Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We're the place
where we don't just skim the surface of sources.
We really get into it, take a whole stack of
research, and pull out the core truths for you.
And, you know, the surprising facts, the deeper
context, basically everything you need to be
properly informed. So today our focus is on someone
many of you will know, or at least know of, Cassandra
Brené Brown, a real modern academic phenomenon.
Our mission for this Deep Dive, well, it's pretty
ambitious actually. We want to synthesize her
whole career path. trace it right from her roots
in rigorous social work academia, define those
core ideas everyone talks about, shame, vulnerability,
courage, and really analyze how she pulled off
this. frankly, almost impossible thing, translating
really nuanced academic data into a massive global
cultural movement. Just to set the stage for
you, think about the sheer scale of her reach.
I mean, she's not just a successful author. She's
got six number one New York Times bestsellers
under her belt. And that famous 2010 TEDx talk,
it's consistently in the top five most viewed
TED talks ever globally. Well, it's just a huge
cultural footprint. And it's all built on social
work principles. Exactly. And that translation
piece, that's the really fascinating part, isn't
it? That jump. from, well, maybe not the lab
bench, but the interview room in her case, right
onto the global stage. That's what we need to
unpack. I mean, you're looking at a tenured research
professor, someone who took concepts that, let's
be honest, are often seen as a bit soft or maybe
too subjective. Yeah, like shame, empathy. Right.
The mechanics of shame, what empathy actually
requires. And she made them essential. Like really
applicable knowledge for literally everyone.
CEOs, parents, you name it. She really sits at
this unique intersection. You know, academic
rigor meets accessible emotional intelligence.
And we're going to show you the research that
makes her platform so authoritative. OK, so let's
definitely unpack that. Because, you know, before
all the bestsellers and the Spotify deals and
the Netflix specials, this was a career built
in the trenches, you could say. The often unseen
work of professional social science. So we really
have to start by establishing her deep roots.
It's these like unshakable foundations in academia
and social work methodology. So Brene Brown,
born Cassandra Brown, eldest of four kids, San
Antonio, Texas. Family moved to New Orleans later,
but it's her education all in Texas that really
dictates the lens she uses for her research.
That's key, right? Absolutely key. She's not
coming at this from, say, clinical psychology
primarily, or she's not just a motivational speaker
who's sort of found research later. No, her core
identity is as a social work researcher. Right.
So walk us through that track. Okay. She got
her Bachelor of Social Work, the BSW, from UT
Austin in 1995. Then pretty quickly after her
Master of Social Work, MSW in 96. And then she
capped it off with her PhD, Doctor of Philosophy
in Social Work from the University of Houston
Graduate School of Social Work. That was 2002.
And why is that PhD specifically in social work
so important here? You touched on it, but let's
underline that. Yeah, it's a really critical
distinction. Clinical psychology very often focuses
on the individual. Diagnosis, treatment, that
kind of thing. Social work, especially PhD level
research, it inherently looks at systems, environments,
community well -being. Ah, okay. The bigger picture.
Exactly. Brown's work is fundamentally about
connection. Right. Belonging. And critically,
how shame stops us from integrating into a group,
into a system. That is classic social work perspective,
looking at the environment, the relational dynamics,
not just what's going on inside one person's
head. That makes sense. And you can even see
that focus way back in her dissertation title,
can't you? You absolutely can. It was Accompagnar,
a grounded theory of developing, maintaining
and assessing relevance in professional helping
from 2002. A compañer, that word stands out.
It really does. It's Spanish, meaning to accompany
or to walk with. And just that word choice tells
you so much about her early focus. It's about
the professional helper needing presence, needing
relational depth. You can see the seed right
there for all her later work on empathy and connection.
It started with how professionals show up for
others. And the methodology she used, grounded
theory, that sounds important, but maybe a bit
academic. Can you break that down for us? What
does it mean in practice, especially for studying
stuff like shame? Yeah, it's crucial to how she
built her ideas. Grounded theory is, well, it's
an inductive approach. Qualitative. So unlike
quantitative research, where you start with a
theory, a hypothesis, and then you test it with
numbers. Right, like a drug trial or something.
