Dare to Lead - Brené Brown

Have you ever been in a leadership position? Something modest, like being a class leader in high school? Or was it something remarkable, like managing a team with ten, maybe hundreds of people? Regardless of what your role has been up to today, your chances of falling into one of the leadership traps of the modern culture are great.

You may think that in order to lead you need to look like a strong person who does not admit failure. That it is necessary to avoid truth because it can hurt someone sentimentally. These things often happen because that is how leadership is viewed by society.

But the truth is that the opposite behavior is that it would produce the best result. Brené Brown in "Dare to Lead" is here to show us how to take charge and lead, eliminating once and for all our misconceptions about this subject.

About the book "Dare to Lead"

The book "Dare to Lead", released in 2018, was written by Brené Brown. It brings a practical and intelligent guide to leadership based on courage.

This book has 320 pages and is divided into 4 parts: "Rumbling with vulnerability", "Living into our values", "Braving trust" and "Learning to rise".

About the author Brené Brown

Brené Brown was born in 1965 in the United States. She is a research professor at The Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. She has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy.

Brown is the author of 4 # 1 New York Times bestsellers: "Braving the Wilderness," Rising Strong "," Daring Greatly "and" The Gifts of Imperfection "."

Her TED talk - "The Power of Vulnerability" - is one of the top five TED lectures in the world with more than 35 million views.

To whom is this book indicated?

If you want to learn how to be a better leader, you have to forget all about status, titles and power games. Instead, be prepared to engage your heart and mind by finding out how the most courageous leaders think, feel, and behave.

Principles like trust, honesty and failure can tell us a lot about leadership bold. You will see that your values, emotions, and relationships with others impact your effectiveness as a leader.

Main ideas of the book "Dare to Lead"

• Courage and vulnerability always go hand in hand;
• By limiting your values to just two, you can navigate successfully even in the most difficult times;
• There are seven behaviors that build trust. They can be summarized with the acronym "BRAVING".

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Overview: Vulnerability is not weakness

Although it is a common feeling, there are myths regarding vulnerability, harmful myths, particularly that means weakness. What makes you feel vulnerable? People often think of different situations like losing a job, getting a divorce, and doing their first business.

However, there is no fact that suggests that vulnerability and weakness are associated. In fact, acts of courage are only possible if we are in a position of vulnerability.

In other words, it is essential to be vulnerable, so we can act with courage.

According to Brown in "Dare to Lead", vulnerability is also the basis of human creativity and innovation. This is because there are a lot of uncertainty characteristics in the creative process, since innovation often requires some portions of failures to be successful.

Culturally speaking, a society that takes vulnerability and weakness as equality will find it difficult to generate new ideas or new perspectives.

Amy Poehler says that:

"It is very difficult to be vulnerable, and those who succeed are often the dreamers, thinkers and creators of society."

Overview: Leaders, truth and feedback

As soon as she opened her own company, Brené Brown went through a situation that left her stunned. Her collaborators sat down with her to discuss some of the concerns they had.

They told her how bad was her time management and how bad her habits setting deadlines, which they usually struggled to find. Although not be easy to hear criticism, Brown was grateful for the feedback from her team.

After all, for her, to be clear is to be gentle, just as using a communication that is not clear is the same as being cruel. That way, if you do not use clarity when you set your expectations about what you want from a contributor, you'll blame them for not delivering more.

One of the lessons learned by Brené Brown and showd in "Dare to Lead", with decades of studies on leadership, it's about the time that leaders need to devote to talk to their team, regarding feelings and fears of each one.

According to Brown, the time you spend doing this will be less than the time spent trying to match the unproductive and ineffective behavior of employees.

So concentrate on the words of these people, after all, they are being kind enough to be clear with you, return the favor by listening to them for real. It is important to always ask for clear feedback from team members by listening to them truly.

Overview: BRAVING

Do you consider yourself a trustworthy person? Probably, right? How many people do you truly trust? Few people, maybe? Brown says most people claim to be totally reliable, but in return, they rely on a few people.

After all, what does the concept of trust mean? Brené's team identified in "Dare to Lead" seven behaviors that encourage trust. Let's go through them.

The B of boundaries. It consists basically in respecting the limits of other people. Whenever you are unsure of another person's boundaries, just ask if everything is right or wrong, so the other person can respond if you are respecting his boundaries.

The next behavior is "reliability," which is to do what we say we will do. One way to apply this, at work, comes down to being aware of our abilities and limitations. By doing this we will avoid committing ourselves too much.

The A of accountability means we take responsibility and apologize for our mistakes.

Next we have the V of "vault", that means safe. This behavior is extremely important because there is information that is not ours to convey. People need to make sure we keep their confidences to ourselves.

We now come to integrity, the fifth behavior, which is represented by the letter "I". Choose courage instead of comfort. Choose to do what is right instead of what is easy, legal or advantageous. In other words, practice the values you convey.

The next behavior, represented by N, is non-judgment. With it people can freely tell us what they really feel. That's because we will not judge them for it.

The last of the behaviors is generosity, represented by the letter G. Being generous in our attitudes, we increase the chances of people trusting us, as they will know that we see the best in others, not the worst.

Add the seven behaviors in your personal and professional life. They will make you a better person and a successful leader.

What do other authors say about it?

In the highly recommended book "The Leadership Pipeline" by authors Ram C., Stephen D. and James N. explain what are the 7 phases of leadership and the 6 transitions between them that a leader must go through to reach an optimal level of management.

For John C. Maxwell, author of the "Leadership Gold", the best leaders are those who know how to listen. Listeners know what's going on because they are listening. Good listeners have the ability to see other people's strengths and weaknesses better.

Niccolo Machiavelli in "The Prince" exposes ancient leadership techniques used by former sovereigns during history.

Okay, but how can I apply this to my life?

Leadership is not about titles, status and power. Leading is about taking on the responsibility of recognizing the potential of people and their ideas, and having the courage to develop that potential.

When we dare to lead, we do not want to get the right answers, but to commit ourselves to being curious and ask the right questions.

True leaders do not see power as something finite that can be accumulated. They know that the true power is that shared with all, so it becomes infinite. Leaders do not avoid difficult conversations and situations. They lean toward vulnerability when it is necessary to do a good job.

But leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires building skills around characteristics that are deeply and exclusively human.

The irony is that we are choosing not to invest in the development of the hearts and minds of leaders. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage to begin.

Easy? No. Because choosing courage in relation to comfort is not always our standard. We want to be courageous with our lives and our work. That's why we're here.

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