Leadership Book Club: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown, Part Two

In part two of their deep dive into Brené Brown's Dare to Lead, Kristen and Mike explore shame, empathy, and trust through both personal and professional lenses. Through vulnerable stories - including Mike's nerve-wracking experience of saying "I love you" first and Kristen's college final exam mishap - they break down how shame shows up in leadership and what to do about it. The episode unpacks practical frameworks for building trust, developing emotional literacy, and becoming more resilient. For leaders looking to create psychologically safe environments where their teams can take risks and bounce back from failure, this episode offers concrete tools and relatable examples of putting Brown's research into practice.

You can listen to part one here: https://www.loveandleadershippod.com/12

Highlights:

• The difference between shame ("I am bad") and guilt ("I did something bad"), and why this distinction matters for leadership
• How shame can permeate organizational culture through perfectionism, favoritism, and tying self-worth to productivity
• The BRAVING framework for building trust: Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Non-judgment, and Generosity
• Understanding emotional literacy and why leaders need to be able to identify and name at least 30 different emotions
• Six common ways people offload emotions onto others, including "chandeliering" (sudden emotional outbursts from those in power)
• The importance of identifying personal and organizational values, and how to actually put them into practice
• Why "the story I'm telling myself" is a powerful tool for managing emotional reactions
• The three-step Learning to Rise process for building resilience: The Reckoning, The Rumble, and The Revolution

Links & Resources:

• Dare to Lead by Brené Brown
• Dare to Lead Hub - Free downloadable workbook and resources
• The Thin Book of Trust by Charles Feltman
• The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
• The Gap and The Gain by Dan Sullivan
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Wilink 
• Boundaries for Leaders by Dr. Henry Cloud 

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Podcast Website: www.loveandleadershippod.com
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Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-s-364970111/

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Transcript

Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.

Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

Kristen: Hello and welcome back to Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen

Mike: And I'm Mike.

Kristen: and today is our part two Leadership Book Club LBC. 

episode for, Dare to Lead by Brene Brown. So if you have not listened to part one, which aired two weeks ago, I highly recommend that you go back and listen to that first. Um, but otherwise, we are going to pick up where we left off at section four of part one,

Mike: Shame and Empathy. Shame

Kristen: and empathy.

So this chapter opens with a very raw story of how Brene had like a crazy book tour and all this stuff lined up and she ran into a glass wall

Mike: While recording the book

Kristen: while recording the audio book.

Mike: And she put herself through some crazy training regimen to get into shape for the book tour, because it can be, I'm sure it's very

Kristen: Very grueling, and physically grueling.

Mike: The sound engineer was like, can you take off your dangle earrings?

I can hear them. And she was, Oh, so sorry. And as she was getting up to do it, she ran straight head first into a six inch plate glass wall. And everything came apart for her. 

And, so she talks about like how she got a severe concussion, Yeah. She's also from Texas and the tech, and she's I think from German descent and the mentality is suck it up, and that's not necessarily what she would say to somebody else, but that's what she was telling herself.

Just suck it up, power through,don't be weak. And her behavior changed and she started getting very aggressive and, snapping at everybody and they're like, okay, something's really wrong.

Kristen: Yeah. And it turned out, I mean, she needed to basically take, over a month off. She had to cancel a bunch of speaking dates. She had to throw her regimen out the window.

And she talks about, like, all the, just, the shame she felt by having to cancel her speaking dates. And I was just, I just felt that, like, how, I. I was always a very high achieving student, but I will always remember like this final that I screwed up the date on in college and I missed my final.

And now I'm like, Oh, ADHD explains a lot of this. But I was like, I and I ended up being fine. I got an incomplete for the semester. My professor let me take the exam the following semester and then it, so it was okay, but like I was just like in agony over it. 'Cause I felt like so much shame for like, how did I miss my final, how did I screw that up?

So I just like related to that. I feel like I felt that in many levels, but that one like experience from college really comes back, the feeling of it still comes back. And that's really kind of what leads into talking a lot about shame and then empathy. So she has says there's the shame one, two, threes, basically intro to shame.

A is we all have it. Shame is universal and it's one of the most primitive human emotions. Two, we're all afraid to talk about shame, which is so true. And three, the less we talk about shame, the more control it has over our lives. And it really drives these like two different tracks inside of our minds.

One is you're not good enough. And the other is like, who do you think you are? Like you're getting too big for your britches. She sounds like in her like Texas, her Texas

Mike: Don't get too big for your britches. 

Kristen: yeah. And neuroscience shows that the pain and feelings of rejection that shame inflicts are as real as physical pain.

Mike: The body keeps the score. Yup.

Kristen: Like our body, we try to ignore our bodies, but our bodies take it all in. Right?And then she spent some time separating, which I actually found really helpful, as somebody who I feel like has not had the highest emotional literacy. It's gotten a lot of a lot better recent years, but, emotional literacy is basically being able to name your feelings.

Right? So she,she talks about like shame versus guilt. So guilt is I did something bad. Shame is, I am bad. So shame in itself is not a compass for moral behavior. it's more about like self worth, right? Versus guilt can sometimes indicate like you did something bad, right?

I mean, It can also be misplaced guilt, but that's like generally a differentiator. And she talks about like, we're like, shame is highly correlated with addiction, violence, aggression, depression, eating disorders, and bullying, while guilt is actually negatively correlated with them because it indicates that we're in touch with our empathy.

Like if we can feel guilt, then we feel like the impact that we have on somebody else, which is interesting. 

Mike: So there's eight cardinal virtues, in Chinese. There's brotherly love, there's filial piety, integrity. One of them is knowing shame. And I think it's mistranslated because it should be, and there's a saying, knowing shame is close to courage. But I think, again, like translating things into English, the shame is I am bad.

I don't think that's the right translation. It's like you should recognize your wrongdoing and its effect on other people. And if you do that, you will almost automatically, if you're working from your conscience, start to take action to correct your behavior. But this, the idea that I am bad, I will always be bad and there's nothing I can do to change it.

Okay. Is not, a productive, healthy, corrective feeling. It's fine to feel guilty. We make mistakes. Okay, you made a mistake. Feel guilty. I know that. I feel courage to correct. Okay, I know I can fix this. That's healthy. But feeling like I can never fix this, or I'm just flawed, inherently flawed. Where does that come from?

Religion? I don't know. Fear mongering, like those are really powerful, culturally shaping devices, if you will, that are used intentionally. 

Kristen: For sure. And then humiliation is people feel like they deserve their shame but they don't believe they deserve their humiliation. So humiliation is actually like less destructive because this is like happening from somebody else or something else. to you, right? So you can start buying into your humiliation and it can turn into shame, but humiliation in itself is less destructive because people don't necessarily feel like they deserve to be humiliated, but they do feel like they deserve their shame because that is like ultimately the core of their self worth, right? And then embarrassment is normally fleeting and can usually eventually be funny is the way to think about it. So I found that helpful to 

Mike: So helpful

Kristen: Shame all these 

Mike: other feelings

Let's define these feelings. And she talks about emotional literacy should be able to name 30 emotions that you feel in your, I'm like, I'm going to do three.

Um, you

Kristen: We actually do this in the education part of the Genos emotional intelligence assessment, which we'll talk all about in a couple episodes. Actually, I think the episode after this, but, um, but yeah,one of the, the things is like name all the feelings you felt in the last 24 hours.

It's very difficult.

Mike: I want to cuss. My brain just exploded a little 

Kristen: Yeah, yeah. You know? Yep.But. 

Mike: Is abject fear an emotion for us

Kristen: saying? Well, fear is an emotion.

Mike: Can we add abject to it?

Kristen: But.

Mike: What I'm thinking of A Few Good Men danger.

Grave danger. Do you know any other kind? No, you know, it's great. Okay. 

Kristen: And then like cues that shame has permeated our culture because shame can also permeate into an organizational culture, which I found really interesting as a concept. So perfectionism, favoritism, gossiping, comparison, self worth being tied to productivity. Oh my God. Harassment, discrimination, power over.

Mike: Hold on, let's go back to self-worth being tied to productivity. Your value in the market is absolutely tied to your ability to produce. 

