taken 165,000 leaders through Dare to Lead, 45 countries.

The quickest way

to have people understand

who they are when they're afraid or feeling vulnerable is to have them identify their armor.

And it's a really painful exercise.

So for me, I micromanage, I get perfectionistic, and I get completely overly decisive.

So if we're in a meeting, I'll be like, and I get fearful.

I don't get analysis, paralysis.

I say, shut it down, move her to this team.

Don't do this.

Reinvest here.

Then I'm like, shit, I think I'm afraid.

Don't do any of those things.

And my team's always like, we don't write anything down when you're like this.

You know, like, we don't, don't worry.

We're not, we're not moving on anything when you go into the space because we know you're under the line.

So I think identifying the armor, if you're really ballsy, you can ask someone that loves you,

who am I when I'm afraid?

Ah, interesting.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I ignore things.

Oh, you do?

I pretend they aren't happening.

Oh, yeah.

I just, I just, and then they change.

Like,

you outweight them.

I do.

I'm like, huh?

Like, someone says to me, I'm like, I don't know.

I don't know.

Like that kind of thing.

It's different.

It's a skill set.

Yeah, it works.

It actually is a very good skill set.

And with the fear thing, it's interesting because people do put up armor.

Either armor, you can armor fear with fear, actually.

I was talking to my daughter, and she was scared of something that wasn't scary.

And I said, it's okay to be scary.

Some things are scary.

You should be fine with it.

You should be fine with it.

And then I taught her my famous line, which is the dark is afraid of me.

When she was scared of the dark, I'm like, the dark is, and she laughed and it was fine.

But one of the things that I think is difficult that we sort of bleach out of kids is the fear of the dark, fear of it's okay to feel those.

Like you're not, you're most parents go, don't be scared.

Like, don't be, like, that's a thing I've said as a parent many times.

Don't be scared of that.

Or this week, my daughter was scared of, she loves all the music from K-pop Demon Hunters, loves it, but can't watch the movie.

That scares her.

So it's a really interesting problem because she loves it so much, but can't watch it because she's so scared, which is somewhat.

But I think you just said something that's really important.

It's, and it's, I'm always cautious to draw, to draw lines between parenting and leadership because I don't want to infantilize adults, but some things just hold, which is

it's okay to be afraid.

Just don't be an asshole to other people when you're in fear, especially if you have power over those people.

If you have some kind of influence over their jobs or their pay or their job security.

Like somebody asked me in an interview, I think it was Dan Harris, I can't remember, but they said, if you wanted to go back to yourself in your early 20s, what would you say to yourself?

I think what I would say to myself is, it's okay to be afraid.

Watch it because you're going to become scary when you're scared.

Ah, that's a good line.

Yeah.

And I can become scary when I'm scared.

But I grew up in a family where you could always be angry.

Anger was always okay.

You could never be afraid and you could never be in pain, have your feelings hurt.

Well, anger is scared.

Right.

Anger is scared and anger is having your feelings hurt.

But the expression of that was only, the only thing allowed for that is you can be pissed off.

And so when I ask a group of leaders, How many of you find it easier to be pissed off than hurt?

Yes.

Every hand goes up.

Right.

Especially men.

They don't want to.

Oh, men and women.

Right.

Men and women.

I think they can't, and men feel uncomfortable.

Yeah, because for women,

I cannot fulfill every shitty stereotype you have about me that jeopardizes my ambition and my career.

Right.

I've heard from so many women leaders, especially political ones, I can't do that.

Men can.

Oh, yeah.

Sometimes.

But sometimes I'm like, come on, just do it anyway.

And they're like, we're going to lose no matter what we do.

Interestingly, I'm interviewing Kamala Harris this week live, and I I think I'm thinking about that a lot because she had to live in so many different paradigms, right?

She was too tough,

she was too tough.

If she wasn't tough enough, she was not tough enough.

You know what I mean?

It's just like all of them.

Did she say enough?

Did she push enough?

If she pushed, it's just an interesting question.

Oh, I mean, it's the classic double bind.

And then you've got a woman, but you've got a black woman and a black Asian woman.

So then you've got

the double binds, and the vices become so tight on both sides

that the squeeze is death.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

It's it's true.

It's really hard.

So every episode we get an expert to send a guest a question.

Oh shit.

Let's hear yours.