Exactly. With grounded theory, you start with
the data itself. Systematically collected data
interviews are huge for her, conversations, observations.
And you build the theory out of that data. You
don't go in with a structure you expect to find.
The structure emerges from people's actual stories,
their lived experiences. Okay, so the theory
is grounded in the data. Precisely. And you can
see why that was perfect for studying shame and
vulnerability, right? Yeah. Because you can't
just measure shame on a scale of 1 to 10 easily.
You really can't. How embarrassed is someone?
How much shame do they feel? It's deeply subjective.
So she had to collect just thousands of stories
and then look for the patterns, the common threads,
the shared ways people talked about these feelings.
Her academic rigor, it comes from her ability
to take this massive amount of qualitative data,
stories, narratives, and synthesize it. Turn
it into reliable concepts that actually define
what courage looks like or how shame operates.
And that's what allowed her to move from just
theory to actual practical application later
on. That's the bridge. That methodology gave
her the confidence in her concepts. And it's
not like she just did the research and then left
academia behind. She's still very much connected,
isn't she? Oh, absolutely. Deeply connected.
She holds the Huffington Foundation's Brene Brown
Endowed Chair at the University of Houston's
Graduate College of Social Work. That sounds
prestigious. It is. And it's not just a title.
The Huffington Foundation put serious money behind
it, like $2 million over four years, starting
in 2016. The goal was specifically to ensure
that research chair could keep guiding social
work students in this exact methodology, grounded
theory, and applying it directly to these tough,
modern issues. Vulnerability, courage, shame,
empathy. She's actively training the next generation
in her field. That says a lot about her commitment
and how her work is valued within academia itself.
But what's also really interesting is how that
academic influence stretches beyond social work
now. She's also a visiting professor in management
at UT Austin's McCombs School of Business. Yeah,
and that McCombs appointment, that's the perfect
illustration of the translation we talked about
earlier. It shows how she successfully took these
core ideas about human behavior rooted in relational
health, remember, and applied them directly to
the world of business, organizations, leadership.
So what's the link? Well, think about internal
human stuff, like the fear of failure in a team
or the need for psychological safety to speak
up. She showed exactly how those internal dynamics
play out in external professional structures,
in meetings, in project outcomes, in innovation
or lack thereof. Ah, OK. So the internal impacts
the external structures. Directly. Her academic
rigor, that foundation in social work research,
is what gives her the credibility, the authority.
To walk into a Fortune 100 company and say, look,
here's why your teams might be struggling to
innovate. It comes down to vulnerability and
shame. OK, so we've got the foundation, the deep
roots in social work research, the grounded theory
method. Now let's get into the meat of it, the
actual concept she's famous for. We hear these
words all the time now, vulnerability, shame,
courage. But what do they actually mean based
on her like. two decades of research. Let's define
the terms as she uses them. Her entire body of
work, you can pretty much boil it down to exploring
what she calls the big five research topics.
The big five. Yeah. Courage, vulnerability, shame,
empathy, and leadership. And she uses these five
pillars, essentially, to figure out how human
connection works. And maybe more importantly,
why it so often breaks down in our personal lives,
our work lives everywhere. Okay. So where do
we start? Which one is the key? You absolutely
have to start with shame. That's the linchpin
for understanding almost everything else she
talks about. All right. So how does Brene Brown
define shame? She defines shame as this intensely
painful feeling, or it could be an experience,
of believing, docked down, that we are flawed.
And because we're flawed, we're therefore unworthy
of love and belonging. Wow. That's heavy. Unworthy
of love and belonging. It is. It's the fear,
basically, that if people really knew us... The
real messy us, they reject us. They turn away.
Okay. And she makes a big deal about differentiating
shame from guilt. A huge deal. And this is critical
for you to graft. Guilt, she argues, is actually
constructive. It's feeling bad about something
you did. The focus is on the behavior. I did
a bad thing. Right, like, oops, I broke that
vase. Exactly. Whereas shame is destructive.