Kristen: But that's different from your self worth. And there are definitely company cultures, I have worked in them, that definitely feed, I mean, I think you also have to have some of those feelings within yourself.

But if you tend to feel that way, where your self worth is tied to your identity, and then you work for a culture that promotes that, then it's, I can say from experience, it is not a good combo, to say the least.But yeah, power over versus we were talking about on the last episode, the difference between power over and power with power to power within.

And the others are bullying, blaming, teasing, cover ups. So those are all indicators that shame may have permeated your company or team culture. She also talks a little bit about firing people. Which we really should do an episode on. And I actually think it'd be really interesting to do with you, Mike.

Because having spent so much time in hospitality management, you've fired a lot of people, unfortunately.

Mike: I cannot comment or confirm nor deny.

So I would like love to get, I have not because I've mostly worked for like bigger companies where it's, it's a whole process to let somebody go, right? I've had a lot of conversations. I really like this too. She talks about, when firing people, aim to give them a way out with dignity. Can they resign? You know, you're bound by the HR laws of your particular state. I like this cause I try and do this when I'm giving feedback too, mostly probably because I don't like to feel uncomfortable.

I'm probably zigzagging, but I do find people generally have a pretty good internal compass of behavior and morality and success. And if you present them with, some kind of facts and situation and ask them, do you feel this was the right? Most people will own up to it and start to like self correct without you having to berate them or bully them or shame them or any of, any, none of those behaviors are particularly healthy, for long term, growth and improvement 

Kristen: Yeah.

Yeah. I really like this. Give people a way out with dignity and make that your objective.

Meeting all of the requirements of H. R. laws and Um, but I liked that as well. And she kind of gets into what is shame resilience.Because that is a thing. we don't just have to feel shame and bury it deep down and never speak of it. Shockingly. Haha. Haha. So shame resilience is the ability to practice authenticity when we experience shame, to move through the experience without sacrificing our values, and come out on the other side of the experience with more courage, compassion, and connection than we had going into it. 

Mike: Self empathy too. I think you can empathize with yourself. 

Kristen: Yes. 

Mike: Step back from the experiences that you're, experiencing and some self compassion, I guess that's probably what empathy is. 

Kristen: Yeah. But that gets into, she says, empathy is the antidote to shame. And that's not the same as like comparative suffering. So comparative suffering is when someone invalidates your feelings by comparing the situation to something worse. It's like, you know, like my, my, my mom just died. Well, look on the bright side, at least your dad's still alive and healthy.

Like, you know, like are things like, oh wow, that's nothing when I lost both my parents in the same, you know, like when people like try to

Mike: Oneupsmanship.

Kristen: One up you. Yeah. So like comparative suffering is not empathy.Actual empathy is infinite and renewable. And when you think of it that way, there's not like an either or, right?

It's not like, Oh, this is situation is definitively worse than the other. Like, it doesn't matter because we don't run out of empathy if we're in touch with it. So you can still have empathy for somebody without being like, well, you know, at least you have a roof over your head. Like.

Mike: Compassion fatigue is a thing though.

Kristen: Oh, for sure. But that comes down to boundaries, right?

Mike: Yeah. What are those?

Kristen: But I like that she says empathy is not about connecting to an experience, like the actual situation. It's connecting to the emotions that underpin an experience. 

Mike: Yeah, I thought this section was awesome. Like I said, she really is able to talk about these,what are somewhat esoteric concepts, feelings, emotions, vulnerable, and spell them out in such solid concrete terms that are very approachable. Understandable, teachable, and repeatable. You know, I was thinking earlier, this has to now be part of my little lexicon of Leadership 101, and I don't know if it's bumping one of the other books off the trio or being added to it.

But I think with the work here is so deep on the human level. On yourself and how you connect to others.

Kristen: It's so, it's so 

Mike: It's so, it's so important.

Kristen: These are skills that are like, I mean, this is addressed towards leadership, but oh my God, these skills are useful for everything.And so she then she gets into five key skills of empathy and then six barriers to empathy. I thought that all of these were amazing. So you can probably imagine, like, I, I, I didn't really cut much out of my notes for this book.

This is part of why we're doing this in two parts, because it's just so much of it is so valuable.

Mike: ~Well,~ you were just impressed with my notes for Extreme Ownership, How U. S. Navy SEALs lead And Win.

Kristen: Oh my God. ~So,~ five key skills of empathy. Number one is perspective taking, which is to see the world as others see it.

Mike: Or try to at least and

Kristen: to. Yeah, so like honoring, a lot of this is like honoring people's perspectives as truth, even when they're different from ours. And I was like, oh my God, the timing of this in election season.

But like honoring that like for the other person, their perspective is truth and not trying to invalidate that. I think this when we talk about the levels of listening, immersive listening is such a powerful tool for this because you need to be able to come at it from a place of curiosity and kind of turn off your own emotional activation and how it like might relate back to your own point of view.

And she says perspective taking requires being the learner, not the knower. Okay. So you have to really take a different mindset for it. And then number two is to be non judgmental. She says, generally, we judge in areas where we're most susceptible to shame. And we judge people who are doing worse than we are in those areas. 

Mike: So when I judge the terrible drivers, I'm ashamed of my dri I don't know, I'm a good driver.

Kristen: I don't know. What does that say? I don't know that it's that literal, but it's

Mike: Well, I'm not patient with myself, so I'm definitely not patient with other 

Kristen: Yeah, well,

Mike: It's like you can turn right, sir, without coming to a complete stop. I promise.

Kristen: I promise. Yeah. Well, it's also, it's interesting because, she repeats that later in the book, and she says, this is why parenting is such a source of judgment because, like, all parents just feel so much guilt and feel like they're, like, screwing up their kids, right, because it's just, part of the experience of being a parent, and, that's why, there's so much parents judging each other. Which I thought was interesting.

Mike: Yeah, that's a really fundamental primal part of us too,

Kristen: Oh, yeah.

Mike: And when she talks about this, when she says primitive, she's talking about like parts of the brain that developed earlier than other parts of the brain, not in you, but in, in our

Kristen: Yeah. It's like our reptile 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. 

But yeah, I thought this was also just a good point is take note, like, where are the areas where you're really judgmental and like, that might be a signal of a cycle of shame forming. It's like, huh, interesting. Oh, Mike just went in and highlighted that.

I I'm just enjoying that we're working off shared document. 

Kristen: So the next two are related. So it's number three to understand another person's feelings. And then number four to communicate your understanding of that person's feelings.

Mike: What I'm hearing is. 

Exactly. Paraphrasing and clarification questions and all that. Oh,See? Shared document. 

Kristen: Oh, and now he just wrote, I love you. it's very cute. 

Mike: Oh that's embarassing.. Don't share that.

Kristen: Why not?

Mike: It's our shared document.

Kristen: That we're using as a basis for talking to the

Mike: Fine. Don't share our family slack, though. That's between us.

Kristen: No. Would never.

Mike: What we Slack in the family stays in the family. 

Kristen: Oh, my God.

So yes, to understand another person's feelings, and communicate that understanding requires us to first be in touch with our own feelings. And also be at least somewhat fluent in the language of feelings. So that's emotional literacy.

Mike: She added three and four together too, because they're the

Kristen: They're related, yeah. It's it's all, it comes back to emotional literacy, which is needed to process our emotions.

And it's also a prerequisite for empathy, shame, resilience, and the ability to reset and rise after a fall. I like this concept of emotional literacy. I will start using that. A lot. I think we talked about this a lot with Megan in the last episode. 

Mike: I need a list of emotions that I can point to, like I'm a four year old. How are you feeling?

Kristen: Feelings wheels are a thing.

Mike: Googles feelings wheels.

Kristen: yeah, absolutely. she also talks about the iceberg effect, which I mentioned in our last episode, because I love the iceberg effect for so many things. But, if you imagine people's feelings as an iceberg, like what is on the surface, which might be like anger, for example, is can be very different from what's below the surface, like at the bottom of the iceberg.

And she said, often shame and grief are really hard to express for most people. So we often turn to anger or silence. And that's what's on the surface that other people were reading. And then the fifth one is mindfulness, which is all about taking a balanced approach to negative feelings, that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated.