It's a good one.

Don't worry.

Hi, Brene Brown.

It's Bobby Brown here.

You and I are both on book tours now, and I feel like we've been following each other.

I hope we get to meet someday soon.

My expert question for you is this.

I'm a founder and entrepreneur who sold my first namesake brand to a very big corporation.

I was often in a boardroom with a lot of men in suits who had a ton of opinions on what products we should launch to be competitive in the beauty market and mostly how women feel.

There was even one executive who told me no one wants to take beauty advice from a soccer mom.

The problem was I was a soccer mom and I just didn't agree with him.

Let me tell you, it was interesting times.

Your new book is based on the work you've done in Fortune 500 companies and the conversations you're having with CEOs about how leadership styles need to change as we navigate through rapid and disruptive change.

I'm guessing you've been in a lot of corporate boardrooms with these same guys and my question is are you seeing any real change because I'm still seeing a lot of mansplaining.

How are you hoping to shift this dynamic and what kind of changes are you seeing that makes you feel optimistic about the leaders of the future?

Thanks, Brene, and I'll see you on the book tour circuit.

I wanted to get a brown.

I mean, but wait, my whole face brought to you by Jones Road.

Me too.

I'm like a huge fan.

Yeah.

I mean, we're.

She was talking about Estee Lauder there, where they started to take over her brand.

Oh, yeah, actually.

Yeah, Bobby Brown, of course.

And then that no compete was like, oh my God.

I was so excited when Jones Road came out because I was like, thank God, a woman at the helm of stuff that women wear.

Right.

Which is what her original company was.

And I mean, raise your hand if you've been been a soccer mom.

Yes, me too.

Yes.

Right.

So I'm still in those rooms on occasion.

You know, it's interesting that because in Strong Ground, I really

take down the idea of executive presence

and say, you know, I don't know

that is really covert.

often covert

language for

diminishing the talents of women, people of color, introverts, shy people, people who process longer.

I am hopeful

because I do see

that

the best leaders among us across gender, across race, understand

that the key to innovation and impact, revenue growth,

is productive challenge on teams.

And those leaders, despite their discomfort, want to be surrounded by different ideas and different people who challenge and represent the market segments that they serve in different ways.

Those are the best of our leaders.

Has this new administration given a green light to returning to old ways of working?

The command and control.

The command and control.

And look, if you do anything with this clip, make sure that this is hyphenated.

Don't take these words apart from each other.

White male power over,

not white male power with.

There are tons of great white men leaders that are saying power with productive challenge,

inclusivity.

But a very specific model of power, which is white hyphen, male hyphen, power hyphen over

is

not good for growth, revenue, impact, or innovation.

But it's easier.

Yeah, it's definitely easier.

That's the definition of privilege.

But you said you felt optimistic.

She was asking,

what are you seeing?

Give me an example that makes you feel optimistic about future leaders.

I'm seeing

leaders across multiple different industries across the world having the option to return to a way of leading that's in the zeitgeist right now and saying, I'm not doing that.

Right.

Not for moral reasons, because it's bad business.

Right.

Even if it might be personally satisfying, even if it's easier for me.

But interestingly enough, speaking of this masculine energy, the values you write about, like vulnerability and empathy, are often coded as feminine in our society.

But a lot of, say, tech CEOs right now is invested in performative masculinity.

Same thing with Pete Hegseth's speech to the military.

It was all about looks and manliness, which means only one thing to me: it's very small on Pete Heck Seth.

But Mark Zuckerberg telling Joe Rogan that he wants more masculine energy in corporate America is the obvious example.

It goes beyond that.

Elon Musk talked about so-called civilizational suicidal empathy, the idea that excessive compassion undermines societal cohesion, values, and security.

From Musk's point of view, the West has become too accepting and empathetic, and it's a weakness.

Talk about, you know, it's a lot of it right now comes from tech.

Yeah.

I'm not going to pretend to

understand the smallness from which this comes.

What I can say is

empathy is a very nuanced thing.

And I think for me, there are two explanations why you'd be anti-empathy.

One,

if you want to hurt people and you don't want any collective pushback, I think empathy would be a problem.

Two, I think there's two different kinds of empathy as we think about it in social science.

There's cognitive empathy and affective empathy.

You call me and you say,

shit, I'm in a hard place.

Here's what's going on.

