Why Toughness and Kindness Need Each Other | The Curiosity Shop

In this episode of The Curiosity Shop, Brené Brown and Adam Grant explore what happens when trust, vulnerability, grief, and performance collide. Using insights from the San Antonio Spurs and Gregg Popovich's leadership philosophy, they examine why caring deeply is an act of courage, how shame quietly undermines teams, families, and organizations, and how psychological safety fuels excellence. The conversation moves through ambition and rejection, miscarriage and loss, community, emotional intelligence and empathy, and the ways people show up for one another through life's hardest moments. This episode explores how strength and kindness are not opposites and why building cultures of trust may be one of the most important things we do. Victor Wembanyama on having Spurs legend David Robinson and Tim Duncan in the building - 2026, Yahoo Sports Armored Versus Daring Leadership, Part 1 of 2 - Brené Brown, 2021, Dare to Lead (Podcast) Victor Wembanyama Emotional After Spurs Advance to the NBA Finals - 2026, Bleacher Report Goals research summary - Gail Matthews, 2015, Dominican University of California Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead - Brené Brown, 2012, Gotham Books Ring Theory Helps Us Bring Comfort In - Elena Sandler, 2025, Psychology Today Atlas of the Heart - Brené Brown, 2021 (Book) U. S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy & Adam Grant on Loneliness - Murthy & Grant, Authors@Wharton, 2024, YouTube ​Andrew Garfield on grief and the loss of his mother – CBS, 2021, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert​ National Survey of Gun Policy - Center for Gun Violence Solutions, 2025, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Empathic Joy and the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis - Batson et al, 1991, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1992-05357-001 Human empathy through the lens of social neuroscience - Decety & Lamm, 2006, The Scientific World Journal ​The Making of an American​ – Jacob Riis, 1901, Macmillan ​The Coach–Athlete Relationship Questionnaire (CART-Q)​ – Sophia Jowett, 2004, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports ​Bad Is Stronger Than Good​ – Roy Baumeister, 2001, Review of General Psychology ​Scarred for the Rest of My Career?​ – Erica Carleton (with Julian Barling), 2016, Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology The evolution of shame and its display - Landers & Sznycer, 2022, Evolutionary human sciences ​Moral Emotions and Moral Behavior​ – June Tangney, 2007, Annual Review of Psychology The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain - Brené Brown and David Eagleman, 2020, Unlocking Us with Brene Brown Podcast Unlocking the Mysteries of our Brain - Chris Anderson with David Eagleman, 2022, The TED Interview Winning coaches’ locker room secret - Blanding on the research of Barry Staw, 2019, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Brené Brown?

  Hi, everyone. In today's episode of The Curiosity Shop, Adam and I are-- there's really very little that we're not talking about in this episode. I'm wearing my Spurs hat today and it's celebrating. And I think he's wearing a Pistons jersey because he looks cute in it, but who knows? But I will say that we are talking about everything from the incredible culture that the Spurs have built. We're talking about what happens when shame seeps into cultures, sports cultures, but also home, work, faith communities. We are talking about hard stuff. We're talking about gun reform. We're talking about grief related to everything from miscarriage, death by suicide,

• 0:45Brené Brown?

  what grief looks like, why we need community, what it means to build families and cultures that are made equally of strength and kindness, and how that's really missing from a lot of what we need today to deal with both the joyful things in our lives and the really hard things in our lives. We're glad you're here.

• 1:09Brené Brown?

  Welcome to The Curiosity Shop.

• 1:11Adam Grant?

  A show from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 1:19Brené Brown?

  Hi, Adam.

• 1:20Adam Grant?

  Hey, Renee.

• 1:21Brené Brown?

  How are you?

• 1:23Adam Grant?

  I'm good. How are you?

• 1:24Brené Brown?

  Good. We were just doing this funny thing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring it into the podcast. Okay, you have to choose Lego or Duplo?

• 1:33Adam Grant?

  Lego. More creativity.

• 1:35Brené Brown?

  Lego or Lincoln Logs?

• 1:40Adam Grant?

  I think, I think when I was three, it was definitely Lincoln Logs, but since then, it's been Legos. You?

• 1:47Brené Brown?

  I'm gonna say Duplo over Lego, Duplo over Lincoln Logs, and then Tinker Toys. Do you remember Tinker Toys?

• 1:55Adam Grant?

  No.

• 1:57Brené Brown?

  Tinker Toys were like long color-coded sticks that almost looked like really skinny wooden straws. And then the joining, the joining piece was a circle, a wooden circle that was wood-colored, that had circles all around, holes all around it and a hole on the top. And those were my least favorite. Yeah. And they used, they came in a big can. Similar, similar, I think, to Lincoln Logs. Lincoln Logs came in a can, right?

• 2:22Adam Grant?

  They did. Wait, why Duplos?

• 2:25Brené Brown?

  I'm a rounded corner person because remember I see things in shapes and I think rounded corners convey more emotional intelligence and regulation than square corners.

• 2:35Adam Grant?

  And less pain when you step on them.

• 2:37Brené Brown?

  And less pain, yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, I grew up with very Lego-y kids, so I I know the real pain of the and it's not just the mound of them, it's the stray Lego that'll kill you when you step on it because you're not expecting it.

• 2:51Adam Grant?

  It's the worst. Did you see the Lego slippers that got released a few years ago?

• 2:55Brené Brown?

  No, what?

• 2:56Adam Grant?

  It's an extra padded pair, it's an extra padded pair of Lego branded slippers so that if you walk around a room full of Legos, it doesn't cause you severe pain.

• 3:06Brené Brown?

  Okay, two inventions that I think I wish I had with my kids. One, the Lego slipper for sure. Two, now they have these mats where you do your Legos on mats and then you just pick up the mat.

• 3:18Adam Grant?

  Oh, that's so clever.

• 3:19Brené Brown?

  The four corners of the mat tie up into a Lego, like a Lego basketball, like basket thing.

• 3:26Adam Grant?

  Well, how long did it take us to think of this?

• 3:28Brené Brown?

  I know.

• 3:29Adam Grant?

  This is as obvious as a rolling suitcase.

• 3:32Brené Brown?

  Oh, my God, I love, you mean, can you imagine?

• 3:33Adam Grant?

  Which shook forever.

• 3:35Brené Brown?

  It did take forever. I accidentally said basketball. I just would like some commentary on my hat today.

• 3:42Adam Grant?

  Go Spurs.

• 3:45Brené Brown?

  So exciting, can you stand it?

• 3:47Adam Grant?

  I, I mean, I, I'm not, I'm not, I don't have a personal attachment to the Spurs, but I've, I've always admired the culture of humility that they've built from the Admiral David Robinson to Tim Duncan, now into the Wemby era. I think it's a great team.

