Dare to Lead

Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

leadership
business
personal development
Ready to become a braver leader? This Learnerd summary of Brené Brown’s “Dare to Lead” breaks down the four core skills of daring leadership. Discover how to rumble with vulnerability, live into your values, build trust using the BRAVING inventory, and rise strong from setbacks. Transform your leadership and create a more courageous culture.

1 Listen to Dare to Lead Summary

2 Book Summary: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

Leadership is not about titles or the corner office. It’s about the willingness to step up, put yourself out there, and lean into courage. Brené Brown defines a leader as “anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential”.

The heart of daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100% teachable, observable, and measurable. The foundational skill is rumbling with vulnerability. The other three build on it.

  1. Rumbling with Vulnerability: Embracing tough conversations, setbacks, and discomfort instead of armoring up.
  2. Living into Our Values: Identifying your core values and ensuring your actions and intentions align with them.
  3. Braving Trust: Building trust through small, consistent actions, defined by the BRAVING inventory.
  4. Learning to Rise: Developing the resilience to get back up after a fall, stronger and more committed than before.

2.1 You can’t get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability

Vulnerability is not a weakness; it is the most accurate measure of courage. It’s defined as the emotion we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. To be a daring leader, you must learn to navigate and stay with vulnerability rather than avoiding it.

  1. Vulnerability is weakness. No example of courage can be found that wasn’t born from vulnerability.
  2. “I don’t do vulnerability.” You can’t opt out. You can either own it and engage with it, or it will own you, letting fear drive your behaviour.
  3. “I can go it alone.” Humans are wired for connection. We suffer in the absence of authentic connection.
  4. You can engineer the uncertainty and discomfort out of vulnerability. Courage requires relational vulnerability; you can’t strip away the risk and emotion without bankrupting courage.
  5. Trust comes before vulnerability. Trust and vulnerability are built together, moment by moment. One cannot exist without the other.
  6. Vulnerability is disclosure. It’s not oversharing or emotional purging. It’s leaning into uncertainty with clear boundaries about what’s okay and not okay.

When we’re in fear, we protect ourselves with armor. Daring leadership requires us to identify our go-to armor and choose courage and vulnerability instead.

  1. Armored: Driving perfectionism and fostering a fear of failure. Daring: Modelling and encouraging healthy striving, empathy, and self-compassion.
  2. Armored: Working from scarcity and squandering opportunities for joy and recognition. Daring: Practising gratitude and celebrating milestones and victories.
  3. Armored: Numbing with things like work, food, or being busy. Daring: Setting boundaries and finding real comfort.
  4. Armored: Propagating the false dichotomy of “victim or Viking,” “crush or be crushed”. Daring: Practising integration - strong back, soft front, wild heart.
  5. Armored: Being a knower and being right. Daring: Being a learner and getting it right.
  6. Armored: Hiding behind cynicism and sarcasm. Daring: Modelling clarity, kindness, and hope.
  7. Armored: Using criticism as self-protection. Daring: Making contributions and taking risks.
  8. Armored: Using “power over” others. Daring: Using “power with,” “power to,” and “power within”.
  9. Armored: Hustling for your worth. Daring: Knowing your value and contribution.
  10. Armored: Leading for compliance and control. Daring: Cultivating commitment and shared purpose.
  11. Armored: Weaponising fear and uncertainty. Daring: Acknowledging, naming, and normalising collective fear and uncertainty.
  12. Armored: Rewarding exhaustion as a status symbol. Daring: Modelling and supporting rest, play, and recovery.
  13. Armored: Tolerating discrimination, echo chambers, and a “fitting-in” culture. Daring: Cultivating a culture of belonging, inclusivity, and diverse perspectives.
  14. Armored: Collecting gold stars and seeking rewards. Daring: Giving gold stars and lifting others up.
  15. Armored: Zigzagging and avoiding hard conversations. Daring: Talking straight and taking action.
  16. Armored: Leading from hurt. Daring: Leading from heart.

2.2 Living into Our Values

To be a daring leader, we must be clear about what we believe and hold important. We can’t live into values we can’t name. The process involves:

  1. Identify Your Top Two Values: From a long list of possibilities, narrow it down to the two that are most core to who you are. These become your North Star.
  2. Operationalise Them into Behaviours: For each value, define 3-4 specific behaviours that support it, and 3-4 “slippery” behaviours that are outside of it. This turns abstract concepts into actionable practices.

Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what’s right over what’s fun, fast, or easy; and practising your values, not just professing them. Clarity of values is essential for giving and receiving feedback effectively.

Before giving feedback, ask yourself if you’re ready to:

  1. Sit next to the person, not across from them.
  2. Put the problem in front of you both, rather than between you.
  3. Listen, ask questions, and accept you might not fully understand.
  4. Acknowledge what they do well.
  5. Recognise their strengths and how they can use them.
  6. Hold them accountable without shaming or blaming.
  7. Own your part in the issue.
  8. Genuinely thank them for their efforts.
  9. Talk about how resolving the challenge leads to growth.
  10. Model the vulnerability and openness you expect to see.

2.3 Braving Trust

Trust is not a grand gesture; it’s built in tiny moments over time, like adding marbles to a jar. To talk about trust without causing defensiveness, we must be specific. The BRAVING Inventory breaks trust down into seven actionable elements.

  • Boundaries: You respect my boundaries, and when you’re not clear, you ask. You’re willing to say no.
  • Reliability: You do what you say you’ll do. You don’t overpromise and you deliver on commitments.
  • Accountability: You own your mistakes, apologise, and make amends.
  • Vault: You don’t share information or experiences that are not yours to share. You hold confidences.
  • Integrity: You choose courage over comfort. You practise your values rather than just professing them.
  • Nonjudgment: I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need. We can talk about how we feel without judgment.
  • Generosity: You extend the most generous interpretation possible to the intentions, words, and actions of others.

2.4 Learning to Rise

If we are brave enough, often enough, we will fall. Daring leadership requires knowing how to get back up. The Rising Strong process has three parts:

  1. The Reckoning: Recognising you’re emotionally hooked by something and getting curious about it, rather than offloading the emotion (e.g., lashing out, numbing, blaming).

  2. The Rumble: Getting honest about the stories we’re making up. In the absence of data, we invent stories to make sense of what’s happening. The first story is the “Shitty First Draft” (SFD). We must capture this story and then rumble with the reality:

    • What do I know objectively?
    • What assumptions am I making?
    • What more do I need to learn about the situation, the other people, and myself?

  3. The Revolution: Taking our learnings from the rumble and integrating them into our lives and work. When we own our stories of struggle, we get to write the ending. This creates transformational change.

2.5 Key Phrases to use

  • “The story I’m making up is…”
  • “I’m curious about…”
  • “Help me understand…”
  • “Walk me through…”
  • “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”
  • “What does support from me look like?”
  • “What does ‘done’ look like?” or “Let’s paint ‘done’”.
  • “I’m brave enough to listen.”
  • “Choose courage over comfort.”

3 Summary Video

4 Practise

A core practice from Dare to Lead is living into your values. To do this, you must first name them. Take a moment to review a list of values (source: https://brenebrown.com/resources/dare-to-lead-list-of-values/)

List of values
  1. Circle all the values that resonate with you (aim for 10-15).
  2. Now, narrow that list down to just two core values. These should be the principles that are most central to who you are and how you want to live.
  3. For each of your two values, write down 2-3 specific behaviours that demonstrate that value in action. This is how you move from professing a value to practising it.

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