It's feeling bad about who you are. The focus
is on the self. I am a bad person. I am a vase
breaker. Inherently clumsy and awful. Ah. I see
the difference. Behavior versus self. Precisely.
And her research shows this distinction has massive
consequences. Guilt, if you handle it right,
can actually motivate you to change, to apologize,
to make amends. It can connect you back. Shame,
on the other hand, it does the opposite. It drives
hiding, blaming others, avoidance. It corrodes
connection. It makes you want to disappear. That
difference, I did versus I am, that feels really
profound. Okay, so if shame is this huge barrier,
this corrosive thing, then her next big concept,
vulnerability, must be the way through it. That's
exactly how she frames it. Vulnerability is the
antidote, but it's also the prerequisite. She
defines vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and
emotional exposure. Uncertainty, risk, emotional
exposure. Yeah. It's not about winning or losing.
It's simply about having the courage to show
up and be seen even when you have absolutely
no control over the outcome. So like asking for
that raise or saying, I love you first. Perfect
examples. It's putting your authentic self out
there, knowing full well you might get hurt.
You might be judged. You might be rejected. It
feels risky because it is risky. But she argues
it's not weakness. Emphatically not weakness.
Her research, story after story, demonstrates
that vulnerability is actually our most accurate
measure of courage. It takes guts to be vulnerable.
OK, so vulnerability equals courage, which links
directly to that other big word, courage, often
summed up by that book title, Daring Greatly.
Precisely. Courage is defined by taking action
even when you're scared, even when things are
uncertain. It's about accepting that vulnerability
isn't something to be avoided, but it's actually
necessary if you want to grow or connect. Right.
You have to risk it. You have to risk it. And
all of this, showing up vulnerably, having courage,
it ultimately leads to and requires empathy.
Okay, empathy. How does that fit in? Empathy
is the skill of seeing the world through someone
else's eyes. Trying to understand their feelings,
reserving judgment, and then communicating that
understanding back to them. So it's not sympathy,
like feeling sorry for them. No, it's feeling
with them. And empathy, she argues, is the ultimate
antidote to shame. Because when someone responds
to your vulnerability with empathy, the message
is clear. You are not alone in this feeling.
I get it. I've been there too. That dissolves
shame. Wow. Okay, so shame isolates, vulnerability
connects through courage, and empathy heals.
You've got it. That's the core dynamic she identified.
And if we zoom out, connect this to the bigger
picture, her work feels like a direct response
to our culture's obsession with perfection, doesn't
it? Absolutely. It's trying to bridge that huge,
painful gap we all feel sometimes. The gap between
who we actually are. The flawed, complex, messy
humans and who we feel we're supposed to be based
on all the external messages and maybe our own
internal critics. Yeah, that pressure is real.
Totally. And her core finding, the thing that
echoes through every book, every talk, is that
you cannot have meaningful connection or love
or joy or even effective leadership without engaging
with these difficult concepts. You have to be
willing to be vulnerable, manage shame, practice
empathy, and find courage. There's no shortcut.
Now, something that adds, I think, a lot of weight
and authenticity to her research is her own personal
story. She's incredibly open about the fact that
this isn't just academic theory for her. That's
right. And you really can't separate her research
path from her personal journey. They're completely
intertwined. She's spoken very candidly, as you
know, about her own history with addiction. Specifically,
struggles with alcohol, smoking, emotional eating.
And also this intense need for control. Right.
Control is a form of addiction almost. Exactly.
And that personal experience, wrestling with
dependencies, wrestling with that drive for control,
it provides the lived context. It fuels the questions
in her later really rigorous work on resilience
and the importance of imperfection. She wasn't
just studying other people's shame. And she points
to a very specific date, a turning point related
to this, doesn't she? She does. She often mentions
May 12th, 1996. That's the date she recalls stopping
drinking and smoking. And the timing of that
is significant, too. Incredibly significant.
It was literally the day after she graduated
from her master's program in social work. Wow.