• 4:05Brené Brown?

  Can we just say Pop, Popovich is just, just amazing.

• 4:09Adam Grant?

  A legend. Even, even as a native Pistons fan, I can admire all of that.

• 4:16Brené Brown?

  Yeah, and you know, it's so funny because when you watch the sidelines, he's, he's there now, but when you watch the sidelines, even when he was coaching, he was so loved by players from other teams too. It was just, God, I mean, talking about the whole idea that love wins, such a Popovich ethos.

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• 6:04Brené Brown?

  Okay, I do want to talk about the Spurs today because I want to talk about a couple of things that I've seen all over social media.

• 6:15Adam Grant?

  I definitely want to talk about that. Can we talk more about Popovich, too?

• 6:19Brené Brown?

  Oh, God, I will always talk about Popovich, yeah. One of the things, are you a Wimby fan?

• 6:27Adam Grant?

  Define fan.

• 6:29Brené Brown?

  Do you just cry when you see his picture on Instagram?

• 6:32Adam Grant?

  No. Do you?

• 6:35Brené Brown?

  Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I just think he's... Yeah, I really love the entire... I love the entire team. But one of the things that I have been really interested in, there is a clip from a press conference where it shows David Robinson and Tim Duncan sitting together in the audience. And the reporter at the conference, at the press conference said, asked Wimby, "When you look up and you see those legends, and you also see pop there, too, does it feel heavy?" And Wimby, who is so thoughtful, you know, just paused for a second and said, "No, it feels safe.

• 7:19Brené Brown?

  It feels like if I were to fall, there are people there to pick me up."

• 7:26Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 7:27Brené Brown?

  And, yeah, and I just want to talk about in hyper... You know, you and I both work with athletes and sports teams. In hyper-competitive environments, to build that level of safety

• 7:45Brené Brown?

  is, one, so intentional, and, two, I believe so related to performance. Thoughts?

• 7:52Adam Grant?

  I think it's surprising to me how rare it is, given how important it is.

• 7:59Brené Brown?

  What do you make of that?

• 8:01Adam Grant?

  I think it's, I mean, it's anti... In some ways, it cuts against the current of masculinity culture and the idea that athletes are supposed to be tough.

• 8:11Brené Brown?

  But are we, have we arrived at the place where tough and love, where kindness and winning, where, you know, hearken back to the podcast, you know, the last podcast on Paradox? Like, are we at this place where tough and love can't coexist? Where kindness and performance can't coexist?

• 8:30Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I hope we get to a place where that's not even a paradox anymore.

• 8:35Brené Brown?

  I mean, that's a skill set deficit.

• 8:38Adam Grant?

  Big time.

• 8:38Brené Brown?

  Right?

• 8:39Adam Grant?

  Yeah, so this, I mean, this is so connected to your work on Armor.

• 8:45Adam Grant?

  I want to hear you talk about this.

• 8:46Brené Brown?

  Yeah. No, yeah, because one of the other things that I thought was interesting, and this is me putting two things together. There was also when the Spurs beat Oklahoma, there was some footage of Wimby's like sheer emotion, just sobbing, hugging people. And now there's been this real flooding of social media around this meme of nonchalant is over. Caring is in. And to me, his ability to be emotional and to care out loud

• 9:30Brené Brown?

  is inextricably connected to the safety he talks about in that team culture. Does that make sense to you?

• 9:40Adam Grant?

  Yeah, it does, because he doesn't have to worry about being judged for, for what he's expressing, whether it's unapologetic ambition or the joy of victory or the disappointment of defeat.

• 9:55Brené Brown?

  I mean, that, that's exactly it. It's interesting because we, we joke about chalant, nonchalant in our organization all the time because they're always, you know, and I had to look it up. It's, the definition is coolness and difference and unconcern from 16, the 1670s from French, nonchalant, meaning careless. And it's like, my team has told me on a number of occasions, you try very hard to be nonchalant about things and you are, you are chalant AF, Brene. You are as chalant as it gets.

• 10:34Brené Brown?

  And so, so I have, yeah, so I have come into my own, my ownership of being chalant-y. But I, I think it's interesting because, you know, both of my kids played sports and it mattered to my kids a lot. And I remember, and they, and they had to try out for teams and they had to go up for captain and they had to, you know, you know, Charlie really, Charlie had some college offers to play and he had to do a lot of hard thinking. But I often told them.

• 11:11Brené Brown?

  Letting the people around you that you trust know how much you want something is courage. That is brave to say, I want this and it's important to me. When you can't control the outcome, to me is one of the best indicators of the relationship between vulnerability and courage.

• 11:32Adam Grant?

  Wow, that's fascinating. Okay, I've never thought about this. So, once you put your goals out there, you're taking a risk because

• 11:41Brené Brown?

  Huge.

• 11:42Adam Grant?

  Then if you fall short, everyone is gonna know that not only did you fail, but now you're gonna feel something that you might not have been comfortable revealing.

• 11:54Brené Brown?

  People will know you're hurting.

• 11:56Adam Grant?

  Yeah. Yeah, I've never thought about that as courage, to put it out there.

• 12:00Brené Brown?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, it wasn't, it was like for me where my kids applied to college or tried out for a team or, you know, Ellen ran for president of the student council, like whatever it was, you know, it, I had to pull them aside and interject the pause that I talk about all the time and just say, I know you're caught up in this moment and you're grinding to achieve something, but I want to pause you here and talk about how brave it is, not only to put yourself out there, but to let people around you know something's important to you. You know, and it didn't always go their way for either one of my kids.

• 12:42Brené Brown?

  You know, and so then to do it another time, it's just, it doesn't go, it doesn't go our way every time for any of us. And I think, I think, when we let the world know.

• 13:03Brené Brown?

  And I think I'm probably, you know, I talk a lot about the relationship between vulnerability and boundaries, and I don't think you have to let the world know. But letting the people who are real marble jar people, the people with whom you've built a lot of trust, letting those folks know what matters, I think is real, it's just, I find it very admirable and very courageous.

• 13:25Adam Grant?

  This is such a, such a, it's such a new way of thinking about sharing your goals for me. And it's actually helping me resolve, actually, a puzzle that's, that's bothered me for a long time. So there's, I'm sure you've seen decades of research on the power of making your goals public, that when you tell the people around you what you're trying to accomplish, you get a great combination of support and accountability. You have people encouraging you, you also have people checking in with you to make sure that you're, you know, you're not, you're not falling off the path that you're trying to take. And yet, despite that, so often, people are reluctant to put their goals out there, and they end

• 14:07Adam Grant?

  up kind of dreaming in private. And I've never understood why that is until now. I've never thought about the risk of having to say, yeah, like, I, I wanted to go to that school and I didn't get in. I wanted that job and I got rejected for it. I wanted to, to win, and I lost. That's a hard thing to put yourself out there for.