And I love this so much. I've talked about mindfulness and it relates a lot to the improv based work I do as well, but I also went on a 10 day Vipassana meditation, silent retreat in a few years ago, and I actually signed up to go on another one in January of this year. Um,

Mike: Bye. See you.

Kristen: Bye! Um, which is crazy, and maybe in another episode I'll talk more about that experience and kind of things I learned from it.

Mike: Like that you were in love with me. 

Kristen: Yeah, 

Mike: Cause you couldn't stop thinking about me.

Kristen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was like a few weeks after Mike and I met. 

Mike: Aww.

Kristen: Aw. But, 

Mike: You also said you knew I was different from the rest of your friends when I was like oh cool, that sounds great. And everyone else was like why would you want to do that, like, I want to do that.

Kristen: Like, oh, I totally get it. It was, yeah, it was funny, but I. Vipassana is a type of meditation,it's essentially a body scan, but it's all about,you're experiencing every single feeling and sensation in your body, like, each part at a time, but you're also really practicing non judgment.

So, labeling that feeling as neutral, which is really hard, like, when you're feeling pain, which, oh my God, if you're sitting to meditate for 10 hours a day and you're not used to it, it is so physically painful. Nobody tells you that. But a lot of what you're doing is learning to recognize feelings as neutral instead of labeling them as bad or good.

And it's so hard, but it's so good for this stuff. And then the six barriers to empathy. So number one is that she talks about sympathy versus empathy, which we kind of like foreshadowed in the last episode. But the difference here is empathy is feeling with people.

So like, I get it. I feel with you. I've been there.

Mike: I've been there is the, you have to have been there to feel some

Kristen: Yeah. But it's a line between I've been there is not like, let me make this all about me now. And more like,I feel you,

Mike: Yeah, I can identify with the

Kristen: I can identify with you. I feel you, like I'm feeling with you right

Mike: Yeah.

Kristen: Versus sympathy is feeling for them. So I feel sorry for

Mike: Her story of trying to make it home for her daughter's

Kristen: Oh my God.

Mike: game. And it was amazing. And she's having a full on meltdown in the airport cause her flight's getting canceled and her teammate or assistant, I'm not sure, is desperately trying to rebook flights and everything.

And finally she looks at Brene and she goes, we're not going to make it.

Kristen: Yeah.

Mike: Clear is kind. And Brene just keeps, apparently like when she's overwhelmed, she just keeps saying, I don't understand, I don't understand. And her friend is like, we're not going to make it. This sucks. This sucks. My heart's breaking for you too.

My heart's not breaking for you, but my heart's breaking now also, not like, Oh, you poor thing, bless your heart. As they say in, in Texas. Brene talks about later, like it's good that she didn't try and hug me cause I might've smacked her. I'm not really, but that, people need different things when they're in.

these, emotional states. But her friend knew exactly what to do, which is just stay with her, be comfortable in the space. we shy away from our own feelings. So we like to shy away from other people's feelings and she didn't do that. She stuck through it with the discomfort of Brene's breakdown. And, she didn't care that she wasn't going to melt down in public, she was like, go ahead, have a meltdown, enjoy.Yeah. And that, I think that experience probably brought the two of them very much, even more close together. And, she probably appreciates that, years and years later.

Kristen: Yeah. And she notes that like, empathy is not climbing into the hole of the emotions with the other person.

That is called enmeshment, So you're still keeping your boundaries, but you're feeling with them. So you're not taking on all their emotions, and you're not like making it your problem, but you're feeling with them. And I think that's important. And she says like, the two most powerful words when somebody is struggling are me too.

And basically what you're saying, even if you don't use those exact words, because it depends on the, what you're talking about, right? But basically it's like, I may not have had the exact same experience as you, but I know this struggle and you are not alone. And that you are not alone in this, I feel with you is the most important part of that.



Mike: Well, yeah, I've kind of gone over this, I'm definitely still, I feel like I'm a pretty empathetic person, but maybe I'm a sympathetic person and I'm still exploring the difference between those two. And I think, one of the main differences like in sympathy, it's armored, you don't expose your own feelings. You're like, Oh, I feel sorry for you. And you're not sharing that you too have felt the exact same way. And you've also been hurt and you know how painful that hurt is. It's coming. It's almost like,I'm up here and you're down here. Oh, it's too bad for you, but I'm fine. Yeah. Yeah.

Kristen: Well, the other, that one's a little longer, but the other five of these, I felt this so much, um, like when you're talking about barriers to empathy, I, so I lost my dad when I was 35, I was on the younger end.

So I had like one or two friends who had lost parents, but not very many. And it's. It is so interesting. When you go through something like that, for one thing, you really find out who your real friends are, but you also just kind of realize how many people have no idea what to say.

Mike: But she says, that's okay. And it's all right to be like, this sucks. I don't even know what to 

Kristen: Yeah. Like it's way better

Mike: That's way better.

Kristen: But I feel like the other ones of these are kind of things that people say when they like, don't know how to deal with it. Right. So the gasp and awe, which is terrible, which just like you share your story and then somebody feels shame on your behalf and they're like appalled.

So the like, oh God, I would just die if that happened to me. Kind of thing. And then suddenly it's like I mean, personally, I'm very like off put by that, but like, or you feel like it's now you need to make them feel better. Like it's not, Oh, it's not that bad. It's not a good reaction.

Or the mighty fall, which is this is particularly when you like make a mistake or something, like the other person needs to think of you as this pillar of worthiness and authenticity and they are so let down by your imperfections that they can't help you. So like, I just never expected that from you. 

Mike: Yeah, she has that where an audience member was like you're my authenticity role model I'm so disappointed that you I don't know if she cussed or something and Brene was like I should not be your role model.

Kristen: I'm on my I'm on this journey with you. I'm on my own journey but you gotta, We're all human. We're all human. Yep. And then the block and tackle, which is like the other person is so uncomfortable with the vulnerability that they scold you. So it's like, what were you thinking? 

Mike: Geez. 

Kristen: Yeah The boots and shovels so the other person like desperately feels like they need to make it better so that they can get out of their own discomfort.

So

Mike: Looks around uncomfortably. Yeah.

Kristen: So they like refuse to acknowledge that you can actually make mistakes they're just like really bad things can happen, right? It's like, Oh, it can't be that bad. You're amazing. Or I think this is a lot when a lot of people come from when somebody dies, or it's like, well, at least he's in a better place now.

I'm like, that's the kind of thing you say when like, you're just Yeah, you're 

Mike: to get out of it. 

Kristen: to just get out of the discomfort, but like, it's actually nobody, don't say that to somebody when a loved one dies, just as a general. I actually have wanted to make a guide to people and like, when a close friend of yours loses somebody close to them, here's, what not to say or what to say, right?

And then the last one is the If you think that's bad

Mike: Perfect time to one up somebody,

Kristen: Yeah, just 

Mike: great time. 

Kristen: Like the person confuses connection with the opportunity to one up. And this is interesting to me because I've actually heard that it's a thing with ADHD, or like, I think maybe just, maybe other types of neurodivergence where, a way to connect with people is by sharing Right. 

Mike: You're not actually trying to one up. Yeah. You're trying to articulate a feeling that you might not express feelings well, or you express them intellectually. 

Kristen: And you can share an experience and do so in a way that is like, all about doing so with empathy, right. I'm with you. Like, I, I may not be know exactly what you're feeling, but I can really feel for you on this. That's very different from this, which is the, Oh yeah, me too. Listen to this. So the, and the main differences is that it shifts the focus to the other person.

And I think that's really important to, to remember, right? Like when you're sharing your story from a place of empathy, you're sharing it as a way to show the other person that they're not alone

Mike: Yeah.

Kristen: Versus when you're sharing it from this place, it's about making it about you. And it's, I love it so much. Um, she also just gets into the idea like empathy is a skill.

We'll screw it up, but you can continue to improve it over time.

Mike: She has a phrase that she uses a lot in the book, which is like circle back and clean it up. That's a very Texan like phrase. We can clean it up. And so you can make a mess in a relationship, in a connection and like, okay, you were out of your integrity there. You need to go clean it That's more, I think, descriptive and paint done right.

