Brené and Adam Grant on the Paradox Tug of War and Leadership Theater

In part two of a special series with Adam Grant on Brené’s new book, Strong Ground, Brené and Adam discuss the far and near enemies of generosity, the tug of war of paradox, and sports as leadership theater. They explore how finding our strong ground offers tethering, connection, and stability, and also the platform for explosive movement and change. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:06Brené Brown?

  Hi, everyone. I'm Brené Brown, and this is Dare to Lead. I am back for my second episode with the one and only Adam Grant. And we are digging into Strong Ground, my new book on leadership. And I'm excited to be here. And I'm always nervous to see what Adam's going to ask me today. How are you, Adam?

• 1:29Adam Grant?

  Nervous.

• 1:29Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I get kind of nervous.

• 1:31Adam Grant?

  Nervous? Well, I dared to read. So I have so many, I have so many new questions for you.

• 1:38Brené Brown?

  I loved our conversation about values. I had no idea we were going to go there. I've been thinking about it. And I don't think we should underestimate the helpfulness of the near enemy, far enemy Buddhist concept when we think about our values. So like, what are the values that we really hold the most dearest? We're always clear on the opposite of those, the far enemy of those values that we hold most dear. But the one, those near enemies, the ones that dress up and masquerade as the value, but also at the same time protect our ego and our kind of armor, those are the ones, I think, to really watch.

• 2:22Adam Grant?

  I was just thinking about this. So if we take the value of generosity, is it fair to say that the far enemy is selfishness or greed? But the near enemy is actually self-sacrifice?

• 2:36Brené Brown?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:38Brené Brown?

  I'm disoriented.

• 2:41Brené Brown?

  It's so weird that you said that because I had a word that came up when you were saying it, but I was like, I could never say that.

• 2:51Brené Brown?

  But the word that came up for me was martyrdom.

• 2:55Adam Grant?

  Same thing?

• 2:56Brené Brown?

  Same thing.

• 2:57Adam Grant?

  Except yours adds, the martyrdom adds an element of needing the recognition for having suffered for someone else's benefit, which is maybe even worse.

• 3:12Brené Brown?

  I'm like, I'm in a swirl of words, which is where you and I always end up. We always end up in this like weird swirl of like, what do things, you know, what are constructs really mean? So the value or the virtue would be generosity.

• 3:29Brené Brown?

  The far enemy would be selfishness. And the near enemy would be kind of a self-sacrificing martyrdom. What I would be looking for in this equation, see if this checks out for you, is generosity just kind of like pulling way back to basic research?

• 3:54Brené Brown?

  A capacity for generosity, I think, would be measured by someone's ability to be other-focused.

• 4:04Brené Brown?

  Selfishness is self, completely self-focused. So using the words other-focused and self-focused, what would the near enemy be?

• 4:19Brené Brown?

  To me, it's some kind of like, it's some kind of fake other focus that's really, like, I can even see control going there.

• 4:31Adam Grant?

  Is it Anne Lamott who says that help is the sunny side of control?

• 4:35Brené Brown?

  Yes, one of my favorite quotes of all time. Help is the sunny side of control. Yeah, that's what I think that's, I mean, I like, I literally have that on a post-it note in my study at home. Because I can find myself doing that under the guise of generosity. And it's really, let me, let me help you with this. Let me help you with this. Because I want to control the outcome, because it'll be better for me if the outcome is this.

• 5:01Adam Grant?

  Oh.

• 5:02Brené Brown?

  Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. For sure, I can do that.

• 5:06Adam Grant?

  Oh, that's a, that's a different framing than the one I was imagining.

• 5:10Brené Brown?

  Yeah, no, like.

• 5:11Adam Grant?

  Which is, go ahead.

• 5:12Brené Brown?

  Go ahead.

• 5:12Adam Grant?

  No, I want to hear yours.

• 5:13Brené Brown?