• 14:32Brené Brown?

  Oh, my God, it, it, it is.

• 14:39Brené Brown?

  It is. And I've, I've, I've been on every side of it that I can think of. I have expressed something that I really wanted. And, you know, it was interesting, like, I, I go back to when Daring Greatly came out. I told Steve, I might cry, I don't know, I'm gonna see if I can work through it. But I told Steve how much I, how much I wanted the real New York book tour experience. And so he got a fancy hotel room for me and surprised me for launch day in New York. And I got there and I got a new outfit and I went. And

• 15:21Brené Brown?

  I remember waking up on pub day and Murdock calling and saying,

• 15:29Brené Brown?

  Everyone turned down the opportunity to interview you. There's nothing, yeah, there's. And I, in that moment, I sat in my hotel room for two days and not a single media interview.

• 15:43Adam Grant?

  Oh, no.

• 15:44Brené Brown?

  And, yeah, and I remember, oh, I cried and cried. And I remember like having so many moments of regret about telling, you know, in my fancy hotel room that Steve surprised me with, like telling how much I regretted telling him and my kids and Murdoch how much I wanted that. But then at the same time, they were the ones that were like, fuck everybody. It's a great book, you know, and I'll say probably including my children, but then it, then it, you know, caught on later, but in that moment, it was, it was so tough.

• 16:28Brené Brown?

  And I remember kind of the shame of would this have been easier had I acted like it was no big deal because I was raised in a family where you never ever act like anything's a big deal so that if you lose, you can say you didn't care.

• 16:46Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 16:47Brené Brown?

  It's hard.

• 16:48Adam Grant?

  That is really hard. I, one, I'm, I'm sorry that happened. That's just, I mean, the image of you sitting alone in a hotel room is so sad.

• 16:57Brené Brown?

  In a fancy hotel room too. Then I was like, I don't think we can afford this and I definitely can't afford the room service.

• 17:03Adam Grant?

  Oh, that's, that's painful. It's, it's a little, a little bit easier to, to stomach knowing ultimately what happened. Obviously you've, you've done the New York book tour more than once.

• 17:15Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Adam Grant?

  And are probably over it by now.

• 17:18Brené Brown?

  But I never take it for granted anymore.

• 17:20Adam Grant?

  Yeah, clearly. I mean, right, that's the, that must be burned into your brain.

• 17:26Brené Brown?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:26Adam Grant?

  That sensation. But it is, it is a, it's a bit of a paradox because at some level, you're right. If you hadn't told them, you wouldn't have been in that situation to begin with. But on the other hand, if you hadn't told them, you would have missed out on their understanding and empathy and compassion.

• 17:45Brené Brown?

  I mean, it's true. And I remember the first, I remember getting pregnant with Ellen and calling my sisters and my mom. I told them like, we went to go eat Mexican food in Houston. And I gave them these little James Avery charms as a surprise. And I said, it's really early and I'm scared to tell you. And I wanted to wait to tell you until, you know, we got further along through the first trimester. But I figured if it, if, if something happens to the pregnancy, I'm going to need you to know because you're the ones I'm going to need to call. So here's a charm and don't get it soldered on. The, the very historic James Avery charm bracelet.

• 18:30Brené Brown?

  Here's the charm, but don't get it soldered on until I get to like 16 weeks. But I want you to know now and celebrate now because if things go wrong, you'll be the people I call. And, and, and then, you know, my mom was very, you know, so should we tipper our responses? Because this was the first grand baby. And I said, no, no, let's celebrate. But just know that this ride will go both ways if, if it, and if it does.

• 18:57Adam Grant?

  This is, this is such a, this is such a challenge around pregnancy. Because, so, you know, I, I, I never thought about it through this lens. But Allison comes from a healthcare background. And so when we were expecting, like, her first thought was, don't tell anyone in case something is wrong. Because then you don't have control over who you share your news with. Right? You're, you're then forced to tell everybody, yeah, we lost the baby. So what happens? You wait. But in our case, Allison ended up having a miscarriage. And then no one knew, like, no one knew that she was pregnant to begin with.

• 19:40Adam Grant?

  And then it was this extra burden to have to say, yeah, we kept this from you and now we're grieving this loss that you didn't even know we had.

• 19:50Brené Brown?

  God, it's hard.

• 19:52Adam Grant?

  It was, it was definitely, it was, it was painful on multiple levels. And I think, once we finally started sharing it with a few people, we discovered tons of people we knew had gone through miscarriages and never told anyone. And this was, it was a topic that there's so much silence around. I'm like, okay, there will come a day when we are grateful this happened because we will have a child that we wouldn't have had if not for this. But until that day comes, this is gonna hurt and nobody talks about it. Like, everyone is grieving in silence.

• 20:26Brené Brown?

  I think, first, I'm sorry that you and Alison went through that. I think it is one of the most complicated griefs that we don't talk about. So I'm really sorry.

• 20:40Adam Grant?

  Thank you.

• 20:41Brené Brown?

  That's, it's hard.

• 20:44Brené Brown?

  I, I have to tell you that miscarriage and infertility was the hardest shame research that I did in my career.

• 20:56Brené Brown?

  Potentially combined with living through

• 21:01Brené Brown?

  death by suicide as a family member. But, I mean, that level of

• 21:09Brené Brown?

  grief, shame, silence, judgment,

• 21:15Brené Brown?

  the cognitive and emotional, who do we tell, who do we not tell? You're right, it's just...

• 21:23Brené Brown?

  And I don't, I don't know why...

• 21:28Brené Brown?

  That's why I do, I think we have to think about it in a more granular way, maybe? Like concentric circles? Like, here's the core group of people that we want to celebrate with and that we will also grieve with. Here's the next group that we maybe don't, you know? And we think about the roles that people play in our lives? I don't know.

• 21:51Adam Grant?

  Oh, okay. So a couple of things that jumped to mind on this. The first is, I'm thinking about the kvetching circle. Do you know this?

• 21:58Brené Brown?

  Yeah, that, yes, yes. Like the Yiddish word kvetching.

• 22:01Adam Grant?

  Yeah, there's a, there's a circle that a therapist draws, where you look at the person who's closest to the pain and then you draw the concentric circles around it. And the principle that I loved was you comfort in and you dump out. And I'm like, oh, people, like, people need to be taught this because so often-

• 22:24Brené Brown?

  Walk us through it, walk us through it though before, because I, I'd heard of it, but I had only heard the in part.

• 22:30Adam Grant?

  The, yeah.

• 22:31Brené Brown?

  Okay, walk me through the circles.

• 22:32Adam Grant?