Talk about a new beginning. Right. It's symbolic.
She's entering this new phase, becoming a professional
helper. And she makes this radical decision to
confront her own ways of numbing and controlling.
She's even said that she initially started researching
shame because she wanted to understand what she
herself was dealing with. And that led her to
the huge realization that it wasn't just her.
It was this universal human experience. So that
decision to embrace her own vulnerabilities,
step away from numbing, that wasn't just personal
growth. informed the research. Absolutely. Gave
her not just the academic lens of grounded theory,
but this deep personal stake in understanding
how people recover, how we reconnect after falling
apart, how we find the courage to, as she says,
dare greatly. It transforms the research, I think.
It stops it from being just clinical observation
and turns it into this deeply empathetic, actionable
framework for living because she's lived it.
Okay. So doing the rigorous research, grounding
it in personal experience, that's one thing.
But becoming a household name, a global phenomenon,
that's a whole different level. So here's where
it gets really interesting for me. How does this
deep social work research, rooted in complex
ideas like grounded theory and personal recovery,
how does that suddenly explode into massive cultural
recognition? Yeah, the trajectory is pretty wild,
isn't it? The major catalyst, the inflection
point, was undoubtedly that 2010 Houston TEDx
talk. The one called The Power of Vulnerability.
Right, the famous one. That's the one. That single
talk, basically overnight, shifted her work,
as people have said, from relative obscurity
in academia into the mainstream spotlight. What
was it about that talk? What did she do differently?
Well, content -wise, it summarized about a decade
of her research findings, particularly around
what separated people who felt a strong sense
of worthiness, she calls them the wholehearted,
from those who really struggled. And the key
difference she found, it was the willingness
to be vulnerable. Okay, so the core... message
was there. The core message was powerful, but
the delivery, that was the magic, I think. As
Reggie Ugoo pointed out in the New York Times,
she framed these complex, potentially heavy discoveries
in this incredibly self -deprecating and personal
way. She used humor, stories about her own struggles,
her own breakdown, as she called it. She made
vulnerability feel, well, relatable, less terrifying,
more human. And it just resonated. It resonated
massively. The talk went viral in a way that,
frankly, few academic talks ever do. It prompted
that New York Times piece declaring the event
basically unveiled a new star of social psychology.
A new star of social psychology. That's quite
a label. Isn't it? And that rapid rise, I think
it really speaks to this enormous, maybe previously
unarticulated hunger in the culture, a hunger
for permission to just. drop the shield, to stop
pretending to be perfect. Yeah, like she gave
voice to something people were feeling but couldn't
name. Exactly. And she didn't just rest on that
one talk, did she? She built on it pretty quickly.
Right. There was another official TED Talk in
2012, listening to shame. Yes. And that one was
crucial, too. Because after the first talk went
huge, there was inevitably some backlash or at
least a lot of fear. People were saying, OK,
vulnerability sounds nice, but what about the
shame? What about that paralyzing fear that stops
us? Right. The vulnerability hangover, she sometimes
calls it. Exactly. So the second talk directly
addressed that. She detailed the connection between
shame and vulnerability using her own experience
of being thrust into the spotlight by the first
talk's fame as a case study. She explained how
shame works, how it shows up, and how to listen
to it without letting it shut you down. Okay,
so power of vulnerability first, then listening
to shame. But wasn't there another maybe less
famous talk around that same time that's also
really important? Yes. Good point. There was
another 2010 talk, this one at TEDxKC, called
The Price of Invulnerability. And this idea is
absolutely foundational to her whole theory of
wholehearted living. The Price of Invulnerability.
What was the core message there? She explained
that when we try to selectively numb difficult
feelings, you know, grief, fear, disappointment,
vulnerability itself, we cannot help but also
numb the positive emotions. Ah, you can't pick
and choose which emotions to turn off. Exactly.
She uses this great analogy. You can't selectively
numb emotion. If you put up that shield to block
the pain, you're simultaneously blocking your
access to joy, to gratitude, to love, to belonging.