  No, I can just say, I'll be glad to, you know, I'll be glad to hit some serves with you. But I need you to get your, I need you to speed up your serve, dude. We're not winning in this mixed doubles, you know, like, you know.

• 5:30Adam Grant?

  Note to self, don't play doubles.

• 5:34Brené Brown?

  Note to self, if you do work on serve. But I do think there is, like, let me volunteer to help with the family dinner. Not because I want to help you, but because I want to control how it goes.

• 5:49Adam Grant?

  You might be, you might be a little uncharitable to yourself there. Why do you want to control how it goes? You want everyone to have a good dinner experience, right?

• 5:58Brené Brown?

  Hmm, probably, I mean, no, uh-uh, I want to, I want to control who sits where so I don't have to talk to certain people. So, no, uh-uh, that's nice. You might be being overly nice to me, but no, uh-uh. I think Anne Lamott, I mean, just, I think because a lot of what informs Anne's thinking is her recovery. And so I think a lot of, for me, a lot of what I have to watch out about offering to help is really wanting to control. I mean, so I think that's where I go. But I do think this near enemy.

• 6:33Brené Brown?

  Concept is super helpful when we're talking about values, right?

• 6:38Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I do too. And I think before we leave the generosity part of it behind,

• 6:44Adam Grant?

  my framing of the near enemy of generosity being self-sacrificing martyrdom was a little different, which is, here, I'm going to go above and beyond to do this thing for you so that I can feel like a good person. So I can feel like I'm not falling short of my values, as opposed to thinking about what's actually best for you.

• 7:06Brené Brown?

  Oh, yeah. Okay, I got it. Oh, shit. Yeah, I can do that. I can do that, too.

• 7:11Adam Grant?

  It's identity validating.

• 7:13Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 7:13Adam Grant?

  It's affirming as opposed to figuring out what's actually helpful here and sustainable for me to give.

• 7:20Brené Brown?

  And it's actually not other focused.

• 7:24Adam Grant?

  No, no, it's not.

• 7:28Adam Grant?

  Okay, so let's, let's talk about this idea of paradox, because, you know, as I think about the relationship between a value and its near enemy, those are, all of those pairings are paradoxical.

• 7:46Brené Brown?

  Yes, for sure.

• 7:49Adam Grant?

  We think of generosity and self-sacrifice as, you know, as being cousins, right? They're, they're, they're connected by a concern for others. And maybe one is a healthy expression of that, and one is an unhealthy version that becomes self-focused, but they're related. And I think that, I have a bunch of questions for you about paradox, but I guess the first one is, so I'm reading Strong Ground, and I'm realizing there's a, there's a physical paradox in the book that you unpacked so nicely, which is, you have to do a bunch of work that's going to take you a step backward to strengthen your core.

• 8:27Brené Brown?

  Yep.

• 8:27Adam Grant?

  In order to then accomplish the goals that you want. And accepting that paradox is not easy, that I have to feel weaker in order to get stronger.

• 8:37Brené Brown?

  No, it, no, it's terrible.

• 8:41Adam Grant?

  So talk to me about how you become okay with that as somebody who's always wanting to be moving forward.

• 8:50Brené Brown?

  I, I'm not trying to like, avoid the answer. I don't think I, I want your opinion on this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer your question with a question.

• 9:03Brené Brown?

  I'm like looking in here, like one of my favorite, I share four of my favorite writers on paradox. Two of them kind of more spiritual and then two of them very business, you know, Jim Collins and James March. Like, let's just look at some of Jim Collins's paradoxes, which I think are great. So he talks, Jim talks a lot about the tyranny of the or and the genius of the and. So in Jim's work, he talks about purpose and profit, freedom and responsibility, discipline and creativity, empirical analysis and decisive action, philosophical visionary futuristic

• 9:46Brené Brown?

  thinking and superb daily execution. So he talks about what leaders and teams risk if they don't get comfortable with the and and the paradox and they fall to the tyranny of the or, which reading the same things I just read to you would be purpose or profit, freedom or responsibility, discipline or creativity. One of the things I'm very curious about, and I think I maybe unknowingly wrote from this belief. I don't think it's easy to resolve paradox if you don't understand the concept of paradox.