  Well, I, I mean, I think it's like, if we, if we take the example of miscarriage, like Allison's at the center of that circle. And so my job as, you know, as her husband is to comfort the person who's closer to it and make it clear to her that I am there to support her. And then not lean on her to support me because she's suffering more intensely than I am. What I'm supposed to do is dump out, find people who are in outer rings of the circle to tell them what I'm going through. And I think people really struggle with this because like in a relationship, like we're, we're supposed to be grieving together. And so, you know, my, my, I guess my impulse in that kind of situation would be to say like, hey, here's, you know, here's how I'm struggling.

• 23:16Adam Grant?

  But she's already carrying a lot. And so I don't want to burden her with having to take care of my emotions at the same time that she's managing hers. And so I, I, I think this, I mean, I think about this all the time. Whenever, whenever somebody goes through something hard, I'm like, okay. Like, yes, I think we all know to comfort the person who's closer, but let's dump outside the circle, the inner circle. So that that person is not stuck in a position where they're, they're having to, to, to care as well as be cared for. That, that seems like it gets missed a lot.

• 23:52Brené Brown?

  I think, yeah, I, I have to, it's going to take me a long time to process this.

• 23:58Brené Brown?

  Because I think in some of my hardest moments.

• 24:06Brené Brown?

  It was interesting because I go to when my, when my sisters and I were caregiving for my mom through her dementia. And how.

• 24:18Brené Brown?

  It was so, we really, I think, because we've been in a lot of therapy together and we work together. So we've learned how to talk about hard things together. How we said to each other that we're all in our own grief, which makes taking care of each other in this situation almost impossible. That we can be empathetic with each other and we can share stories, but none of us are in the position to care for each other. Because we're each, like, I'm having a hard time putting you on my back and carrying you because my grief is about 50 cinder blocks tied around my shoulders right now. And so I think, I mean, I think it's lucky that we all do therapy.

• 25:03Brené Brown?

  And I can say that because we've talked about it on the podcast before. So it's not like I'm outing my sisters that, I mean, one of my sisters is a therapist. But I think, I think it also explains the rates of divorce after the death of a child. That I think, how do you, how do you care for someone else when you're, you know, which is miscarriage too. I mean, you know, which is, I think about the definition we use of grief in our work. Because I was trying to figure out the best definition in the literature. And then when I did the qualitative analysis, it was like three things.

• 25:47Brené Brown?

  Kind of longing, lost. Like, this, there was this like very deep sense of, I don't have a mooring. I've lost, like, I'm untethered from what I would define as my ordinary life, which I thought was ordinary till now, and now I'm desperate to get back to it. And this kind of unmet longing for something. It's really hard to be grounding for someone when you don't have footing.

• 26:19Adam Grant?

  Yes. Say that, wait, say that again.

• 26:24Brené Brown?

  It's really hard to provide a source of grounding and tethering for someone when you are completely.

• 26:33Brené Brown?

  Not grounded or tethered to your own life. Like, how do you? That's just not the way gravity works. So gravity, neither gravity nor grief work that way.

• 26:43Adam Grant?

  No, and I think this is one of the reasons why. I feel like I know a lot of couples who basically are each other's primary and sometimes only source of all emotional support. And you need other people that you can both rely on, not just to complain about each other, but also because there will be times when you're both hurting and one of you is not in a position to care for the other or in both directions, for that matter.

• 27:13Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I think the whole. I think finding, that's why, you know, and again, I think it's such, it's such an access issue, but finding good therapists, good coaches. If I could wave a healthcare wand, it'd be in my top three things that I would want to provide for everybody. Just access to, to be able to sit across from someone who, when you're untethered and you can't find the ground, can provide an opportunity to talk through how to get back there, you know, that's not directly connected to your own grief. You know, or fear, anxiety, whatever it is. I think it's, that should not be privileged.

• 27:57Adam Grant?

  No.

• 27:58Brené Brown?

  And we've lost community. We've lost community. And we've lost multi-generational living. And we've lost a lot of the things that provided it before it became professionalized. So I do think it's part of the loneliness.

• 28:16Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I think so too. And I think one of the things that that community used to do was give you an outlet for the longing that you're describing. Like, a lot of, I've noticed that when people go through loss, whether it's, you know, the, the death of a loved one or like even, you know, in some cases, just a relationship that ends and it's more ambiguous loss. No one asks you about it. And it's strange because they think that they're being polite and maybe even respectful to not remind you. And the reality is that then you never had to have a chance to share

• 28:58Adam Grant?

  it. You never have a chance to talk about those memories, to reminisce about the person. And I'm just thinking about the great psychologist Andrew Garfield, Spider-Man.

• 29:15Brené Brown?

  Spider-Man.

• 29:16Adam Grant?

  I thought had the most beautiful reframe of grief that I've ever heard. When I remember seeing him on Colbert, actually, I think, when he lost his mother. And he said that for him, grief was unexpressed love. He was overwhelmed with all of the feelings of love that he was never going to be able to show to her. Which, yeah, one, heartbreaking, but two, people need to express that love, right? I'm sure he would want to be asked about her so he could talk about why she was so special to him. And I'm just thinking, you know, your comment about the loss of community. If you're not around people who also knew

• 30:00Adam Grant?

  the person you lost, then when are you going to talk about them? When are you going to express the love that you didn't get to share directly?

• 30:11Speaker 02

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• 30:40Speaker 03

  Hey Spotify listeners. When you travel with American Airlines, you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admiral's Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected with high-speed Wi-Fi, sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at AA.com.

• 31:06Speaker 04

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• 31:36Brené Brown?

  This takes me to two really wildly different experiences that happened in a short kind of concentrated amount of time for me that made me understand this. One was, we started doing research. We were doing Dare to Lead. And we started basically a five-year research project, asking leaders, what do the people who report to you do to gain trust? And number one didn't surprise me at all. It surprises people all the time, but it didn't surprise me. One is ask for help. I trust somebody who asks for help.

• 32:22Brené Brown?

  The wildest thing that held over five years of asking this every time we went to an organization to work with the cohort of C-suite and the direct reports to the C-suite. Do you know what number two was?

• 32:34Adam Grant?

  No, but I want to.

• 32:35Brené Brown?

  Attend funerals.

• 32:38Adam Grant?

  Really?

• 32:41Brené Brown?

  If you can, geographically, to attend the funerals that matter to the people with whom you work.

• 32:51Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 32:52Brené Brown?

  And I just remember...

• 32:58Brené Brown?

  Doing a dare to lead intervention at a big tech company. And hearing a story about. I think, I don't know if this matters, but to me, for some reason, it brought, we can, obviously, it mattered because she was the only woman on a software engineering team. And her sister died by suicide. And very few people showed up at the funeral, which is not unusual in a death by suicide. And it's, and I don't, I think sometimes we can say it's because people are, think they're being respectful or not by, not wanting to bring it up. But sometimes it's people being comfortable in their own, you know, people privileging

• 33:42Brené Brown?

  their comfort over other people's grief and needs. And she said, when she walked in, her entire team was there, including two people who'd flown in.