Wow. That is, that's a really staggering insight
when you think about it. Isn't it? The very act
of protecting yourself from pain automatically
walls you off from the very things you're probably
seeking most deeply joy connection. The emotional
logic is just immediate and kind of convicting.
Yeah, it really makes you think. And it's that
kind of clarity, that ability to distill these
complex emotional truths that allowed her to
move beyond just TED Talks into longer formats,
which led eventually to the 2019 Netflix special,
Brene Brown. The call to courage. Right, the
Netflix special. That felt like another big leap
in reach. It was huge. And it was a really interesting
format, wasn't it? USA Today called it a mix
of a motivational speech and stand -up comedy
special. Yeah, that sounds about right. She's
funny. She is. And that, again, highlights her
unique skill, delivering really substantive,
research -backed material, but with humor and
approachability that keeps you engaged. And the
core message of that special. It basically distilled
everything down into a clear call to action.
Choose courage over comfort. She directly equated
being brave with being vulnerable. Arguing that
vulnerability isn't the obstacle, it's the pathway
that opens us up to love, joy, and belonging
precisely because it forces us to show up authentically,
be seen, and connect more deeply. It was like
taking two decades of research and giving you
a 90 -minute roadmap for emotional leadership
in your own life. And that influence obviously
didn't just stay on our screens at home. Her
authority translated directly into the corporate
world, into consulting. Oh, absolutely. That
public platform gave her enormous credibility.
She started regularly working as a keynote speaker,
a consultant, doing private events for businesses.
And she was taking these social work principles,
these ideas about shame and vulnerability, and
applying them directly to how organizations function.
We know she's spoken at some major places, right?
Yeah, big names. Companies like Google, Disney
places, grappling with how to foster innovation,
creativity, psychological safety, things that
require people to feel safe enough to be vulnerable.
to take risks. And she's also connected with
more sort of intellectual organizations like
Elaine de Botton's School of Life, which shows
how these principles of human connection really
apply across all sorts of different landscapes,
professional, personal, philosophical. So this
ability to translate, I mean, we keep coming
back to that word, but it's key, isn't it? Taking
this complex, qualitative research and making
it accessible, making it... digestible for a
mass audience, that's arguably the biggest driver
of her huge cultural success. It really is. She
didn't just stay in academia or just do talks.
She became this incredibly prolific author and
producer, proving really that deep academic ideas
can fuel mass market bestsellers if you do it
right. And the numbers speak for themselves.
As of 2021, she had six number one New York Times
bestsellers. An incredible run. And if you look
at them chronologically, you can almost track
the evolution of her thinking, right? From the
very personal to the more organizational. Absolutely.
Let's walk through them quickly. It's useful.
First was The Gifts of Imperfection in 2010.
That really focused on wholehearted living, embracing
imperfection not as a flaw, but as a source of
strength and connection. Very personal focus.
Right. That felt like the foundation. Then Daring
Greatly in 2012. This is where the vulnerability
concepts really took center stage and started
shifting towards broader application. And that
title, Daring Greatly, that's from somewhere
specific, isn't it? Yes. It's important context.
It's directly from Theodore Roosevelt's famous
1910 Citizenship in a Republic speech. The man
in the arena part. Given at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Ah, so she's deliberately linking vulnerability
to this bigger idea of civic courage, of showing
up in the world. Exactly. It gives it a weight
beyond just personal feelings. And Daring Greatly
got a huge boost when she discussed it with Oprah
Winfrey on Super Soul Sunday in March 2013. That
really catapulted her into the mainstream. Okay.
After Daring Greatly... Rising Strong came in
2015. If Daring Greatly was about putting yourself
out there, Rising Strong was about... What happens
next? How do you get back up after you fall,
after the vulnerability doesn't go well? The
process of resilience. Exactly. She outlined
this three -stage process. The rumble, which
is like reckoning with your emotions and story.
Yeah. The brave effort, owning that story. And
the revolution, changing how you live based on
what you learn. Then Braving the Wilderness in
2017, that one felt a bit different. It did.