Clean it up is more, descriptive and complete then apologize. Clean it up has a more kind of broad idea of like we need to reconnect. We need to like explore how it happened. We need to get to the root of the problem. Maybe we'll rumble with vulnerability and we'll clean it up.

I love that. 

Kristen: And the rest of this section gets into, so that was like, how can you empathize with other people? And the rest of this is kind of about how can you empathize with yourself. So like a lot of this is self kindness. This is the talk to yourself, the way you would talk to somebody you love.

Mike: Nope 

Kristen: Self kindness is self empathy. Basically. And she also has word choices. I think these are actually really good for like when you're not sure what to say to somebody else and also as things to say to yourself when you're trying to talk to yourself, and have empathy for yourself is like the, Oh man, I feel you.

I know that feeling and it sucks. I see you. You're not alone. I've been in a similar place and it's really hard. I think a lot of us experience that. Either we're all normal or we're all weird, but either way it's not just you. And I understand what that's like. Like, these are really good phrases. I really do want to make a guide for people, of like, things to say and not say when somebody dies or goes through a really hard time, right?

Because we don't know if we're not, we're not taught what to say. 

Mike: And people with complicated relationships with loved ones can experience different things like the loved one who maybe caused a lot of their trauma passes away and they have very conflicted feelings about it.

Some of their feelings are relief centered. And of course they feel guilty about that because you're not supposed to, but, and you're like, Oh, you poor thing. And you're like, actually I'm a little bit happy. And now you're in some weird shame storm. So it is not a one size fits all.

Kristen: Yeah. And then to kind of wrap this up, I'm realizing this is a very meaty section.

We spent a lot of

Mike: very deep,

Kristen: it's so 

It's so good. So the four elements of shame resilience. So this is like the bouncing back from knowing how to acknowledge when you feel shame and move forward.

So number one, recognizing shame and understanding its triggers.

Understanding our physiology when we're feeling shame, like paying attention to what is happening in your body. And she notes that we have these shame shields that we use to avoid feeling shame. So there's moving away, moving toward, moving against.

So moving away is like withdrawing, hiding, silencing ourselves. I would never do that. That's not my way of handling this at all.

Mike: Avoidant.

Kristen: Or moving toward, seeking to appease and please.

Mike: Yeah, when I see this too, I think these can be physical too. You can really watch people's body language and see the way they're positioned.

See, you know, are they crossing? It's not a, body language is not as simple as it's made to seem on TV. We should do that book. Look, I gotta find that.

Kristen: Body language

Mike: Yeah, it's another like FBI dude who, and they really break down like, okay, And just looking up and to the left doesn't indicate lying.

You need baselines of people's body language. It's more complicated than that, but you can see there's a physical reaction to emotions, to feelings and by practicing mindfulness, you can learn a lot if you're paying attention.

Kristen: Well, and then like the moving against is trying to gain power over others and using shame to fight shame. So like, these are all clues that you or somebody else might like, really just be feeling shame and we just do everything we can to avoid feeling it. Which is crazy.It's so true. So number two, practicing critical awareness. She says shame is like a zoom lens. So when we're feeling shame, we're just so zoomed in on ourselves that like, all we see is our flawed self. We feel really alone. So, zooming out helps us see that we're apart or something. Andanything you can do to realize you're not alone in this, whether it's finding like, a Facebook support group, or whatever it is you're going through, like having conversations with people, like reminding yourself that you're not alone helps take you out of that shame spiral. Reaching out, this is similar, like helping us learn the experiences that make us feel alone are actually the most universal. And then speaking shame because shame derives its power from being unspeakable. And this is very powerful.

So that was a lot.

Mike: Like speak the truth even if your voice shakes 

Kristen: I like that 

Mike: That's courage.

Kristen: Well, then moving into section five, and we're like almost done with part one. Luckily, the other three parts are much shorter, so otherwise this would be like a multi part episode. 

Mike: Jocko has done like multiple three hour podcasts on certain books, I think. and I love this book on The Psychology of Military Incompetence took them like nine hours to get through.

Kristen: I'll tell you what, baby, when we have, um, 3 million followers or whatever it is, we can do some much longer episodes.

Mike: Ah, it's such a good book 

Kristen: I can't imagine listening to anybody, including you for nine hours.

Mike: Geez. Wow. You No, that's fair.

Kristen: I mean, you're like, also

Mike: also like also Yes.

Kristen: it's a long time.

Mike: a long time. It's a long time. 

Kristen: So section five is all about curiosity and grounded confidence. As she defines grounded confidence as the messy process of learning and unlearning, practicing and failing and surviving a few misses. Which is not the same thing as like blustery arrogance or being built on BS.

It's like this real solid and build on self awareness and practice.

Mike: That's what I was thinking of with jujitsu. They did a study where like lobsters, if they lose a fight, they're far more likely to lose the next fight. And if they win a fight with another, they're far more likely to win it. And I observed that on the mats.

If you do well in a role, you feel confident in your skills. And if you don't, which is the more the norm, you're getting tossed around. It is very hard to believe that what you know will work, which is absolutely the prerequisite for it working.

But when you do it enough, you start to gain that, that grounded confidence and awareness of what you're good at, what you're not good at, what you need to work on, your ability to dissect a situation and see like, where did I go wrong?

Or what's not firing. 

Yeah, for sure. And I think it's interesting, she talks about how when leaders don't have the skills to lean into vulnerability, they're not successfully able to navigate paradoxes that I think also line up with The Dichotomy of Leadership. that you've talked about with Jocko, right? It's like the letting chaos reign versus reigning in chaos, like big heart versus tough decision making, humility versus fierce resolve, thinking global versus acting local, ambition versus attention to detail, thinking big versus starting small.

Kristen: So she argues that leaders need the skills to lean into vulnerability in order to actually navigate those. 

Mike: And uncertainty.I read, remember the book, it's by a general from the National Guard, I think from Pennsylvania.

I'm trying to, it was a great book and he talks about leaders really need to make decisions when they have between 50 and 70 percent of the information that you would like to have to make the decision. And that is not, I mean, that's a learned skill for some people. I'm a very analytical person.

And that can be hard to, make a decision with incomplete data. Even though I'm also kind of known as an impulsive person, I'm collecting data to make decisions. And that is, that's part of the chaos of, situations and life, I 

Kristen: Yeah. Right? 

Mike: I guess.Yeah, how do you walk that, how do you walk that fine line in between these, paradoxes, Jekyll says dichotomies, they're competing priorities, as we saw in that book, you have to be close to your team, but not too close.

You have to show emotion, but not too emotional, all of those things. So it's, it's balance, right? You know, the center. 

Kristen: Yeah. I think it was also interesting. One of the things she's also talked about in this section is that many organizations have actually gone too far in making learning too easy. And like research actually shows that in order for learning to be effective, it needs to be effortful.

Mike: Yeah, I wrote that down too. The brain needs a certain level of discomfort for learning.Curiosity is actually a skill of vulnerability. It's also a skill that requires,the comfort in chaos. In Jiu Jitsu, we drill moves, and you'll drill them 100 times. But then when you're actually rolling, the experience doesn't look like that at all.

It's 200 percent more chaotic. And, being comfortable in that scramble and then even being willing to create the scramble and to know how to take advantage of the scramble, that is far more useful of a skill than knowing the, rote steps or the technical, you know. Like, back to Game of Thrones, like chaos is a ladder.

So it is, if you know how to Yeah,

I'm not good at any . I'm not good at any of that. I like order, I like, regularity. I, if you go in my closet, my shirts are lined up, in order of. There's white, then there's stripes, then there's blood and there's doesn't have

Kristen: He also doesn't have that many shirts.

Mike: I have a lot of shirt, but they're all the same

Kristen: They're all the same shirt.

Mike: Yeah. I have 11 of the same blue shirt.

Kristen: Yeah, it's true.

but yeah. And then she like defines like grounded confidence is rumble skills plus curiosity plus practice.

Mike: Sure.

Kristen: Yeah. And like curiosity is an act of vulnerability and courage.