• 10:30Brené Brown?

  I think if you're just faced with seemingly opposing ideas and you can't recognize the schematic of, oh, this is a paradox and my job is to hold the tension of both until something better than either emerges, that our cognitive wiring for certainty and clarity overrides our ability to hold the tension. What do you think?

• 10:59Adam Grant?

  Yes. Yeah, I have no further thoughts, Your Honor.

• 11:04Brené Brown?

  No, but I really, I really-

• 11:06Adam Grant?

  No, I think that's, I think that's exactly right. I think that it's a little bit like, it's like one of the core findings from emotion research that you write about, which is sometimes naming it is the best way to tame it.

• 11:19Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 11:20Adam Grant?

  You, you have to be able to, to recognize and articulate that you're in the middle of one of these tensions in order to handle it effectively. And so often, you're, it's like you're playing a, it's like you're, you're, you're in the middle of a tug of war and you don't realize, you don't realize that you're pulling against yourself.

• 11:41Brené Brown?

  Yes. Oh, my God, that's such a good visual.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  What will you canva today? What will you brainstorm, collaborate on, present today? What will you resize, post, edit, imagine? What will you research, test, switch, and finally have the courage to pitch? You got this. What will you visualize, design, brand, animate, create, generate? What will you translate, pour your heart into, or have a laugh doing? Whatever you want to make is possible. So what will you canva today?

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• 13:02Brené Brown?

  I share in the chapter my own real experience of this and I'm still, I'm still struggling, struggling with it. I told my coach the other day that I wanted to change my value, that I wanted to change one of my values. And she said, you know, courage or faith? And I said, oh, maybe I'll just add a third. And she's like, I'd be very curious to hear what it's going to be before we go down that path. And I said, I want, I value as highly as I value like faith, which is very high, and courage, unfindability.

• 13:39Brené Brown?

  And she's like, what does that mean? I said, I do not want to be findable. I don't know, I don't want anyone to know where I am. I don't want anyone to be able to reach me, you know? And we immediately dropped back into this work that I've been doing over the past five years, which is discipline and freedom.

• 14:00Brené Brown?

  I want freedom. I do not want my life to be defined in 30-minute scheduling blocks. Therefore, I schedule shit. I don't schedule anything. And so my calendar looks amazing.

• 14:21Brené Brown?

  But actually, I have obligations. I just refuse to put them on the calendar. So I schedule over them. I double schedule. It's chaos. I'm, you know, I cry. And so until just this last year, I've started to really understand the paradox that I'm in of I need more freedom.

• 14:42Brené Brown?

  And that's not going to be solved by unfindability. It's going to be solved by discipline.

• 14:51Brené Brown?

  And I resent the fuck out of that.

• 14:54Adam Grant?

  Why?

• 15:08Brené Brown?

  I'm not sure. I just... So I started scheduling like my hair appointments for six weeks out. I started scheduling all of my games, you know, my pickleball games. I started scheduling my downtime. And what it's meant is I play six days a week. I don't have to call my hair salon crying and like, oh, my God, please get me in. I've got to do something and, you know, and it's been good. But I'm still wrestling with, there's got to be an easier way.

• 15:39Adam Grant?

  Oh, okay. So the paradox in here that's jumping out for me is in order to gain freedom, you have to give up some control.

• 15:50Brené Brown?

  In order to gain freedom?

• 15:56Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 15:59Brené Brown?

  I'm not built that way. I want freedom and control and no discipline.

• 16:06Brené Brown?

  I think, you know what I think we're pushing up against too?

• 16:10Brené Brown?

  I think I've spent my whole life subscribing to the belief that the definition of freedom is no discipline.