• 33:54Adam Grant?

  Amazing.

• 33:55Brené Brown?

  Then when she, oh yeah, she said, she said it was one of the most important moments of her life. Then she said, on her first day back to work, she was so stressed out about how to bring it up. But her team leader said, we want to let you know that we are excited that you're back. We've all talked and we are ready to talk about this and we are ready to not talk about it. But we are comfortable talking about it and we are comfortable not talking about it and we will follow your lead. Like.

• 34:28Adam Grant?

  That's a masterclass in emotional intelligence, right there.

• 34:32Brené Brown?

  Oh, it, yeah, it's just, it's incredible. The second experience I had was maybe in the top, if not the, maybe, yeah, maybe the most difficult professional experience I've had in my life, which was being invited to spend some time with the parents at Sandy Hook.

• 34:57Brené Brown?

  And I have very strong feelings about gun reform. As someone who was basically raised in a hunting blind, like I am not anti-gun ownership. I shot skeet growing up, thought for a while I'd go to college on a shooting scholarship. Like I, I, I, you know, like I was raised in a gun family, a hunting family, a skeet and trap family. But I have always been a huge believer in gun reform as a result of that, actually, not despite that. And so when Sandy Hook happened, they were first graders who were killed and my son was in first grade.

• 35:40Brené Brown?

  And so when I got invited to go, I was in a car going to Sandy Hook from New York and I had kind of one of my first professional full-blown panic attacks. And I called Steve and I was like, I can't do this. I can't, it's too close. I can't do it. I'm scared. I can't do it. What am I gonna say? What am I, you know, I don't know. And one of the things that really struck me is he's like, you know exactly how to do this. It's just, you know how to do this. Like this is, this is who you are. And I was like, I don't know, I don't know if this is helpful, but I'm gonna just, I'm gonna believe it anyway. So when I got there, they had pictures of their kids who had been killed.

• 36:25Brené Brown?

  And I fumbled in my bag and pulled out my phone and showed them a picture of my kids. And just intuitively and responsively, irresponsively, with what I'm looking intuitively and reflexively, like, and it just, it was a reflex because we were sharing pictures of children. And two of the parents started crying. And I said, I'm so sorry. Because, you know, my children are still alive, right? And I thought, I've done something. And they said, you are the first person that we've showed pictures of our kids to, who looked at us in this very normal, human way and said, let me show you pictures of my kids.

• 37:07Brené Brown?

  And we want to see pictures of your kids because it helps us understand that you know what it means to show the picture of our kids who have been killed. And it was just this moment where like, I remember one of the parents saying to me, if I go to a restaurant and I'm crying, everyone looks at me with pity. And if I go and I'm laughing, they look at me like, don't you care about what happened? And so it's like this loss of normalcy where we participate by not saying things like, wow, I had a, I had a really big memory of so and so today

• 37:52Brené Brown?

  and how he used to run down the soccer field. Like as if, if we say that, they'll all be, oh, I forgot completely that I had, you know, this happen. So it's what you're saying about community in a way, it's like, it's like what we try to mimic with, in social work with wraparound services. You know, it's like, we try to mimic community with wraparound services where community is the ultimate wraparound service. Right?

• 38:22Adam Grant?

  That's right. I, I can't believe you went. I just, just imagining going into that room. The, I mean, the, just, I think about the, like, the empathic distress of sitting with people who have faced the most unimaginable horrific thing. And then also feeling like, well, what, how do I help? What, what could I possibly offer here? What did you do?

• 38:51Brené Brown?

  Listened, cried, laughed, told stories, listened to stories, and talked about how the, one of the things that we talk, we don't talk about with grief a lot is the loss of ordinary, the loss of normal. The thing that we diminish the whole time when everything's going okay, how we were resentful of our small lives and the rituals that make up our small lives until the moment those things are gone. And then all we really want is the ordinary part of our lives back. And so.

• 39:32Brené Brown?

  I don't, I, I, the only thing I'm sure of, the only thing I'm 100% sure of about that work, and I, I went several times, is it changed me more than I could ever change them. And, look, if we're not willing to consider gun reform after Sandy Hook, then I'm clear, don't, don't talk about our love for children as a nation. Like, don't, don't, don't waste your bullshit on me. Take it somewhere else because there's a way to think about gun ownership as a responsibility, not a right. And as someone who's raised,

• 40:16Brené Brown?

  again, in a family where you couldn't shoot anything, you couldn't take apart and put back together again, and you couldn't kill anything that you didn't field dress and eat, there's probably a big collection of us that grew up like that that are probably the biggest supporters of gun reform.

• 40:34Adam Grant?

  Especially in a country where the overwhelming majority of both Republicans and Democrats favor simple interventions like universal background checks.

• 40:43Brené Brown?

  I mean, that's, yeah, like, like, yeah.

• 40:46Adam Grant?

  Like, we're, we're well above 80%.

• 40:50Brené Brown?

  Right.

• 40:50Adam Grant?

  Like, this should not be hard.

• 40:53Brené Brown?

  No, it's just, yeah. So I think it was a very meaningful experience for me. I still am in touch with several of them, and I think about it all the time. And I think about what a privilege to be invited.

• 41:07Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 41:09Brené Brown?

  Really, just, yeah. But it was, it was scary because this is the whole thing about empathy and love and community, is when we choose our own comfort over being there for someone else, things break. Just things break. Big things, hard things.

• 41:42Speaker 02

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• 42:11Speaker 03

  Hey Spotify listeners. When you travel with American Airlines, you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admiral's Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected with high-speed Wi-Fi. Sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at AA.com.

• 42:38Speaker 04

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• 43:07Brené Brown?

  What a wild ride this has been from the Spurs.

• 43:09Adam Grant?

  Spurs!

• 43:12Adam Grant?

  I'll tell you what, though. I actually have a fridge back to that, which is, I-

• 43:17Brené Brown?

  I will walk over it with you, Adam Grant.

• 43:19Adam Grant?

  Here we go, ready? I was actually thinking that one of the ways that you know whether teammates really trust each other is whether they show up for each other when something hard happens personally.

• 43:36Brené Brown?

  I think that's true. And here's the other thing. You can also evaluate the leadership of a team by-

• 43:49Brené Brown?

  How willing they are to excavate

• 43:57Brené Brown?

  the grief that's in the locker room and not just about losing, but I mean, like, I think about, you know, I'm a big Liverpool fan.

• 44:08Brené Brown?

