DARE TO LEAD BY BRENE BROWN
What the book is about
I was surprised by this book. Going in, my sum total of knowledge about Brene Brown was that Reese Witherspoon plays her in a movie. And to be 100%, completely, and totally honest, the cover of that movie put me off reading anything by Brene Brown. If you’re as obtuse as I was, get over it. This book is about leadership, plain and simple. It’s a great book for cutting to the core of some important concepts and for promoting some of the foundation skills and attitudes for leaders in every context. Sometimes it’s a pleasure to be wrong - this book is proof.
Five key takeaways:
Vulnerability is not a dirty word. You can’t be courageous unless you’re vulnerable, and you literally cannot establish trust without vulnerability.
If you have more than three priorities, you have none. If you have more than three core values, you have none.
Feedback needs to be clear to be useful, and you don’t do any favours by sugarcoating it. You need to be courageous and embrace the suck – acknowledge the vulnerability – to do the right thing.
Failure needs to be an option. There are no perfect leaders. Acknowledge when you’re down and out and come back when you’re together.
Perfectionism is not a strength for a leader. Perfection is subjective – if you seek it, only you can define it so only you can achieve it. Your team is useless, so you aren’t the leader.
It’s the man in the ring that matters, not the crowd or commentators.
Things to guide a new leader:
Understand how you come across to others, and what effect that can have.
You need to learn to trust your team
Learn to give and receive feedback – not about performance, but about personality.
Things to remind an experienced leader:
Trust is essential, and requires vulnerability
You can only have one main effort
If you don’t know your values, you can’t practise them
The quote I’d tweet:
‘If you have more than three priorities, you have none’. (N.B. this is not originally Brene’s quote, but the thoughts she uses in this section are too good not too use, and this quote sums it up perfectly).
3 things to put into practice:
Trusting my team – I don’t need to be the chokepoint for decisions or collaboration.
Deciding what my core values are, whittle the list down from 7 to 2
Seek honest feedback about how I come across to others
Inspired reading – The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek.
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