And it's correlated with creativity, intelligence, improved learning, and memory and problem solving, which definitely goes in line with my work and what I've seen as well, And yeah. She says that the most common barrier to getting curious is having a dry well because it's harder to be curious about something that you have no knowledge or awareness of. So you might have to prime the pump by using intriguing information to get people interested first. But I also think so much of this is a mindset, right? If you go into any situation prepared to be curious it makes it so much easier. 

Mike: I think that's., like a concept 

Kristen: Yeah. 

Mike: The curiosity.

Where are you coming from with this? How did you get to this point? And then trying to trace those threads and people as far back as you possibly can, you'll understand their perspective, their motivations, their fears, their hopes, their,all of that stuff. You'll get a, you'll get a very vivid picture.

Kristen: Yeah. For sure. I mean, I was literally just, we just had some friends over and I was chatting with them about what made dating easier for me was to just go in with a mindset of like I can talk to anybody for 30 minutes and if I just go in interested in hearing their story and learning something, it takes the pressure off and it makes it so much easier versus all the negativity that comes with

Mike: Were you prepared to bounce after 30 minutes?

Wow. 

Kristen: But I didn't.

Mike: I'm not

Kristen: With you.. I

Mike: Not like that. I had a friend one time, I was trying to put on the whole show. So I, it would be like three or five hour dates or something. My friends, yeah. And I, I thought like, you know, trying to like, and my friend was like, no dude,you're giving them an epic.

Give them an episode of a season and make them want to come back for more. I was like, Oh, okay. 

Kristen: Yeah. Well, that's a lot of time to spend with somebody that you're just, yeah.

Mike: I'm very intense in that. I was like, this is

Kristen: I mean, granted, I think our first date was several hours.

Mike: Yeah, but it seemed natural. I didn't, I did not plan

Kristen: We could have ended it early if we weren't feeling it.

Mike: I was just gonna throw you a croissant my way. Have a coffee and a 

Kristen: Uh huh. Yeah. Well, you know, things worked out okay, I guess.So believe it or not, I think we have actually wrapped up part one of four. The

Mike: The other three are 

Kristen: pretty 

Mike: quick. 

Kristen: quick Are pretty 

quick. It's the crux of it, It's the deepest.

Mike: Deep, and I do feel like a lot of times people who write books, and I don't know, I'll probably never write one, but they add on maybe an extra third of stuff that they feel they need to make the book longer, you know.

There's a lot of good stuff in here, though. 

Kristen: There is. Yeah, and then part two is all about values..She's defining value, which I think is a very of universal definition as like a way of being or believing that we hold most important. So like our values are basically like what we consider to be most important to us.

It's just how you define it. And living into our values is more than just professing our values. Saying your values is one thing. We're actually being clear about what they are and we're taking care that our intentions, our words, our thoughts, and our behaviors actually align with those beliefs. And then she actually goes into a process to identify your values. I think one really important thing, there's only, I think, one mention that I saw in the book, but there's actually a lot of resources that go with this. If you go to her website and then Dare to Lead.We can include the link to it in the show notes, but she has all these free resources.

She doesn't even collect an email, which like, to be clear, if I enjoy a book, I have absolutely no problem giving myself somebody, my email to get their

Mike: there. She's probably stop giving

Kristen: Yeah, she doesn't even care. She's so she has six number one, New York Times bestsellers I guess..

Mike: No more emails. Please stop emailing me about giving me your email.

Kristen: But yeah, you can just go on her website, you can download, and there's like a 40 page workbook that goes with this and it actually has like exercises that go through all this stuff. and there's also like a list of values, like value words that is in the book and on her free resources. And I would say in general, if you have never been through the process of identifying your values, do it, I think it's really important to understand what those are.

Mike: Yeah, she, getting clear about, I mean,people who have gone through some seasons of life will have whittled away to see what they're made of and what's most important. But actually doing the exercise and really having to clarify what is most important to you.is pretty useful.

Kristen: Yeah. And she says, we only have one set of values.

We don't shift them based on context. Now I would argue that, I think these at heart or overall are going to stay pretty consistent throughout your life. Like I do think I have some values that have things that are still important, like travel and adventure. Like these are still things I value, but are they as high up on my list of values as they were five or ten years ago, like probably not. So I do think some of these maybe shift a little bit throughout your life, but it is generally something that like, it's not going to vary by context, right? 

Mike: Well she says there's not a home values and work values.

Kristen: Like whether you're, yeah, if you're home at work, like these are still going to be your values.And she, what's interesting about this. Like most people are probably going to circle like 10 to 15 values when they go through this list of words and maybe add their own, but she really insists that it's important to pick the two that you hold most dear, which is really hard, but she says that her research showed that participants that had the most willingness to practice vulnerability and courage tethered their behavior to one or two values, not 10. so I thought this was interesting. I've done a lot of values exercises in the past.

I know Mike has too, but I was curious. I'm like, okay, if we had to narrow them down to two, what would they be? So we both did this exercise and we have not shared them with other yet.

Mike: Oh, I don't agree with this. I'm

Kristen: I know you don't. but we'll talk

Mike: Some part of this I agree with, but there's some part I don't.

Kristen: I know.

Well, we'll talk about that in the what didn't resonate. But if you had to choose from two values, or if you had to narrow it down to two values, what would be?

Mike: So I am more on board with one.

Kristen: Interesting.

Mike: And then I am with two. And I think,I'm going to go to the five constant virtues that Confucius elucidates.

Which are benevolence, propriety, wisdom, righteousness, and faith or trustworthiness.

So those are my five.

Kristen: Okay, but

Mike: If I have to choose one, it's benevolence.

Kristen: Benevolence. 

Mike: Yeah. Which in some, the Buddhists, they talk about compassion. I don't think it's exactly the same thing. I think compassion is a little closer to kindness. Benevolence is, oh God, I don't dare try and explain it. But I will tell you that the Chinese character for benevolence is made up of the characters for man or human and the character for two. So in order to have benevolence, you need two people. 

Kristen: Hmm.And what would your second be? 

Mike: Of the five, I would say faith.

You, there's a saying, Confucius without faith you cannot be established. 

Kristen: 

Mike: So I like what she's doing. It's whittle down who you are and what's important to you to one or two things that you can remember and keep in your working memory. If we go back to boundaries, right Boundaries for Leaders, there's what are we paying attention to?

What are we not allowing? And what can we keep in working memory? I think you can only keep so many things in working memory. I think you could keep more than one or two, but getting it down to some very key concepts will inform your choices and decisions in everything you do. And hers was courage. And I think also faith.

And so whenever she's faced with the situation, she can go back to that. And if I'm going to act courageously in this situation, how will I act? And then do that, and that is, that's good Kung Fu, man. I like the concept. I don't agree a hundred percent with her approach, but, it's good stuff. 



Kristen: The two I came up with were one was compassion, but I was like going a little back and forth, like benevolence might almost be a better word for it. Cause ultimately a lot of it's like the caring about people and helping them and empowering them right?

It's like a very deep value of mine. And then my other one was growth, like the, being always open to learning and growing and improving, which I know is also a very high value of yours.

Mike: Yeah, if you want to go constant virtues, you can go wisdom, which is like a growth and a natural restoration of our bright nature. I think it's sometimes when people say compassion, I think it's like sympathy almost. And that's,

Kristen: Yeah, that's the only thing. And it's also associated with suffering. So I don't, it's not necessarily always suffering, right? Like sometimes it's just like helping people figure out what the next step in their path is.

And they don't necessarily need to be like suffering to benefit from help with that and support. So yeah, I don't know.

Mike: That's how I get to benevolence. If I have to pick one, but like helping other people grow, I feel like that's benevolence.

My mentorship coaching approach to leadership, I think that's, you know. 

Kristen: Yeah,

Mike: It's a much more cosmic kindness, if you will. And that can also entail the very difficult conversations. It doesn't mean being nice. If you really have benevolence for somebody, you will not let them, sit there with their, you know, their shortcomings or their areas of opportunity.

You will help them face it and move forward. That's real kindness.

Kristen: Yeah.

Mike: It's not kindness to be like, Oh, it'll be okay. You're fine. no, actually there's some work to be done. And I feel you, I've been there. Here's some steps you can take or let's workshop this or something, but not to just ignore. That's not kindness at all. 