• 16:24Brené Brown?

  You know, and so now I want the freedom to enjoy the last 20 or 30 years of my life in a very different way than what happened to my mom and my grandmother with dementia and frailty. And so I'm disciplined, I'm at the gym, I'm lifting weights, I'm working out. But I'm paying for my freedom with discipline. And I think there's a part of me that just...

• 16:49Adam Grant?

  Rebecks against that.

• 16:50Brené Brown?

  Yes, that's the right word.

• 16:53Adam Grant?

  It feels like an active rebellion.

• 16:56Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 17:00Brené Brown?

  But it's like,

• 17:04Brené Brown?

  how many of us do things

• 17:08Brené Brown?

  to be rebellious? And we're the only one hurt by them?

• 17:15Brené Brown?

  Do you know what I mean? It reminds me of that definition of resentment, that resentment is drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

• 17:23Adam Grant?

  Wow. Oh, I haven't heard that before. That's good.

• 17:26Brené Brown?

  Yeah. So I do think the power of paradox is

• 17:35Brené Brown?

  just like our conversation about rigidity and discipline. I think the power of paradox is it introduces a relationship between two concepts that we didn't understand existed.

• 17:53Brené Brown?

  Does that make sense to you?

• 17:55Adam Grant?

  It does. I think the part that I struggle with, and this is, this is one of the ways that Strong Ground really pushed me, is I just don't want to believe that the trade offs are inherent. Like, okay, what's, like, what's the integrative solution? How do we get the best of both worlds? So let's take, let's take a practical version of this in your life. So my solution to the paradox of, you know, I want, basically, I want to, I want to control my time, but I also want to have flexibility and freedom is Paul Graham's idea of maker days versus manager days.

• 18:36Adam Grant?

  So two days a week, I basically fill my calendar with all the things that need to be done. And then the other three days are pretty empty, is the goal. It doesn't always work out that way. But that's, that's the template that I try to work from. And so what I feel like I'm doing is I'm trading two days of freedom for the rest of the week of freedom.

• 18:58Brené Brown?

  But that seems to me to be discipline and freedom because this because Paul Graham's idea is a discipline practice.

• 19:07Adam Grant?

  It is. You're right.

• 19:09Brené Brown?

  I mean, that, I mean, I'm not, I'm not sure there's a productivity and I've looked at all of them because rather than doing, should I actually just watch YouTube videos on productivity schemes? I mean, come on, if you have it, we can't even be friends if you haven't wasted 30 minutes doing that. Like, come on.

• 19:25Adam Grant?

  I've never watched a productivity video in my life.

• 19:27Brené Brown?

  Oh, God. And you're so fricking productive. I know. It makes me crazy how productive you are sometimes. But I do think Paul's idea of maker versus manage, maker versus manage, right? Yeah.

• 19:44Adam Grant?

  Maker versus manager.

• 19:45Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Brené Brown?

  Is a disciplined, is a discipline.

• 19:50Adam Grant?

  You're right. It is.

• 19:51Brené Brown?

  It's a practice.

• 19:53Adam Grant?

  It is a practice. And I guess what it does is it makes the paradox more tolerable, but it doesn't make it go away.

• 20:00Brené Brown?

  No. Because you're trading, when you say you're trading a couple of days for more freedom, I still, I still clearly see you in this heart of discipline versus, versus freedom paradox, discipline and freedom.

• 20:16Adam Grant?

  Yeah, that's right. So you're just gonna have to accept it then?

• 20:19Brené Brown?

  I cannot. I mean, I am, you know, yeah, because it's like, I'm gonna have to get underneath. I love, I'm grateful that you use the word rebellion because I'm going to

• 20:34Brené Brown?

  I'm gonna do some investigating in my coaching work to understand what that's about. I think I need to do that. And I think that's help, that'll be helpful for me. So thank you. I think the thing about strong ground that

• 20:49Brené Brown?