  Arnie Slot was just let go by Liverpool. And I think about the work that needs to be done with that team, not on the pitch, but off the pitch, about the death of one of the, one of the closest brothers on that team and his, and his younger brother that were killed, you know, and how much of that work did they surface and do? And, and this is, this is everything we're talking about right here. If you'll allow me just a one minute silicoi here.

• 44:42Brené Brown?

  This mythology

• 44:46Brené Brown?

  that if I don't mention

• 44:50Brené Brown?

  the miscarriage, it won't hurt. Wrong. The idea that if I say something to you when you come back from leave about, I'm really sorry to hear about your dad, that that's being, you know, generous. And then the idea that if we don't talk to the players about the, the grief they're drowning in about the loss of a teammate, that it's better for performance. Like, this is mythologies of comfort.

• 45:23Brené Brown?

  These are not, this is not how we work as humans.

• 45:28Adam Grant?

  Not even close. And, you know, it's, I mean, this, this actually takes us back to Greg Popovich. As a coach, one of my favorite things that he did was when looking at who he wanted on his team, you know, obviously taking talent into account. He said he looked for players who enjoyed other people's success, who were sitting on the bench cheering when their teammates scored. And in psychology, that's called Empathic joy. And the idea that you could be as excited for somebody else's success as you were for your own is just a core signal that you are interested in being a good teammate. And I think you could pay just as much attention to, do you hurt when other people are hurting?

• 46:15Brené Brown?

  I mean, I, I, and, and, and let me ask you this.

• 46:21Brené Brown?

  Because this is an important distinction. I want to, I want to, I want us to, to dig in here. Do you hurt when other people are hurting? And is that different than do you show up for other people when they're hurting? Is it a difference between cognitive and affective empathy?

• 46:39Adam Grant?

  Yes.

• 46:41Brené Brown?

  Say more.

• 46:42Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 46:43Brené Brown?

  Do, do you have to hurt when other people are hurting? Or do you have to hold space for other people who are hurting and be with them in their hurt?

• 46:52Adam Grant?

  I, I think we're both all in on the latter. You, you do not have to feel other people's feelings to care about their feelings. And sometimes it's easiest to show care for their feelings when you don't feel it personally.

• 47:03Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I think that's true.

• 47:04Adam Grant?

  Because then you're not carrying the cinder blocks that you were talking about earlier.

• 47:07Brené Brown?

  Right. And if you are, because you're affected by it, then you have to acknowledge the cinder block. So I think, I think this is a really strong point on what happens if you have, you know, so affective empathy and cognitive empathy, just the quick differentiator. Cognitive empathy is understanding, you know, intellectually what you're going through and being with you in that. Affective empathy is taking on what you're feeling. And that can lead to burnout and really hard, in hard things. And so,

• 47:41Brené Brown?

  and I think it's really interesting. Empathic joy is such a Popovich move. The other Popovich move that I think goes along with that, there are so many, we could be here all day on, on, and on great things he does. He also scouted for

• 48:00Brené Brown?

  diversity in playing styles in, did you, have you only played in US college or do you come from international play? Becky Hammond, first woman to be an assistant coach in the NBA, brought her on. He also, and he, and his coaching staff, he hired intentionally people who disagreed with him. He did not want people who just, out of reverence, agreed with everything he said.

• 48:30Brené Brown?

  I want to talk about something that's on, it's like 30 feet long and 20 feet high in the Spurs locker room. And it's been there for three decades. And it's a quote that Popovich had made into a wall. It's from Jacob Rees, who was an early 20th century Danish American photographer, reformist. And here's what the quote says. I think you'll love this. Do you know it?

• 48:56Adam Grant?

  No, tell me.

• 48:57Brené Brown?

  Adam, you don't? Okay. "When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps 100 times, without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the 100th and first blow, it will split in two. And I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before." Oh, God.

• 49:21Adam Grant?

  So good.

• 49:22Brené Brown?

  It's so good around, I think kindness and love wins when coupled with discipline and commitment. And the thing, you know, as you know, I'm a San Antonio. My, my, my parents were from, are from San Antonio. I was born in San Antonio. I think as long as I can think back on the Spurs and, and, you know, and Popovich, the three words that come to mind are discipline, commitment, not compliance, but commitment, and love.

• 50:04Brené Brown?

  And every team I've worked with that worked from that ethos has had incredible winning experiences. Not every season and not all the time because it doesn't, doesn't work like that. But to me, we started this conversation, interestingly, about the paradox of toughness and kindness. You know, I think that's when you're sitting with someone in grief or you're the Spurs.

• 50:36Brené Brown?

  It takes toughness to sit with someone in grief, and it takes deep kindness.

• 50:41Adam Grant?

  Yeah, it does. And I think so many people still see kindness as a sign of weakness when they don't recognize what they should realize is it's a source of strength. But to your point, that strength doesn't always show up right away. It's something that that it's like an investment in building. It's an investment in building a cohesive team and culture in the long run. But you can't expect an immediate payoff. I was I was kind to you today, and therefore you played better tonight. Maybe, maybe not. Do you have a better season, knowing that there's somebody on your team who has your back? Probably.

• 51:18Brené Brown?

  Oh, God, yes. That is that is actually. That is not. I don't think that's a probably. That is the three C model. Closeness, commitment, and complementary skills. That that is. That's research.

• 51:41Brené Brown?

  And I think you just hit on research.

• 51:43Adam Grant?

  Well, I'm just thinking also, the the absence of kindness is in some ways. I'm thinking about the the well documented pattern that bad is stronger than good. Having an abusive or toxic coach or teammate may do more harm even than the upsides you get of, you know, of somebody being unusually kind and caring.

• 52:08Adam Grant?

  I'm thinking about have we have we talked about the the research on NBA players who had abusive coaches?

• 52:14Brené Brown?

  You and I have offline, but we should talk about it here. I think it's important.

• 52:18Adam Grant?

  Julian Barling and his colleagues published this study where they looked at at coaches who were consistently berating and belittling their players and compared them with with coaches who didn't. And so you have a every coach gets a score on how abusive they are. And then you track what happens to players' careers if they happen to have a coach who was higher on the abusive end of the spectrum. And it turns out those players go on to perform worse for the rest of their careers, even when they're not under that coach's thumb anymore.

• 52:48Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 52:49Adam Grant?

  And, and one of the key mechanisms there seems to be that they have more emotional outbursts. They are more dysregulated. They commit more technical fouls. They, they end up struggling more to coordinate with their teammates. And like the, in the paper, the researchers talk about it as like, these players are a little scarred for life. Like that, that, they, they never fully healed the wounds of feeling like, if I don't perform today, it means there might be something wrong with me. And I never thought about it through a shame lens until you brought shame into this conversation. But I think part of that scar is those abusive coaches are leaving these players with a lasting sense of shame that interferes with their ability to concentrate on, on performing their best.