And I listen and I connect with what you're saying.

I reflect it back to you.

You feel seen and heard and believed.

And I not, for one second, I don't take on your emotion.

I just let you know you're not alone.

I see you.

I believe you.

And I understand what it is.

Right.

It's it that that is actually the freaking source code for democracy.

Right, right.

And that is a classic psychiatrist thing, right?

I mean, well, it's just, it's cognitive empathy.

Everybody can do it to everybody.

You say to your daughter, I love these, this music and I really want to watch it, but I'm scared.

And you say, enjoy the music.

And it's okay to be scared of it.

And when you're ready, you can watch it.

But enjoy the music.

There's nothing wrong.

It's probably exactly what you said.

Except now I'm hearing it every single day, five or seven times a day.

But go ahead.

That's the mom tax.

If I hear takedown, one more time.

Oh, yeah, no, that's the mom tax.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you called me and you said you were having a hard time and then I'm like, tell me all about it.

And then I start feeling it with you.

And then you're sad, I'm sad.

That's affective empathy and it's not productive.

It causes burnout.

It actually ends up causing compassion fatigue, but two different kinds of empathy.

Right.

And then you get mad about talking to that person, right?

Right.

Right.

Now you're enmeshed.

That's not empathy.

That's enmeshment.

I don't know where you end and I begin.

And now we're just both in the shithole.

So that's not good.

But I think the masculine energy,

it just feels,

it just feels really performative to me.

I don't even know, I'm not 100% convinced that they believe it or know what they're saying.

And they're not just trying to pass the fidelity test.

Like, I don't, I don't know, but I can.

Well, explain what when you watch, you watch the P-Tags thing.

Only part of it.

I actually.

That's a leadership moment, right?

I don't,

this is really a painful thing.

I have not talked about this.

Like, this is a really painful thing for me.

I think over the past 15 years, I've done a ton of work with the military and all pro bono, just as part of what I feel like is my,

just something I care about.

Your duty.

It's your duty.

It's patriotic duty.

It's just, I mean, I think, and

I have a lot of conversations with who I believe are amazing military leaders.

There's many.

Yeah.

Oh, there's so many.

I probably can't even engage in a conversation

where I joke about it because I find it to be very heartbreaking.

Yeah.

Although they weren't buying it either, Brene.

No, no, they weren't.

And

look, there are great military leaders and there are dangerous military leaders.

There are great corporate leaders and dangerous corporate leaders.

There are great

NGO leaders and dangerous, great faith leaders, dangerous faith leaders.

Absolutely.

The industry in which you work does not define

your goodness.

Who you are every day in a room when you have more power over other people, that defines who you are.

And so

I can't joke about that because

I find it heartbreaking.

And

because I've done so much work with the military,

I find it as a citizen to be

frightening.

It is.

And at the same time, it was a leadership fail.

Like, I don't think it worked.

I think it was a performative clown.

Like, it didn't, I don't, I don't think it, it sunk in, I would say.

I think most people across the spectrum had the same reaction, including the Trump people, by the way.

I don't think anyone thought that worked.

You got to remember,

if you just want the easiest source code for understanding leadership and evaluating leadership, there's a very simple question.

When you look at a leader, is it clear to you that they know their job is to serve the people they lead and not be served by them yep

we'll be back in a minute

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One of the things, you mentioned humanity, human spirit, human experience throughout the book, and you emphasize the importance of taking that human-centered approach to leadership.

At the same time, lots of CEOs, CTOs in every industry are feeling the need of pressure to incorporate AI into their organizations, which is something you also talked about.

Talk about the rapid

adoption of AI in the workplace and how leaders can deploy it without sacrificing the human connection, you say, is foundational.

Let me just read what you wrote about AI.

I think we're witnessing one of the most dangerous, unresolved time paradoxes in modern history when it comes to AI.

And it's basically framed like this: in the United States, we can't slow down and worry about ethics and safety.

We need to beat China.

The risks and rewards of putting untested technology into the market have never been more serious.

And we're not seeing the level of daring leadership we need to address these paradoxes related to AI.

So talk about what daring leadership would look like and about what's happening right now in this space, because it does remove human connection in a lot of ways.

I have a lot of thoughts on AI.

I have a lot of thoughts from the research and I have a lot of, I had a really hard personal experience with that.