It tackled belonging. Specifically, the difference
between true belonging, which might mean standing
alone sometimes, versus just fitting in, standing
in your truth, even when it's uncomfortable or
unpopular. And then she moved explicitly into
leadership. Yep. Dare to Lead in 2018. This was
her first book aimed squarely at the corporate
and organizational world, taking all the previous
research and saying, point blank, courage is
a skill and it's the absolute prerequisite for
effective. daring leadership. And finally, the
most recent big one, Atlas of the Heart in 2021,
which felt like a massive project. Oh, it was
a huge undertaking. And arguably, it's the culmination
in many ways of her work on translating research
into practical tools. What was the specific goal
with Atlas of the Heart? The stated goal was
really clear. Help people expand their emotional
vocabulary. Her argument is that most of us have
shockingly limited language for our feelings.
Like we just say, I feel bad or I'm stressed.
Exactly. When maybe what we're really feeling
is disappointment or grief or envy or shame or
overwhelm, all very different things requiring
different responses. So her team literally work
to map out, define and differentiate 87 specific
emotions and experiences that she believes underpin
meaningful human connection. 87. That's incredibly
detailed. It is. It moves beyond just understanding
the big concepts like shame and vulnerability.
and gives you the actual words, the precise language
to articulate your inner world. She compares
it to giving people a better map or GPS for their
emotions. Her core belief here is that emotional
literacy, being able to accurately name your
feelings, is fundamental. If you can't name it,
you can't really understand it or manage it effectively.
And knowing the names helps you realize you're
not alone in feeling that way? That's a huge
part of it, too. The book provides the map. but
also the reassurance that these complex feelings
are part of this shared human experience. Now,
beyond her own massive bestsellers, she's also
been involved in collaborations, hasn't she?
Applying her work in different contexts. Yes,
and this is really important for seeing how the
social work perspective, looking at systems and
specific communities, remains central. She contributed
advice to Tim Ferriss' book Tools of Titans,
which is interesting. But far more significant,
I think, was her co -creating the anthology You
Are Your Best Thing. Yes, the one with Tarana
Burke. Exactly. Tarana Burke, the incredible
activist who started the Me Too movement. They
co -edited this anthology, subtitled Vulnerability,
Shame, Resilience, and the Black Experience.
That sounds incredibly powerful. It is, and it
really showcases Brene's commitment to applying
her theories, not just generally, but to specific,
profound societal issues and lived realities.
The book features essays by various black writers,
thinkers, artists, talking about the trauma of
white supremacy, the unique challenges of navigating
white spaces, but also the deep experiences of
black love, black joy, black life. It takes her
concepts like vulnerability and shame resilience
and grounds them in the concrete intersectional
reality of systemic oppression and the specific
ways resilience manifests within marginalized
communities. It shows the concepts aren't just
abstract. That's vital work. And then, as if
books and talks weren't enough, she moved on.
into podcasting in a big way. Right? She embraced
the audio medium too, struck an exclusive deal
with Spotify back in 2020 to host two major podcasts,
Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead. Let's talk about
Unlocking Us. That format seems perfectly suited
to her style. It really is. It blends solo episodes
where she'll share personal stories, break down
research findings, connect dots between different
social science ideas with these really deep,
long -form interviews. And the guest list is
impressive. Incredibly diverse. You've got grief
experts like David Kessler, huge musicians like
Alicia Keys, fellow writers like Glennon Doyle,
and of course her collaborator Tarana Burke has
been on. It's a really rich mix. And people clearly
responded to that format. They really did. It
offered a space for the kind of nuance and extended
conversation that you just can't get in a quick
TV segment or even a single talk. Unlocking Us
actually won the iHeartRadio Podcast Award for
Best Advice or Inspirational Podcast in 2021.
Wow. Okay. So that just confirms how well her
conversational yet research -backed style translates
to audio. And she pops up as a guest elsewhere,
too, like that detailed interview she did with
Debbie Millman for the Storybound podcast premiere
in 2022. And the visual media continues, too,
doesn't it? Yep. Building on the Atlas of the
Heart book, there was the five -part docuseries
on HBO Max in 2022. Brene Brown, Atlas of the
Heart, taking that emotional mapping and giving
it visual life. Making it even more accessible.