  The whole concept for me is a paradox in itself that I never thought about till after I finished the book, which is strong, strong ground offers tethering, connection, and stability, but it's also the platform for explosive movement and change.

• 21:13Brené Brown?

  You know, on the back of the book, I think we wrote something like, when people ask me, how far, fast, or high do you think we can go as a team or as an organization? The first question I find myself asking now is, tell me about your relationship with the ground, then we can talk about that. And I mean, I think that's why there's a chapter on the tush push. I think that's why I think about Simone Biles and the physics of what she can do is all about her relationship with the ground. I think about, you know, springboard diving.

• 21:47Brené Brown?

  Like, how can, how, how great could a diver be if they had no relationship with a board?

• 21:55Adam Grant?

  It's the single hardest part of the sport.

• 21:57Brené Brown?

  Oh, my God, is it really?

• 21:59Adam Grant?

  The flipping and twisting and the rip entries, like, all of that is far easier than timing and rhythm and balance on the board.

• 22:08Brené Brown?

  So a diver's strong ground is the board?

• 22:11Adam Grant?

  Absolutely, or the platform. Yeah, if you're on Tower. But it's, it, it, that, that was one of the things that, that jumped out at me when I was reading the book is, like, yeah, even, even these activities where, like, what the, what we think is the defining strength is, is being up in the air, it's all about ground.

• 22:32Brené Brown?

  It's all about ground, and I think that's true in organizations as well. I think, you know, I talk a lot about the physics of the tush push and, you know, and all of Newton's rules, you know, and how they apply to the tush push and how it, you know, if you've got someone that can execute against it well, if you've got a team. So for those of y'all listening that don't know what the tush push is, it's in American football, you've got an offensive team and a defensive team, and In a situation where the offensive team is what we'd call a short yardage situation, they only need to move the ball about a yard. One of the ways they can do it, and it's kind of belongs in the tush push belongs in

• 23:14Brené Brown?

  a family of moves that are like a quarterback sneak collection of moves. But what they'll literally do is pass the ball to a quarterback and then ground down into the turf and literally just use their massive muscles and ground force to push the ball forward a yard. And the physics of it is really about the fact that the offense has a split second advantage. They go first, so you're up against the law of physics there. And, you know, their body weight, and what's really interesting is the minute any player becomes detached from the ground, they're no longer contributing to the tush push because they've lost their ground force. Right.

• 23:59Brené Brown?

  And so I just thought, what would it mean for an organizational team to all be grounded, not only in their values, but a clear understanding of the mission of their team or what they're trying to do? And moving quickly and, you know, that's Newtonian teamwork.

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• 25:47Adam Grant?

  So we have to talk about sports metaphors a little bit more.

• 25:50Brené Brown?

  Okay.

• 25:52Adam Grant?

  Because I think you and I have both gotten a lot out of them, but also gotten pushback for using them. And I know sometimes when I use them, people say, well, wait, you're leaving out half the population. And it's led me to wonder, is it easier for a woman to bring sports metaphors to the table?

• 26:14Brené Brown?

  When people say that you are leaving out half the population, are they talking about women?

• 26:19Adam Grant?

  They're assuming, it's feedback that often comes from women saying, you know, by default, women were less likely to, you know, to grow up playing all the men's sports. They didn't grow up playing American football, for example. They're less likely to be super fans. And so, you know, the sport, like, they don't, they're not out golfing all the time. So sometimes the metaphors don't translate for them.

• 26:43Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I, yeah, I think, first of all, I think that's definitely becoming a very faulty assumption. Hashtag everyone watches women's sports. I love that. And I think that if you're gonna, look, I use sports metaphors for a simple reason. I'm a big sports person. And I think that sports is leadership theater. I think.

• 27:08Brené Brown?