Kristen: Yeah. And she says our values should be so crystallized in our minds that they don't feel like a choice.

Mike: It's not a choice.

Kristen: They're simply a definition of who we are in our lives. And in the hard moments, we know we'll pick what's right over what's fun, fast, or easy. But then, she gets to something I feel so hard, which is that only 10 percent of organizations have actually operationalized their values into teachable and observable behaviors that are actually used to train their employees and hold them accountable.

Mike: In Good to Great, they found that it didn't actually matter what your organizational values were, as long as you had them and were able to put them into practice, those companies were going to be more far more successful, but what they were didn't matter?

Kristen: I believe that, honestly. I mean, I'm sure there's some limits of that.

Mike: That, well, sure.

Kristen: But,

Mike: we're not doing Gordon

Kristen: Yeah, to some degree, as long as, you're, to some degree, your organization values being ethical, otherwise, that's gonna come out eventually, right? But I, yeah, I agree that what the values are is less important as actually identifying what behaviors are associated with those values and then incentivizing that behavior across the organization, starting with the top and modeling it from the top.

Like I have been a part of so many times where like the leadership team meets and they're like, these are our company values and now we're putting it on the wall all throughout the office. So now these are our values now, right? Like, that is not actually instilling your values into the organization.

It takes a lot more than that, and actually identifying it with specific behaviors and holding people accountable for them is so important. And this is kind of what she gets into from here, is actually, whether we're talking personal values or organizational values,identifying, like, what are the behaviors that support our values and then what are our slippery behaviors that are like actions that we find ourselves tempted to do, even if they don't actually meet our values. And being honest with yourself about that. And we talked about this a little bit, earlier in the series, but.Daring leaders who live into their values are never silent about the hard things. Because if you can opt out of those conversations, the conversations about privilege and oppression, because they make you uncomfortable, that is the epitome of privilege. 

Mike: Yeah. I hear that.

Kristen: I feel that so hard and I feel like this is a big area that I personally want to keep developing for myself is like, how do we have those hard conversations and show up and like also accept that, like, I'm going to say some things that are wrong and that's better than not saying anything at all, as long as I'm learning from it.

And yeah, it's hard, but it's harder to be on the other side of it. So,she also gives 10 points to make sure you're in the right headspace to give somebody feedback. I'm not going to read these out right now because we just did a whole episode not long ago on how to give feedback and how to put yourself in the right mindset, but I did want to call it out for anybody who's reading the book.

And she also like talks about how important it is to have that team conversation because you have your organizational values, right? And you have your personal values, but you can also have team values that ideally are pulling in some of those organizational values, but customizing them for your team, right?

For example, you have like a data analyst team. You're probably going to have some specific values that relate to that within a broader company that has their own values, right?

Mike: I remember I did this, I remember when I read this book the first time, now it was when I was at the hotel and we did this as a team and I'm like, let's pick five things about how we're going to operate together.

And I remember one of the things we picked was like very direct communication because we were all struggling in our departments and we were standing in each other's way. So one of our values was going to be very clear communication about how we're working together in a polite way, but we're going to be very direct aboutwhere we're falling short.

And I think it helped. And we, every time we would come together in a meeting, it's okay, how are we doing on this value? You know?Let's filter out the noise and run it through the, the sieve of what we've agreed that we will work together in, in this manner.

Kristen: Yeah, I love that. She also encourages everyone to identify, like, how do your values relate to receiving feedback?

And what is a value supporting behavior or piece of self talk that you can use to help yourself when you're receiving feedback, especially if it's something that might emotionally activate you, might put you on the defense, right? So like hers are like, I'm brave enough to listen, or there's something valuable here.

Take what works and leave the rest. So ahead of time, identifying like, what are those beliefs or mantras that you can use going into those conversations? 

Mike: So from this, this moves into part three. See, we told you that the other parts were shorter. We're moving faster.

Kristen: No, it's, we're, we're

We're getting there guys. We really are. So the part three is braving trust. And she uses a definition of trust from Charles Feltman and his, The Thin Book of Trust.

His definition of trust is choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person's actions.

Mike: Like saying, I love you first. we just

Kristen: I thought we just skipped over this story. 

Mike: to come

I will never forget I will never forget this. That's the, she, she, somewhere in the book she says, the ultimate like act of vulnerability is being the first person to say I love you in a relationship. 



Kristen: Mike insists that when he first told me he loved me that there was an extremely long pause. It 

Mike: It was so long 

Kristen: I mean, it wasn't that long. I was surprised.

Mike: And I'm just looking at you going, oh no. 

Kristen: Awww. 

Mike: I couldn't read your face and it was like.

Kristen: It was also dark. 

Mike: It wasn't that dark. It wasn't that dark. And I was just like, oh, okay, all right. I'm just going to go hide my face in shame. And I think that is the correct usage of the definition of shame. And I was like. 

Kristen: But then I told you I loved you too. 

Mike: Don't remember that part. I

Kristen: Yes you do.

Mike: Kind of.

Kristen: Lies. Lies.

But it is, it's, you know, IBut yes, that is truly vulnerable.

Mike: A lot, lots of vulnerability that we experience, the more we lean into it, the more fully we will live. I guess the more like highs we will have in our life.

Kristen: Yeah.

Mike: That's like, I guess why people go skydiving and base jumping and things like that. The vulnerability is what makes it exciting. Yeah. me neither.

Kristen: had the desire for

Mike: Saying I love you first was as vulnerable as I

Kristen: that was as much

Mike: Yeah, that's a lot of risk. Jumping off baver and no, thank 

Kristen: I also, the main thing I love about this part is she gives this like seven step inventory for the behaviors that define trust and it stands for braving. I mean,I love a framework that spells out a word. 

Mike: Oh my God. This is the part that I, I'm a little annoyed by. It's like, how much branding do we need?

Kristen: mean,I appreciate it personally. It's hard. It's hard to make these up. I say from experience.

Mike: for sure.

Kristen: hard. And it does help you remember it.

Mike: it does. It, and this one is actually very, I think, excellent.

Kristen: Yeah, it is excellent. So the, so yes, so the seven braving all stands for braving. So boundaries, which is like you respect my boundaries.

And when you're not clear about what's okay and what's not okay, you ask. And there's like a willingness to say no, like saying no is okay.Reliability. So you do what you'll say you do. You stay aware of your competencies and limitations so you don't overpromise and you're able to deliver on commitments and balancing competing priorities.

Also accountability. You own your mistakes, you apologize and make amends. Vault, which is, you don't share information or experiences that are not yours to share. And I think really worth noting with this includes sharing with somebody information about somebody else that you are not in a position to share because I think it is very easy to fall into the trap of sharing information sharing gossip in order to build connection.

Mike: Yeah. She says it's a very quick connection, but it actually, it's very fleeting.

Kristen: Because people are going to wonder like, so what are you going to tell everybody else about me.

Mike: What are you telling everyone else that I told you that I didn't want you

Kristen: So it's very short lived. And I've I've been there. It can be really easy to fall into that trap. So I

We see, we seek acceptance in the tribe. Yeah, it was definitely the quick, not ultimately satisfying way to build connection.

Integrity, so you're choosing courage over comfort and what's right over fun, fast or easy. Non judgment. So feeling like I can ask for what I need and you can ask for what you need. We can talk about how we feel. We can ask each other for help without judgment. And then the G and it is generosity. So extending the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others. So this is like the, more elevated version of assuming positive intent.

Mike: Yeah. 

Kristen: Yeah.

And then she also noticed, this is something that works for, a relationship between two people, like teams can also use this framework and they can identify one or two observable behaviors for each of the seven elements.

And then you can also use it to work on your own self trust and kind of evaluate,

Mike: Looks around uncomfortable,

Kristen: I know, the evaluating, like how you did in this particular situation. So like, did I respect my own boundaries for this situation? Could I count on myself? Or am I like signing myself up to do something that I know I'm probably not going to succeed at?

Like, if you have ADHD time blindness, maybe awareness of that, she notes, right? Not ADHD, but having her own issues with estimating time. Did I hold myself accountable? Or did I blame others? Did I share or not share appropriately? Did I choose courage over my comfort and practice my values? Did I ask for help when I needed it without judging myself?