Exactly. And just for a bit of fun flavor, showing
her, you know, cultural ubiquity now, she even
appeared as herself in the Amy Poehler movie
Wine Country. Huh. I remember that. So she's
really everywhere. Books, TED, Netflix, podcasts,
even movies. Pretty much across every contemporary
media platform you can think of. So this naturally
brings up a really important question. And it's
a fair question, maybe even a critique sometimes
leveled at popular academics. After all this
research, all the writing, the speaking, how
does Brene Brown's work actually get translated
formally into practical, scalable application?
especially for organizations, for leaders? How
do you move from people feeling connected to
her ideas to actual cultural change on the ground?
Right. Beyond just reading the book or watching
the special, is there a system? There is. The
main vehicle for that formalized implementation
is The Daring Way. Okay. The Daring Way. What
is that exactly? It's her official professional
training and certification program. It's basically
a curriculum -based structure, and it's laser
-focused on teaching professionals, therapists,
coaches, educators, leaders, corporate trainers
how to facilitate her work based on vulnerability,
courage, shame, and empathy. So it's not just
an informal workshop people attend. It's like
a standardized training. Exactly. It's a certified
curriculum designed very intentionally to maintain
fidelity to your original qualitative research
findings. It's about ensuring the concepts don't
get watered down or misinterpreted. as they get
rolled out. Does that make sense? So how would
that curriculum take something like, say, vulnerability
and make it a practical tool in a corporate setting?
Because vulnerability can sound risky in business.
That's a great question. The daring way translates
vulnerability in a corporate context, primarily
through the lens of trust. It defines vulnerability
in leadership, not as, you know, oversharing
personal drama, but as the willingness to do
things like ask for help. Admit you made a mistake.
Give honest but constructive feedback. Speak
up with a new idea. Ah, actions that involve
emotional risk in a professional setting. Precisely.
Those actions carry risk, risk of looking incompetent,
risk of conflict, risk of rejection. So the Daring
Way curriculum teaches leaders specific behaviors
and skills to build cultures where taking those
kinds of risk is actually rewarded or at least
feel safe rather than being punished. It uses
vulnerability as a key indicator. a metric almost,
for psychological safety and trust within teams.
She has a whole framework for this called the
anatomy of trust built around concepts like boundaries,
reliability, accountability, et cetera. Braving
is the acronym. OK, braving. That sounds very
structured. So this formalized training, plus
her ongoing roles at University of Houston and
McCombs, that's basically her structure for defending
the rigor behind the mass market appeal. I think
it has to be, yeah. And it directly addresses
that potential academic critique you sometimes
hear. You know, whenever you take really nuanced
qualitative research built on thousands of individual
stories and you generalize it into broader advice
or frameworks for the mass market, there's always
a risk. A danger of flattening the complexity,
oversimplifying things. Sure, turning it into
sound bites. Exactly. But Brown seems very aware
of this. She defends her approach by ensuring
that the application through the daring way,
through her consulting, stays firmly rooted in
the specific findings from her grounded theory
work. And the fact that she maintains those serious
academic appointments, like the endowed chair,
it shows that her peers within academia recognize
her success in bridging that difficult gap between
rigorous research and broad accessibility. They
see the value. And she certainly received a lot
of recognition for both sides of her work, the
academic and the public influence. We should
probably touch on some of those honors. Definitely.
They paid a picture of her impact over time.
Well, even back in 2009, locally, Houston Woman
magazine voted her one of the city's most influential
women. So the impact started close to home. And
within the university itself, she's received
multiple teaching awards, like the Graduate College
of Social Work's Outstanding Faculty Award, which
really highlights her commitment to the academic
side, to mentoring students. Absolutely. It shows
she's respected as an educator, not just a public
figure. Yeah. And then that recognition clearly
expanded nationally. especially on the literary
front. More recently, Atlas of the Heart won
that big Goodreads Choice Award for Best Nonfiction
in 2022. Yeah, Goodreads is huge. That's voted
on by readers, right? Millions of readers. Yeah.