I'll talk about the research first, which is,

you know, I think about Linda Hill from Harvard, who has studied digital transformation for decades.

My favorite quote by her is, the most difficult part of digital transformation is never the technology.

It's always the human beings who are using the technology.

And so one of the things that scares me right now is the platitude, don't worry about our relevance.

What makes us human will keep us relevant.

We are terrible at what makes us human.

We are terrible right now at discernment, empathy, connection, courage, because it's, you know,

Welchian leadership taught us 30 years ago,

yes, what makes us human.

is a liability to growth, revenue, and performance.

He's one of the most damaging leaders.

Right.

And so we kind of bought that,

even though there have never been data ever to support it.

Yeah.

Sounds good.

It sounds great.

Yeah.

So right now we find ourselves in a situation where we're not good at what uniquely is us.

So we need to skill up and relearn and unlearn on that.

I think

the idea

that we're not using AI, it's happening to us in the workforce is killing agency.

People have no sense of agency because leaders are not,

you know, show me your AI investment and I'm going to ask two questions.

Tell me exactly how this is aligned with your business strategy and show me the line item where the human investment on using AI is proportional to the tech investment.

Right.

It doesn't exist right now.

We'll get there, but we won't get there until there's wasted billions of dollars dollars and traumatized workforce.

Right.

For me personally, we did something really interesting.

I'll be curious what you think about this.

For this research in Strong Ground, we ran a parallel literature review process.

We did an entire literature review on AI across four different platforms.

Then we did a traditional literature review with the research team that was in the stacks doing all the old school stuff.

Then we hired a group of college interns.

We call them the hallucination hunters.

And their job was to take apart the the lit review done by AI.

70%

of the citations were hallucinations in the AI lit review.

That's not a surprise.

I mean, wait, it would say like 2024, Swisher, K, and Brown, B, Harvard Business Review, volume 24,

AI analysis on manufacturing industry.

I mean, it was so legit, but that did not exist.

Yeah, that did not exist.

It would take a quote and attribute it to a scholar.

And that scholar ended up like

being

Reddit user at I Like My Bike.

Ah, wow.

Yeah.

It's very sycophantic.

Yes, very.

That's the problem.

I mean, it's not dependable.

Certain things it is.

Certain things are like, what is this?

What is this tick?

What is this leave?

What is this?

Typically, they get it right.

Oh, and I use it for that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The utility stuff works.

The stuff that requires analysis or any kind of reporting, as you would say, is problematic.

So do you see the rush to CEOs doing this as a big problem of leadership?

Is it just kick it down the road or this will save me money or anything else?

Oh, I think it's more simple than that.

I think it's like,

hey, wait, look over there.

Johnny's got a new toy.

Right.

And my board is breathing down my neck because I don't have that new toy.

And there's no thoughtful adoption tied inextricably to business strategy and leveling up the people who are going to use it in effective ways.

And I'll tell you the other thing that's really weird.

Like I use it.

I love it.

But I use it for like weird things, like probably more utility things.

There are three times in my life where I was so disoriented and kind of this weird depressed anxiety feeling that I had a hard time getting out of bed.

One was 28 years ago when I got sober.

I thought sobriety was going to bring massive clarity to me, but it really jacked me up for like two or three weeks before I understood, wow, there's no clarity because I don't know who I am.

And that's what I'm doing this for.

Two, I took a social media sabbatical a couple of years ago for a year.

It changed my life.

It was so disorienting.

Yeah.

It It was great.

I did about 60 days of heavy AI use.

I

felt like shit.

I felt hollowed out.

And Kate Crawford and I did a talk on AI at Aspen Ideas Festival.

Amazing.

I love her.

Do you like her work?

Yes, I do.

I love Kate Crawford.

Yeah.

And

I think I learned about her actually from you.

And I think I heard about Atlas of AI from you, and I read it.

And when she and I did this talk, I told her, I was like, I felt hollowed out, like empty on the inside, and it lingered past my usage of the instrument.

And she said, it's interesting that you say hollowed out because AI is an extraction technology.

We extract minerals from the earth.

We extract water, extract water, we extract people's data.

It's an extraction technology.

So there's something poetic about the fact that when you use it for long periods of time,

you feel hollowed out.

Well, one of the things that I was just noting was years ago, the first technologies of the internet were push technology, push stuff at you, right?