Oh my God, that is hard. And did I treat myself with generosity and self compassion?

Mike: No, no, no, no, no, no, and also no. Right.

Kristen: And this is all like, we're all works in progress, right? Yeah.

So moving into the final part, part four, which is learning to rise. So this is, I think, pulling largely from her book on resilience. But a lot of this is around like we can't expect people to be brave or risk failure if they're not prepared for what happens when they inevitably fail, right?

And like she really emphasizes a lot of times companies do resilience training after there's already been a major crisis. 

I've, never been a part, of resilience training.

~Well,~ I've been in like companies where there was a merger happening and they were like, here's like training on how to manage change. And like, it did not help . First of all, they did it like, it was like day three of an offsite and it was. 8 a. m. after a very long dinner and happy hour. So maybe right there that was not the best strategy, but like also all of this comes down to how you frame it right and how your leaders are positioning it.

She says like the most powerful tool for resilience is using some form of these sentence starters, which is. The story I'm telling myself. The story I'm making up. Or I make up that and She tells us this whole story about a time with her husband where she was under a ton of work stress a ton of deadlines that were coming up at once and her husband had come home and opened the fridge and was like, oh we don't even have like deli meat. And she instantly lit up and was like, Oh my God, I'm already failing all these accounts. And he just wants to make sure I know that I'm failing on this as well.

Mike: Yeah. She went in the kitchen and she was like, I know what you're thinking. You've come home and dinner's not on the table. And he looks at her and he goes what's 30 times 365.

And she goes, I don't, and now he's math shaming me. And no, he wasn't mad. He's like, I don't know the answer to that, but we've been together 30 years. And in those 30 years, dinner has never been on the table when I've come home. And I'm the one that does the grocery shopping. She's okay. she calmed down and she also talked about in this section, she starts to notice physiological changes, that are her like. bellwether of something's wrong. She's triggered. She's reactive and she didn't pay attention to all of that And finally she told him the story. I'm telling myself is like I'm not good enough. You're sick of the stress you're sick of all this and he's like, okay, let me think about it.

He's like, no, I'm just frustrated cuz I had a hard day and I came home and I'm hungry.

Kristen: Yeah. Like he was hungry. He's like, why did you say that? He's like, I was hungry.

hungry. But like, also I, I, I, this was another story. I'm like, oh, I relate to Brene. I would totally do that.

Mike: Well I do that and that's the story. It's the story we're telling ourselves. AndI think naming it and being able to stop and talk to your partner certainly or your team or your boss. That's, probably useful in getting, those cognitive, distortions out in the open.

And when you start naming them, when you put them in the sunlight, they don't have as much power.

Kristen: Yeah, for sure. She's like, whatever it is, we all have these experiences where we make ourselves the center of something that actually has nothing to do with us out of our own fear and scarcity.

And then we're like, Oh, actually, that didn't actually have anything to do with me. So it's good to have that awareness. For sure. So she, she ends the book with this three step Learning to Rise process. And the first one is the reckoning, which is basically like knowing when we're like emotionally hooked or like emotionally activated is usually what I call it.

And choosing to get curious about it. Because most of us did not learn how to actually like slow down, take a deep breath and get curious about what's happening when we're activated about something. Instead, we bust out our armor. And I actually, I really like these six strategies that we commonly use to offload our emotions onto others in these situations.

So there's chandeliering, which is basically the case where somebody who's in a position of power,just loses their mind,like they, they flip out, they overreact, and because they're way less likely to be held accountable for it, and they can.

And then this just results in everybody else walking on eggshells over time, right?bouncing heart, which is your adopting a pose of indifference or stoicism, like deflecting with humor and cynicism. It's basically from a point of avoidance. And numbing hurt, which is back to numbing we talked about in the last episode to you, right? It's like taking the edge off with whatever provides the quickest relief. Stockpiling hurt. So this is like you're not actually processing the hurt. You're just packing it down

Mike: push it down,

Kristen: and amassing it.

And then at some point your body has had enough and it comes up. 

Mike: It'll be fine.

Kristen: Yeah. And when she talks about like, this comes up for a lot of peoplemidlife or mid career because, our bodies can only take so much, right? So if you've been, like, stockpiling all of this and just trying to shove it down, you start to see the effects of stockpiled emotion at that point in your life.

And that can show up as anxiety, depression, burnout, insomnia, and physical pain, which is so true. So, again, like, therapy? Very useful, right? And then, she also calls the next one the Umbridge, which is based on the character of Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter. But, this is like toxic positivity, right?

This is like the, everything is amazing, everything is so good, I love all these things. like pretty things, but there's something like torturing children.

right? Yeah. So there's a dark side there, right? So there's this feeling of like, oh no, everything's amazing. Everything's so good.

Eh, something's off there, right? And then hurt and the fear of high centering and she says like this reason for why we deny our feelings is this fear of getting emotionally high centered, which is basically getting stuck in a way that makes it difficult to go forward or go backward.

And you see this happen so many times, right ? 

What if this just lodges something and I can't control myself anymore and like I lose my control and I cry at work, right? So that feeling of like, I can't acknowledge us this because I can't go backward or forward if I do, 

Mike: Cry in the walk in.

Kristen: I Cry in the walk in. oh, I, Yeah, for me it was like cry in the, one single stall bathroom at work. 

Mike: Those pods they have now in a lot of you know what I'm talking about? Like those work pods where you can go in and make calls. They're really for sobbing.

Kristen: But most of them like your see through. It's you can see the person in there.

Mike: Oh.

Kristen: Yeah, I mean, there should be cry rooms, right? I think there's,

that's a whole

Mike: You shouldn't need that at work, but okay.

Kristen: Sometimes you do though. And sometimes there's other things happening in your life and it all comes to head when you're at work.

Her top tactic for regulating is actually box breathing, which is something you and I have talked about before. I've used other variations of this, but this is basically the inhale through the nose for four counts, hold for four counts, exhale for four counts, hold the empty breath for four counts and then start over again.

So you're like breathing in a box, exactly what it sounds like, right? And it is a really good way,there's many breathing exercises you can use as a way to just regulate yourself in those situations.And then like slowing yourself when you find yourself emotionally activated, like slowing the conversation down, whether that's slowing how you're speaking, taking like a few breaths, recognizing you can take a pause, and then asking yourself in that pause, do I have enough information to freak out about this situation?

And if I do have enough data, will freaking out help?

Mike: Action. I love this . I'm totally doing this.

Kristen: I love it. I love it too. And then the next section is the rumble, which is like the second part of this learning to rise part, right?and a lot, most of what this is talking about, is in the absence of data, our brains will always make up stories.

And I thought this was interesting from like a neuroscience standpoint. She talks about like our brain rewards us with dopamine when we recognize and complete patterns and stories are ultimately patterns.

Mike: Yeah. Even if they're not true,

Kristen: Yeah. Even if they're not true.

Mike: Why we jumped to assumptions.

Kristen: Yeah. So like when we explain something that happened by coming up with a story, a totally untrue story, like we will get dopamine from that.

So like our brains are basically wired to do that. And that does not mean those stories are accurate. She talks about like the first story we make up is the SFD or the,

you know, we're, we're trying not to do a like much cursing on this, but like when it's something that comes from the author or interviewee, in this case, it's the shitty first draft.

Or she says like with kids, I call it the stormy first draft. The raw version of this is like all of our fears and insecurities romping all over the place, making up all these worst case scenarios, where fear is just filling in all the gaps, like where we don't have information.

And like, these are also basically conspiracy theories, because they're stories that are based on limited real data. And a lot of imagined data blended into this coherent, emotionally satisfying version of reality. And our brains are really good at coming up with these. Right?

Mike: Right? Just because I'm paranoid, it doesn't mean everyone's not after me. 

Kristen: She also talks about confabulations, which is a lie told honestly, where you replace missing information with something false that we actually believe to be true. So these are things that we believe are factual information, but it's actually just our opinion. I mean I was listening to a podcast like yesterday, about like the Mandela effect, and I feel like you see this in a lot of cases where people are certain something happened, where it's not actually what history says happened, right? All this stuff is so interesting.