• 53:35Brené Brown?

  A hu, I mean, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. Shame impairs performance. I, I, I, I am actively working with teams right now who were talking about this a lot. And it's interesting because there is, there's so much data on it and there, and there's some top reasons. Increasing fear of failure promotes negative team atmosphere, inhibits creativity and innovation, increases burnout, reduces autonomy. But one of the things that I think I wanted to bring into this conversation, because I, I really was so excited about these findings.

• 54:16Brené Brown?

  One of the most operationally significant, I think, findings from this shame research around shame and coaching is shame drives concealment. They stop asking questions. They stop taking risks. They stop disclosing struggles. They stop seeking feedback. Shame drives hiding. Because when, when, and this, this is a parenting truth. This is, this is, you know, one of the places that where I do more work than I do with athletes is in hospital settings and with physicians.

• 54:56Brené Brown?

  And one of the core issues around shame-based medical school and residency programs is concealment. Because when something goes wrong.

• 55:10Brené Brown?

  Physicians can grapple more with shame from their peers than how it impacts patients or patient families. So what ends up happening is concealment and hiding mistakes. And so, but this is also true in every milieu, in a classroom, in a locker room, in our living rooms with our kids. When I connect your value and your lovability and your worthiness for belonging to your performance, I am driving batshit levels of scarring. Like you can get, you can come through it and change the trajectory of your athletic

• 55:55Brené Brown?

  performance, or your human performance, or your person, your personhood, but it will require deliberate repair.

• 56:01Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 56:02Brené Brown?

  You have to deliberately go through work, hard trauma work. Shame is trauma. Shame is trauma. Shame is being told, this makes you unlovable and unworthy of connection and belonging. It's so serious. Why don't people get how serious it is, Adam?

• 56:23Adam Grant?

  I don't know. I've, I've never, I've never understood why anybody thinks this is a, an effective philosophy of, of leadership, of parenting, of teaching, like, pick, pick your environment. I think one of the, I think one of the reasons that people screw this up is shame is powerful. And they see a short-term response. And they think, oh, like, I just shamed my team and all of a sudden they trained harder? I just shamed my kid and they stopped misbehaving? Like, I, I am learning that this works. And they don't see the wound. They don't see the long-term detrimental effect it has. All they see is the immediate action. I think it's the same reason why leaders think fear is an effective strategy.

• 57:08Adam Grant?

  And a lot of parents operate from a position of fear is, you, you get reinforcement for the behavior that elicits an immediate response. And like, it seems like it's being rewarded because that's what's visible in the short term. And the, the long-term cost is, is much, it's much more difficult to connect the long-term cost to what I did as a leader or a parent.

• 57:32Brené Brown?

  No, it's, it's, you're exactly right. I remember one of the things I used to say all the time early in the shame research when I was talking, speaking about it publicly is you can change a child's behavior with shame on a dime.

• 57:48Adam Grant?

  Yep.

• 57:48Brené Brown?

  But you are forever changing who they are.

• 57:52Adam Grant?

  Wow. Yeah. That, that, and you don't see the latter and you see the former. Or you don't see the latter until it's too late.

• 58:02Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I mean, this could take me into a really terrible place with things I love, like college sports, you know, where are we treating players? Are some, are some, are shame-based coaches treating players as talent assets and commodities versus as people?

• 58:25Adam Grant?

  I, I remember being, at the end of my freshman year of college, I was a diver, and one of the swim coaches came in and said, "All right, according to NCAA rules, I can't obligate anybody to be here more than," I think it was 15 hours a week.

• 58:41Brené Brown?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:41Adam Grant?

  And he said, "I can't tell anybody to be here more than 15 hours a week, but I can tell you this: if you're not here at least 30 hours a week, I will assume you're not on the team next year."

• 58:54Adam Grant?

  Okay, first of all, I mean, at minimum, the athletes who prioritize school in the offseason are getting shamed. More likely, they're getting cut.

• 59:06Brené Brown?

  Yeah, this is, this is, you know, I have a question that I don't even know is answerable, but I, I do, I do, I, I, but if, if, if anyone could answer, it's probably you.

• 59:20Brené Brown?

  Or maybe we could call a phone a friend, maybe David Eagleman, I don't know who we would call, but here, here's my question.

• 59:28Brené Brown?

  Shame served a biological, an evolutionary biological function, right? You bring danger to the community, we shun and stigmatize you because you're bringing threats to the community and now we're going to get rid of you. Over time, as we've developed as humans, shame has become far too blunt of an instrument to use because the detrimental effects of it are so, it's so positively correlated with violence, addiction, aggression, suicidal ideation, these things that don't, you know, are really horrible markers for humans.

• 1:00:09Brené Brown?

  Is it possible today that there is an old school coaching, parenting, leading philosophy that has become increasingly excruciating neurobiologically because we have developed amygdala-wise and, you know, do you understand what I'm asking?

• 1:00:37Adam Grant?

  Yeah. Yeah. Is the, is the, if you think about the adaptive origins of shame or the reasons why it existed in the first place, is it increasingly maladaptive, given the way that we operate in the modern world?

• 1:00:53Brené Brown?

  No, I know. I think it's, I definitely.

• 1:00:56Adam Grant?

  Or is the use of it?

• 1:00:57Brené Brown?

  I think the use of it is increasingly malad-

• 1:00:59Adam Grant?

  The weaponization of it.

• 1:01:00Brené Brown?

  Yes, I think it's increasingly maladaptive for sure. I guess what I'm asking is there, would there be brain changes? Like, the reason why I'm asking this is kids today, college students today, in my experience, are like, nah, we're not doing that. I'm not, they're, they're, there's some interesting intergenerational, but not super great studies on, you know, our grandparents use more shame than our parents, you know, but is there, over time, a real physical and neurobiological cognitive response to maladaptive behavior?

• 1:01:40Adam Grant?

  I am not qualified to answer that question. We should definitely phone a friend.

• 1:01:44Brené Brown?

  But isn't it an interesting question?

• 1:01:46Adam Grant?

  It's such an interesting question. I'm, I'm pretty skeptical.

• 1:01:51Brené Brown?

  Are you?

• 1:01:52Adam Grant?

  I'm skeptical. I just, I think the, if you take one conclusion from social cognitive neuroscience as a, you know, as an outsider who just reads casually in this literature, neuroplasticity is my big takeaway. And I think that, I think that our, our brains evolved to be highly adaptable. And it's hard for me to imagine that there's a generational shift in, you know, the, in the, I guess to me, it seems more like a learned psychological response.

• 1:02:27Brené Brown?

  Okay.

• 1:02:28Adam Grant?