And it was too much for the bandwidth at the time.

And so then it became a pull technology as you asked for something, it gave it to you.

Right now, AI is a push technology.

God, that's

pushes.

Think about that.

There was a company, look it up called Pointcast, and it was the first hot company, one of the first, and it just collapsed because the bandwidth was too much of them pushing or flooding.

Or think about Clockwork Orange.

They're flooding you with information.

It's just as bad.

A desert is better than a flood, really, in many ways.

It's an information flood.

So let me get back to actually leadership.

You said earlier, as part of your job, you end up in the room with a lot of these CEOs.

And I know you do talk to a lot of tech CEOs.

I'm just using them because they're the top CEOs these days.

Obviously, I do too.

Were you surprised by the kowtowing, given these are the most powerful people and richest people on earth?

At the White House dinner, the leading luminaries took turns going around groveling before him as the cameras rolled.

You've worked with these leaders, and again, I'm only using them because they're the current top leaders with the top companies.

Did you expect this kind of groveling behavior?

Because you can be arrogant all you want, but it was what they become is more groveling in a weird way.

What is the North Star for CEOs?

If their North Star is shareholder value, everything else comes in second.

I think it's a temporal decision.

I think it's a time-based decision.

Okay.

Even if your North Star is shareholder value and you ultimately see your sole responsibility being

stock price, value, market cap,

I'm wondering

if,

and I don't know the answer,

if these folks are taking a long enough view,

even if that's your North Star,

I don't know the answer to it.

I've had one CEO say, actually, it's the worst thing you can do for shareholder value over the long term.

That was the only one who said it to me, which was really interesting.

And others are like, I have to do it, kind of thing.

But it has to do with humiliation, too, right?

And you rewrote a lot about humiliation in your book.

And according to Dr.

Linda Harding, whose research you include in the book, Humiliation May Be the Most Toxic Social Dynamic of Our Age, you write about shame and humiliation are not effective tools, especially around social justice and cruelty.

Obviously, and humiliation are part of Trump's leadership style.

But some on the left have weaponized shame on social media.

Oh my God, yeah.

So talk about,

I mean, it's more irritating than what Trump is doing, right?

His is very, quite serious, I think.

But it's the same, it's the same coin, like this idea of humiliation as a tool in American politics, in companies.

It can infect the way leaders are, presumably.

This is one of the biggest change, unlearned, relearned moments in my career because for a long time, we've always taught the four self-conscious affects, shame, guilt, humiliation, and embarrassment.

Shame, I am bad.

Guilt, I did something bad.

Shame's a focus on self.

Guilt is a focus on behavior.

Super important difference.

The outcomes for shame-based people.

You get an F back on your test.

You say to yourself, God, I'm so stupid.

That's shame.

Guilt, you get an F back on your test and you say, man, going out last night and partying was really stupid.

I should have stayed home and studied.

Then you've got humiliation and embarrassment.

And we always thought humiliation was less dangerous than shame.

Because let's say somebody says, your leader at work in front of your colleague says, God, Brene, you're such an idiot.

Right.

If my self-talk is, I'm such an idiot, I'm such an idiot, that's shame.

But if my self-talk is, screw her, I don't deserve that, that's humiliation.

Someone attacked who I am, but it was undeserved.

We always thought that was less dangerous than shame.

Right.

Until like probably the last five or six years when we've done these in-depth studies on humiliation, where studies of school shooters, violent criminals, humiliation's role in violence.

And so when we start using humiliation

and shame as tools,

it's fundamentally dehumanizing.

And I don't care whether it's from the left or the right, it's dangerous.

Right, as a leadership tool, and obviously political violence has resulted and all kinds of violence.

All kinds of violence.

And that's, you know, when you look at dehumanization and you think about, you know, dehumanization researchers talk about moral inclusion, that very close to us is this idea of here are all these people that are morally included in what I think it means to be human.

And to hurt people within our circle of moral inclusion is actually, we're not neurobiologically wired for it.

To kill, rape, assault, attack people whom we believe are morally included in humanity for us is fundamentally dangerous for us and for them.

So what happens, and this happens at the hands of very expert leaders,

is we think,

I want to hurt them or we want others to hurt them.

So how can we push them beyond moral inclusion to be outside of the circle of people we see as human and deserving?

So if you're morally excluded, it's easier.

It's easier.