Mike: I think there's a very small percentage of the people population with like truly didactic memories. Memory is not reliable.

Kristen: Oh no. It's not.

Mike: From a neurobiological standpoint, like when you remember something, you're not remembering the event.

You're going to the place in your brain that was the last, that's the point that the last time you remembered it. So it's a pretty fluid experience.

Kristen: Very. Yep. So she talks about like, how do you move from this SFD to a true story. I really like that,when something comes up, she'll do like an SFD on her phone real quick. And it's just the format for this is just this is a story I'm making up. Here's my emotions, what my body's doing, my thinking, my beliefs, my actions, period. I was like, oh, I kind of want to try that next time I'm like having a hard time getting over something, like something's really activating me. 

And then to move it from an SFD to an actual true story, that you can do something about asking yourself these questions, which are, what more do I need to learn and understand about the situation? So, like, what do I know objectively, and what assumptions am I making?

What more do I need to learn and understand about the other people in the story? Like, what additional information do I need? What questions or clarifications might help? And then, what more do I need to learn and understand about myself? Which is actually the hardest part, right? So, like, what's underneath my response? What am I really feeling? What part did I play in this? 

And if you answer all of these, you can help go from this SFD that is like probably a lot of not actual reality into something that you can actually work with.

Mike: I think the key is what's underneath my response. What is going on under the surface? Like this is sometimes I find these exercises a little bit oblique to, to do in real life,but if you can get the crux of it, it's honestly, what am I afraid of? Fear is probably the motivator.

What am I, afraid of that's making me generate this, cognitive distortion.

Kristen: Yep. And then the last section, which is pretty brief, actually, of these three

Mike: Surprisingly,

Kristen: We'll talk about that. The revolution. So she talks about, three things she learned from her research. The level of collective courage in an organization is the biggest thing best predictor of their ability to be successful in terms of culture to develop their leaders and meet its mission.

The greatest challenge in developing brave leaders is helping them acknowledge and answer their personal call to courage. And we fail the minute that we let someone else to find success for us. And then she talks about this importance of I think this was actually from The Gifts of Imperfection, which was her first book.

But coming with like a joint meaning list and thinking through, like, when things are going really well in our family or team, what does it look like? What brings us the most joy? When are we in our zone? And then using it to actually define your success. And I thought this was cool because we actually have a list hanging on our refrigerator.

Mike: I think I got that from Gap and Gain.

Kristen: Yeah. Like from the Gap and the Gain, which is literally like we, when we are on a vacation, we defined what does success look like for our family? And we have it hanging on our fridge and it's kind of cool. I like

Mike: it's not one value by the way.

Kristen: No, it's not. And it's also like, are we defining your success based on what's on that list?

No, that's a work in progress.

Mike: It's a work in progress, but it definitely helps to define your own success and we'll do, Dan Harding and his books at some point, but.High achievers never think they're successful, right? They're trying to reach some point where they'll finally feel like they're successful. That never happens. So the right, verbiage is I'm succeeding when,and I have my own list. I'm succeeding when at work, it's I'm succeeding when I prioritize my own, mental, spiritual, and physical health over anything, any external success or accolades.

And that's a trigger for me because I, I want all those external, so okay, that's not, that's not a, an end point, but I'm succeeding as the person I want to be when I'm doing that, which is almost never. 

Kristen: Well, believe it or not, everybody, we actually made it to the end of the book.

Mike: Okay. So

Kristen: Our two questions that we ask for every book.

Mike: Kristen, what didn't resonate for you?

Kristen: So,I was actually like, I got to the end, almost to the end of the book, and I was like, I'm having a hard time with this. Maybe like the word rumble was what I was thinking about, because like, I don't super love it as we mentioned. But I think actually what I ended with, there is so much packed into this book.

So much amazing stuff, amazing tools and concepts, and then the ending itself is kind of abrupt. I found like it just has that last like revolution section. I think it could really use something that actually helps with okay, now that you know all this, like what is a way to take in all this information and process it and actually like start working through it?

I think also I think there's maybe one mention of the resources on her website, which like are really good. So, mentioning that again and like just giving more for people to actually like take this and put it into place because there's so many things in here. You can't change everything at once, right?

So I think just giving some guidelines and resources and ways that are like here's a way that you could take all this and actually start putting it into place or even pointing out for each section like these are the exercises in the workbook that you can go to work on this would be really helpful.

Mike: Sure

Kristen: So, what about you?

Mike: For me, it was, I think the second part of the book is a bit, I don't want to say forced, but I think a little bit forced. 

Kristen: You mean like parts two through four? 

Mike: A little bit where we come up with the Braving inventory. Okay. That all works and everything. I don't know that it's absolutely necessary. I think some of that is a natural progression from the beginning of the book and authors tend to make, in my opinion, things longer sometimes than they need to be because that's what sells, or that's what feels good, or you need a certain number of pages for your contract.

And I'm not saying she did that. but I don't think it's as well researchedas her whole work. you know, the thesis of this is shame, vulnerability, and courage, and then she's giving a couple like organizational, tools and they're good tools. I like them, but I don't think they hit home as well.

And the part about the values, I don't think you can, I think it's a good exercise to like distill your values down. It's a little bit for me, a bit of an oversimplification.

Kristen: Yeah, that's fair. 

Mike: But I have not written six New York Times bestsellers. So, I mean, overall, I, this book is so touching. It's so good. so powerful.

Kristen: What was your most life changing takeaway?

Mike: I've read it twice, right? So the first time I remember, was the rumble, right? And this concept of sitting there in the uncomfortableness. And I can tell you, I remember, I think I talked about it once before.

I remember the first time that I used this concept. It was when I had to sit there and tell another like manager level person like, your effort is not cutting it. Like we're all running around 14 hours a day and you're doing seven and a half hours and clocking out for lunch and being like, okay, I'm going home now.

See you guys. And we're all like, I'm going to be here until midnight. Cause we're, And I had to sit there and tell him that I was not comfortable and he was older than me. And so I was like, okay, I've got to sit here and rumble with them. And so that was a really life changing takeaway, being comfortable with that.

The second time I think, my life changing takeaway is that courage really is a teachable skill.It's a repeatable teachable skill and there's a step by step process. A lot of it is,getting comfortable with your own feelings of inadequacy and all the other fears and and in the face of that still like moving forward and teaching other people to do that.

So pretty, that's pretty life changing. 

Kristen: Nice. And for me, I mean there were so many things I could have picked, but I ended up going with shame and having a better understanding of shame is an emotion and the idea that by talking about it openly you're giving it less power Like I had a specific situation where I'm like in the middle of reading this book I was able to actually articulate that what I was actually feeling was shame about it.l

Mike: Yeah.

Kristen: And just saying that is very empowering and it makes a lot of progress just by being able to recognize that. So I chose that because it just made an immediate difference in the way I was approaching something, but I feel like I could read this many times and get something different each time. 

Mike: I changed my answer. If I read it again it will probably be understanding the difference between shame and guilt. I don't think I've dug into that enough. Cause I have a lot of cultural, cultural shame and I got to dig into that more. But I think that's so powerful and I'm going to explore that probably for the next decade. Strap in, get ready.

Kristen: I'm ready.

Mike: You say that. We'll see about that.

Kristen: All right. Well, we have made it to the end. Thank you guys for listening to these. These have been two long, meaty episodes, but I hope you've enjoyed being along on this ride with us. I, do not expect we'll do this with that many books, but this is one that

Mike: It's not even that long of a, yeah, it's not even that long of a book. It's not.

Kristen: it's just I feel like most books have more, I don't want to say fluff, but there's more here's the idea and here's how you demonstrate it with a story or whatever. And like hers is just, there's so much

Mike: Because she has so many decades of research. Yeah. So many. clinical studies from different disciplines that she's pulled together. It's, 

Kristen: Absolutely.

Mike: It's backed by science.

Kristen: Yep.

Mike: Approved by the Love and Leadership podcast trademark.

Kristen: Alright. So we are going to wrap here. Thank you guys so much for listening. We will be back next week with a brand new episode and Bye everyone.

Mike: Goodbye. Thank you.

Kristen: The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

You can also find more information on our website, loveandleadershippod.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again next week.