  In a single play, certainly over the course of a quarter of a game, or a half a game, or a whole game, you can actually watch, it's like looking under the hood at strategy, discipline, operations. You can look at the whole line from idea to execution. You can watch it play out. It's literally leadership theater. So I think when you use sports metaphors, and not only do I use a lot of them, I have an entire chapter explaining why I use them and why I think they're valuable. I think you just have to pause to explain the sport.

• 27:51Brené Brown?

  And I think, you know, when I use them, I usually will show videos, or I'll walk people through and say, there are two opposing teams. This team's trying to move the ball a yard. So they're using the physics of just, you know, five 300-pound guys just to literally push. So I think it's not using, it's not just using them that's problematic, or can be problematic, it's how they use them. And what can feel, I think, not great for people, myself included, is making an assumption as a speaker that people know what you're talking about. But I don't think it's any different than when I've been in the audience and said, you know, hey, look, we've all read this book, right?

• 28:33Brené Brown?

  You know, we're all really familiar with Lynda Hill's work on digital transformation. Like, excuse me, row four, seat J. No, don't know what you're talking about. That's just, that's just sloppy.

• 28:46Adam Grant?

  Yep.

• 28:47Brené Brown?

  A speaker could just take five seconds and say, listen, let me introduce you to Lynda Hill. For those of you not familiar with her work, this is what she studies at Harvard. This is what she's known for, and this is something that she's taught. And then you've done a service. And so...

• 29:04Brené Brown?

  I'm gonna use best sports metaphors. I'm gonna try to be more mindful about how I use them. But I think they are

• 29:11Brené Brown?

  super helpful because you'd have to observe a team for a year and put together tiny snippets that you could never do it.

• 29:25Adam Grant?

  I love the way that you characterize it. Sports are leadership theater. You're absolutely right. They're teamwork theater. We get more vivid observation.

• 29:35Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 29:35Adam Grant?

  And like more vivid, more visible examples than we do in any other world. And I think also we get the, we get the discipline of people trying to learn the skills.

• 29:47Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 29:48Adam Grant?

  And, and, and practice them at an elite level as opposed to, I mean, talk about paradox. People spend easily 95% of their time as elite athletes, practicing for a performance that's a tiny fraction.

• 30:06Brené Brown?

  Right.

• 30:06Adam Grant?

  Of their career.

• 30:07Brené Brown?

  Right.

• 30:08Adam Grant?

  Which is the exact opposite of what most leaders and team members do at work.

• 30:13Brené Brown?

  Right. And I would say that they train for those, that 5% and include in their training, they build in obstacles. Like I remember when, I think it was the Colorado's, the college football team in the US, Colorado, was training to play against Oregon, which has a notoriously loud stadium. So at practice, the coaches were all holding five foot high speakers, blaring the Oregon, the Oregon State song, you know, just to create. Leaders should be doing that.

• 30:55Brené Brown?

  We should be training and skilling up and practicing. That might look like role plays. That might look like, um, pre-mortems. That might look like red teams that, you know, we should be creating some, you know, environments to make sure our ideas and our strategies hold in environments and cultures and contexts that we can't control.

• 31:26Adam Grant?

  So important and so rarely done.

• 31:28Brené Brown?

  So rarely done. I mean, how long does a pre-mortem take? I mean, you're the one that introduced me to the idea and was it, what book was it in?

• 31:35Adam Grant?

  Gary Klein is the one who put it on my radar.

• 31:37Brené Brown?

  Okay, so Gary Klein's got it, but where did you write about it first?

• 31:42Adam Grant?

  Oh.

• 31:43Brené Brown?

  Is it Think Again?

• 31:44Adam Grant?

  I might have written, I might have written about it in Think Again.

• 31:46Brené Brown?

  I think it was Think Again. That's where I got introduced to the idea. Then I went into Gary's research and looked at it. And we do them all the time. It's six months from now. This has gone to total shit.

• 31:58Brené Brown?

  Why did it go to shit? What did we miss?