That's classic.

In a recent interview, you referred to the person you hate the most as someone who's in politics.

Let's assume it's not Pete Hagseth that you're referring to Trump.

But he's someone who seems to reject most, if not all, of the findings in your book.

He leads by appealing to negative emotions, primarily feel his power is very clearly coercive control, to borrow a phrase from management theory pioneer Mary Parker Follett.

In Strong Round, you quote from her 1924 book where she wrote, coercive power is the curse of the universe, coactive power, the enrichment and advancement of every human soul.

So talk about that.

And what effect does his style of leadership have on us, on our broader culture?

And then alternatively, Democrats are effectively leaderless right now, whatever you think of minority leader Chuck Schumer or House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

They're not inspiring the masses.

So what would be the key characteristics of a successful Democratic presidential nominee or a Republican one who's going to counter Trump?

But that's a more difficult situation because they seem to like.

his style of leadership at this moment.

I think what I'm looking for, and I can't speak for the the citizenry, but I think what would be very appealing to me and I think the majority of people

is

someone is a leader who has the courage to put policies into effect that they have to follow.

Right now, we have built in this country politicians on both sides are creating laws and policies

in a very careless way because they have no intention of following them themselves.

There's one group of rules for the citizenry and one group of rules for the politicians.

And as long as that remains the truth, I don't think either side is going to be successful in making this country what it can be.

I mean,

I believe in the democratic ideal.

I believe in the experiment of democracy.

I believe in a multicultural democracy.

I'm not sure

that that is the goal on the far right or the far left.

I'm not sure that either side on the extremes, a standard deviation out, is interested in democracy as an ideal.

I really don't think that's true.

And so to me,

I don't think character can be underestimated.

I don't think truth-telling and intellect.

I mean, if you go back to,

I was able to interview Ken Burns for the new 12-part special on the American Revolution, and I was so struck

by this idea from the founding fathers and mothers, because as it turns out, there was a collective group of mothers right behind those fathers.

I was so struck by the idea that the core pillars of democracy are virtue and education.

I think the citizenry

deserves

honest,

strong,

disciplined leaders, accountable leaders.

And I think if you put that in front of us,

we're going to support it wildly.

So, at this most basic level, this is my last question.

You've written a book about being a good and decent person.

That's what you just described.

You know, it says leaders are grounded, open, honest, empathetic.

Instead of acting like defensive jerks who try to scare people into submission, they'll get better results.

And yet, as we discussed, there are countless examples of leaders in business and politics who aren't honest and decent, don't, but are still tremendously successful.

You're a researcher, so give us the data.

Why is being good and decent leader actually more effective or successful than the alternative?

I've been thinking about this a lot, especially given the climate that we're in globally.

This is going to sound so naive.

That's okay.

I think it depends on how you define success.

And I don't really believe

in

my heart that the majority of people

want to

hurt other people,

want to leave the world worse than they found it.

I think people care about their legacy.

I think people care.

I mean, you look at Trump, who's like, you know, just really crazy about the Nobel Peace Prize.

Like, I think people want to be good.

So if you define success as meeting a metric that could be shareholder value, but also

being a good human being to other human beings.

I don't think the style of leadership we're seeing right now in this administration is going to do that.

So, I think by

the metric that really matters to the majority of people in the world, if you think that you have to choose between being a wholehearted leader and driving growth and revenue and impact, if you think that's the choice, you are missing skills

because it's not, it's not, it's a false dichotomy.

Right.

And do you imagine they will return?

That there will be a backlash against that, which is you're pushing here a different kind of leader.

Yes.

I think courage wins in the end.

Vulnerable courage again.

Well, there's no courage without vulnerability, so I'm for it.

Brene, thank you very much.

Thank you, Karen.

This is a fascinating book.

It's well worth reading.

I, you know, I kept reading and going, I wish people would behave like this.

And then they never failed at this appointment.

But there's so many people who are.

So I think that's the hope.

100%.

But it just, it feels like we're in the Empire Strikes back.

Oh, we are definitely in the Empire Strikes back.

But we know how that saga ends.

Badly for everybody.

Stick with Star Trek.

Everything is good.

Everything is good in Star Trek.

Oh, it is better.

Yeah.

Today's show was produced by Christian Castor Rousselle, Katera Yoakum, Michelle Aloy, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch.

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