  Than, you know, an underlying neuro, an underlying neurological response, but I, I'm out, I'm outside of my, my expertise on that one. So your, your guess is as good as mine.

• 1:02:41Brené Brown?

  I think it's probably, I think it's probably psychosocial cultural.

• 1:02:45Adam Grant?

  Yeah, that's, that's where I would be.

• 1:02:48Brené Brown?

  Yeah. And not biological. And I think the resistance, you know, as a very solid Gen Xer. Everybody that I know, myself included, was, was raised with a pretty healthy dose of shame at home, in the classroom, as athletes. I think the, I think today, the kids' rejection of that, where they can, and power is a hard thing there, is more psychosocial cultural than it is biological. I, I'm just wondering if there's, you know?

• 1:03:25Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Brené Brown?

  It's, it's interesting. I, I think it's interesting.

• 1:03:29Adam Grant?

  I think so too. And I, I think that it's, I, I guess, I look at that question and I think, it's surprising to me that anyone believed that it worked, even, you know, in the medium term. Even in the short term in some cases, because you're right, shame does change behavior. But, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about, there's a Barry Staudt all study on angry halftime speeches by college basketball coaches.

• 1:03:55Adam Grant?

  Do you know this one?

• 1:03:56Brené Brown?

  Oh, my God, I don't. I'm so excited I could die.

• 1:03:58Adam Grant?

  It's such a cool study. So you look at what happens to a team after the coach goes in and gives the angry halftime speech or not, when they're behind. And it turns out that the team is more likely to win if the angry halftime speech happens, but only under two conditions, only under two conditions. The first condition is the coach has to be only moderately angry, not too angry. So they're not berating you to the point of shaming you. They're kind of firing you up by saying, we gotta do better. Like, this was not good enough.

• 1:04:32Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:32Adam Grant?

  And secondly, and I think this is the real kicker, they have to be not normally angry. So they're not tyrants.

• 1:04:40Brené Brown?

  Oh, my God, I love this.

• 1:04:41Adam Grant?

  They're not typically out of control.

• 1:04:43Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Adam Grant?

  This is a, this is a situationally appropriate response

• 1:04:47Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Adam Grant?

  from somebody for whom this is out of character. And so, wow, we must be really blowing it that our level-headed, calm coach is now a little bit worked up and we need to rise to this occasion. And, I mean, to me, that, that research just decimates the Bobby Knight style of, you know, of coaching and leadership.

• 1:05:05Brené Brown?

  100%.

• 1:05:06Adam Grant?

  And says, you actually want the person who, to the point you were making earlier, you want the coach who makes the team feel safe and sets high standards of discipline and performance.

• 1:05:17Brené Brown?

  That's it. Oh, my God, I love this. I love this. One of the best angry halftime speeches that I've ever heard in like, real time, because I was there, working with this team, was a coach who rarely, if ever, raised his voice.

• 1:05:37Brené Brown?

  And he said, and, and, and he had tears in his eyes. And he said, I'm so effing angry. You're letting yourselves down. You're disappointing yourselves. I don't want this for you. You have trained for this. And I was like, I am suiting up. Let's go.

• 1:05:58Adam Grant?

  Brené Brown is playing center.

• 1:06:01Brené Brown?

  I can take it from here.

• 1:06:03Adam Grant?

  She will be blocking all the shots.

• 1:06:05Brené Brown?

  Oh, yeah, no, yeah, you, you will, you will want me out there. Yeah, so I, that's just incredible. This has been. This has been a roller coaster of emotion.

• 1:06:18Adam Grant?

  Seriously? What are you doing to me, Renee?

• 1:06:22Brené Brown?

  I don't know, but I like it. We're both like, hands up, woo, strapped in. I like it. I will say that I'm not using any roller coaster metaphors right now because the roller coaster in Galveston that my kids, I have, that's over the water, got stuck. Did you see this in the news?

• 1:06:40Adam Grant?

  No, oh no.

• 1:06:42Brené Brown?

  Yeah, it got stuck 100 feet, 105 feet up, and I know it was 105, with people backward for four hours. And the firefighter ladder was 100 feet exactly.

• 1:06:54Adam Grant?

  No.

• 1:06:55Brené Brown?

  And they were stuck 105, and they got him out. So it's like, and I'm a roller coaster rider, but I don't do like, but I don't do the ocean, so you gotta pick, you gotta pick two scary as hell things. Are you a roller coaster rider? We'll end with this question.

• 1:07:12Adam Grant?

  I was afraid of heights as a kid. And I tried to cure myself by going on every ride at Cedar Point my senior year of high school.

• 1:07:22Adam Grant?

  And it partially worked.

• 1:07:23Brené Brown?

  Exposure therapy.

• 1:07:24Adam Grant?

  It was exposure therapy 101. And it worked in the sense that I've told our kids, I will ride any ride with you that you want to ride. And I do it, but the fear has never gone away.

• 1:07:38Brené Brown?

  I, it's so interesting that you, that Steve does not love a roller coaster. Steve hates a roller coaster, but has told my kids, I'll ride anything with you that you want me to ride.

• 1:07:49Brené Brown?

  Is that, is that, is that dad school? Where do you, where do you get that?

• 1:07:53Adam Grant?

  This is dad bravado.

• 1:07:57Adam Grant?

  I don't want my kids to be scared like I was, so I'm gonna put on a tough run.

• 1:08:04Brené Brown?

  Yeah, because when I, before we had kids, I said, ride this with me. He's like, I'll hold your purse.

• 1:08:11Brené Brown?

  But with the kids, he's like, he just looks at me and he's like, God, damn it. All right, that sounds fun. Here we go, yeah. I like that. Okay, this was a good conversation. I have had all the feels. Have you had all the feels?

• 1:08:23Adam Grant?

  I've had more feels in this conversation than I have in a typical week.

• 1:08:29Brené Brown?

  You're welcome.

• 1:08:32Adam Grant?

  Thank you, I think.

• 1:08:34Brené Brown?

  Oh, you love it? All right, see you next time.

• 1:08:39Brené Brown?

  The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brené Brown Education and Research Group and Granted Productions. You can subscribe to The Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app.

• 1:08:49Adam Grant?

  We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

• 1:08:54Brené Brown?

  OneNote Curiosity Shop website has launched. It's going to be where you'll find all the show notes. We're also, we did a poll on LinkedIn to see if conversation questions would be helpful on the work-based stuff, so you can do lunch and learn with your teams. We'll be adding those there. And for this episode in particular, we'll be adding some resources and places where you can find some of our favorite books on grief, hotline numbers. So check out thecuriosityshop.com. Check home worries off your list and save up to $5,000 on repairs with Virginia Foundation Solutions. Wet basement? Foundation cracks? Uneven concrete? Leave those to

• 1:09:35Brené Brown?

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