So that win really proves her influence spans
all the way from those focused academic circles
in Houston right out to broad, popular acclaim
from the reading public. Okay, before we wrap
things up, we always like to add just a few personal
details. Helps to kind of ground the researcher,
connect them to the work, you know. Sure. Well,
we know she's married, has two children, and
the family still lives in Houston, Texas. So
she maintains that strong connection to her primary
academic and research base. Keeps her grounded,
maybe. Perhaps. And for anyone interested in
her downtime, she apparently has some very specific
sports team loyalties. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she's
mentioned supporting Liverpool FC, the soccer
team. Okay. And also the San Antonio Spurs in
basketball and the Houston Astros in baseball.
A true Texas sports fan, mostly. Seems like it.
But these little details, they just help underscore
the idea that her concept of wholeheartedness
isn't just theory. It's integrated into a real
everyday life with family and interests. And
her personal journey also includes a pretty significant
exploration of faith and belonging, which seems
very relevant to her work. Absolutely relevant.
She was baptized in the Episcopal Church, but
raised Catholic. And she speaks very openly about
leaving the Catholic Church for quite a long
period. But then eventually she and her husband
and kids found their way back to the Episcopal
community about two decades later. That sounds
like a journey. It does. And it mirrors in many
ways the kind of complex long -term wrestling
with big questions, belonging, identity, belief,
community, that are absolutely central to her
professional research. It shows she's continually
living and practicing the vulnerability and the
searching that she writes about. Hashtag hashtag
outro. All right. So we've covered a lot of ground
here. What does it all mean when you put it together?
We've traced this incredible scope of Brene Brown's
work right from that early Ph .D. thesis, Accompagnar,
and her deep dive into grounded theory. Through
the absolute phenomenon of the TED Talks that
changed everything, the six number one bestsellers,
all the way up to her current massive project
of building this universal curriculum for emotional
literacy with Atlas of the Heart. Yeah, and I
think the central finding, the thing that really
explains her monumental success, is how her work
managed to provide language and maybe even more
importantly normalization for these universal
but often deeply hidden human experiences of
shame and vulnerability. Giving people permission
to talk about it. Exactly. By researching them
so meticulously and then articulating them so
clearly and relatably, she essentially created
a pathway, a way for millions of people, leaders,
parents, individuals, everyone to move through
those difficult feelings instead of being stuck
by them. And that pathway leads towards more
genuine connection, a deeper sense of belonging,
and ultimately more courageous and effective
leadership. And the sheer time commitment is
remarkable, too. Over 20 years focused on these
really difficult topics. It shows incredible
consistency and rigor. It's not a fad. It's a
sustained, deep commitment to exploring the same
core questions about what it means to be human
together. And maybe here's a final... Provocative
thought for you, the listener, to chew on next
time you're thinking about this stuff. We know
that her really early academic work back around
2007 was crucial in establishing her shame resilience
theory, how individuals survive and recover from
shame. Right. Resilience. Now, fast forward.
Her newest book, Strong Ground, is apparently
scheduled for 2025. So you've got this almost
20 year span from an academic theory focused
on individual resilience. the ability to bounce
back from shame, to this global platform focused
increasingly on leadership, on guiding organizations
and teams. Okay, so individual resilience to
leading others. What's the provocative link?
Well, consider this. How much is the ability
to lead others effectively, especially in today's
complex world, intrinsically dependent on a leader's
own mastery of shame resilience? Is personal
resilience not just helpful, but actually the
absolute prerequisite for daring leadership?
That relationship, personal resilience as the
foundation for leading others courageously, that
might be the next piece of this whole Brene Brown
puzzle for you to really examine. That's a great
question to leave us with. Resilience as the
bedrock of leadership. Lots to think about there.
Thank you so much for joining us today for this
deep dive into the really fascinating trajectory
of Brene Brown.