• 32:02Brené Brown?

  And it has drastically changed how we think.

• 32:09Adam Grant?

  It's, it's amazing to me that these kinds of activities aren't more popular because I was, I was with the leadership team recently and they had made what they all agreed was a disastrous strategic decision. And I, I was listening to them debrief it. And I said, well, like, how many, how many major decisions did you simulate before you went into the real thing? And they said, none. Why did you expect to be good at this? The first time you had to make a big choice together as a group.

• 32:40Brené Brown?

  I mean, it's, yeah, it's, and you're gonna, you know, I think one of the things you're gonna come to every chapter, you could talk about this in my book and Think Again and all your books and all my books. The biggest unspoken resistance to intentionality is time.

• 33:02Adam Grant?

  Always. We don't have time.

• 33:03Brené Brown?

  We don't have time. You know, you think it's gonna take time now. You think a 20-minute post-mortem is gonna be time, cost, you know, cost you a lot. You wait.

• 33:14Brené Brown?

  You know, a year from now, when this has cost you, you know, $27 million in six months.

• 33:23Adam Grant?

  The way that people discount future time is beyond problematic. Yes, invest, invest the two hours this week to save yourself 200 hours over the next year.

• 33:35Brené Brown?

  That's so, that's so interesting, the devaluation of future time. Do you think that's predicated on the overwhelming stress of current time?

• 33:46Adam Grant?

  It's, I mean, it's, it's hard to imagine that that's not a major contributing factor. There's a, there's an economist you might know, David Leibson, who's, who's studied this, he calls it hyperbolic discounting. And it's the, it's just the dramatic decrease in the amount of weight that people put on, you know, the time they have even a week from now or a month from now as opposed to now.

• 34:11Brené Brown?

  Wow.

• 34:12Adam Grant?

  And I've got to think that, that intensifies under pressure and stress.

• 34:18Brené Brown?

  Okay, to be continued. I love this conversation.

• 34:24Adam Grant?

  Same.

• 34:25Brené Brown?

  We'll be back.

• 34:26Adam Grant?

  We have lots more to talk about.

• 34:27Brené Brown?

  We have lots more to talk about. All right. Thanks, Adam. I really appreciate it and I'm really, let's just, maybe it'll be fun to do this. What's something you're taking away from this conversation?

• 34:35Adam Grant?

  Oh, I mean, I have, I have multiple takeaways already. One is, I mean, just, I'll, I'll pick one from where we just were, which is, instead of fighting against time, I want to reframe time invested now as time savings later. I'm, I'm always kind of, I feel like chipping away and saying, no, no, you can squeeze more, you know, you could, you could add one meeting to the calendar or you could prioritize one hour a week to, you know, to devote to rethinking and unlearning things. And what this conversation is, is leading me to think is, no, let's take people into the future, like you were saying. Let's, let's talk to them about how much time they're going to waste cleaning up the

• 35:19Adam Grant?

  giant mess they're going to make if they don't carve out time now. That's, that's like, that's an investment, not a cost.

• 35:27Brené Brown?

  It is a total investment and it's actually going back to the top of our conversation, possibly an investment in your own freedom.

• 35:35Brené Brown?

  Which I can get behind and I am going to think about this hyperbolic devaluation. I do not think about future time because in future, I'm even in better shape than I am now and I don't need as much time and my house is already clean. I've got some serious ass magical thinking on future time. Confession?

• 35:58Adam Grant?

  Stay tuned. We're going to dive into that in our next episode.

• 36:02Brené Brown?

  Thanks, Adam.

• 36:03Adam Grant?

  Thank you.

• 36:07Brené Brown?

  Dare to Lead is produced by Brené Brown Education Research Group. Music is by The Sufferers. Get new episodes as soon as they're published by following Dare to Lead on your favorite podcast app. We are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcasts.voxmedia.com.

• 36:28Speaker 00

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• 36:58Speaker 06

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