Brené and Adam Grant on Time Scarcity, Asking Questions, and Pocket Presence

In the third part of a special series with Adam Grant, Brené and Adam tackle the topics of time scarcity, how a great leader doesn’t have all the right answers, but the right questions, and the difference between pocket presence and executive presence. They dig into how understanding the 5 Cs — color, context, connective tissue, cost, and consequence — of delegation and strategy operations can build the situational awareness, temporal awareness, systems theory, and critical thinking skills necessary for pocket presence. In their discussion, Adam shares his breakthrough of seeing pocket presence as a collective capability, whereas executive presence is “party of one.” 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.

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• 1:10Brené Brown?

  Hi, everyone. I'm Brené Brown, and this is Dare to Lead. And joining us for more conversations around pretty much any topic you can think of, Adam Grant. Hi, Adam.

• 1:22Adam Grant?

  Hey, Brene. I'm excited to be back.

• 1:24Brené Brown?

  I'm excited to have you back. I, um, it's gonna take me a very long time to get my head around my devaluation of future time. I fancy myself a realistic person, but I do not think of my future time with the same amount of discipline as I think about my time today. And it's really changing me.

• 1:59Adam Grant?

  Wow, that's fascinating. Okay, I want to hear more. Why?

• 2:08Brené Brown?

  I think right now, especially in my life, I'm feeling a lot of time scarcity. And one way, one of the things I need to do right now is get more disciplined in my time now. So it's not driving me to think tomorrow will be different.

• 2:37Brené Brown?

  So I think it's just a confounding variable for me. Like, is that the more scarcity I'm in with my time now, the more I project that the future is going to be easy?

• 2:50Adam Grant?

  Is that a coping mechanism?

• 2:52Brené Brown?

  For sure.

• 2:53Adam Grant?

  So you're telling yourself this is, this is only temporary?

• 2:57Brené Brown?

  Yes, for sure. But for, this is year 10.

• 3:03Adam Grant?

  So having done nothing to, to change it?

• 3:06Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 3:07Adam Grant?

  Hope is not a strategy? Is that the, is that the line?

• 3:10Brené Brown?

  That is the line. I have very mixed feelings about that quote. So we should talk about it sometime because I'm not sure that it's right. But I'm pro hope. I am radically anti magical thinking.

• 3:27Adam Grant?

  Yeah, maybe, maybe the, the correction to it should be, hope alone is not a strategy.

• 3:32Brené Brown?

  Hope alone.

• 3:34Adam Grant?

  Hope can be motivation for finding a strategy.

• 3:37Brené Brown?

  I think it's C.R. Schneider's work. And hope.

• 3:42Adam Grant?

  Agency and pathways.

• 3:44Brené Brown?

  Get goal, agency and pathway. So in some ways, hope is the ultimate strategy. If you're a Schneider follower, because that hope, high levels of hopefulness are correlated with the ability to set a goal, to determine a pathway, to be relentless about the pathway, even if the first one doesn't work out. And then to believe in your ability to do it. So in some ways, hope is actually a strategy. If you define it with his definition, right? But I guess, I wonder, our last conversation makes me wonder. This is my exercise I'm going to do with my coach. When I am thinking, when I'm devaluing future time.

• 4:31Brené Brown?

  What specifically does my world and my life look like in the future that's so radically different than today?

• 4:37Adam Grant?

  And why aren't you creating it today?

• 4:41Brené Brown?

  Damn. And why am I not creating it today? So if you're joining us and you missed the last podcast, I think it's really worth going back to because we had a really interesting conversation about paradox and about the paradox of discipline and freedom, of productivity. And I was explaining to Adam that I thought, I always think it's going to be better moving forward. And tell us about the research you introduced from The Economist.

• 5:11Adam Grant?

  Oh, this is Leibson on hyperbolic discounting. And the idea is that people value the same thing in the future much less than in the present. And sometimes with disastrous consequences. You could offer, I think in a typical experiment, you give people the choice between, you know, I'll give you $5 today or $50 in a year. And most people prefer the $5 today.

• 5:41Brené Brown?

  Yeah, because this is the magical thinking. So I'm going to invest that $5 today, and it's going to be 100, not 50. And really, I'm just going to buy like a Diet Coke and, you know, a power bar.

• 5:52Adam Grant?

  Yeah. And also, I think there's a, there's often an identity disconnect of that that future person is not me. Like, the now is me, and I need to take care of the now.

• 6:04Brené Brown?

  No, that's it. Oh, my God. That's it.

• 6:10Brené Brown?

  That's it.

• 6:11Adam Grant?

  Future Brene is a different person. That's, that's part of the challenge here, right?

• 6:15Brené Brown?

  Yeah, future Brene doesn't need to be thoughtful about time. She's got all this shit figured out.

• 6:24Adam Grant?

  I'm realizing as we talk this through, this is another difference between us.

• 6:28Brené Brown?

  Hmm.

• 6:29Adam Grant?

  You live in the present and I live in the future.

• 6:32Brené Brown?

  Say more.

• 6:34Adam Grant?

  I think I've, when you were talking last episode about seeing me as a disciplined person.

• 6:42Adam Grant?

  I don't feel particularly disciplined. I just, I spend probably half my time thinking about tomorrow and next week and how am I going to work toward the goal I'm trying to accomplish? And how am I going to solve a problem that someone I care about is facing? And it's, it's great for momentum and motivation, but sometimes it means I'm not engaged in the moment.

• 7:06Brené Brown?

  Hmm.

• 7:06Adam Grant?

  Because I'm too busy thinking ahead. And you do the opposite, I think, from what I'm hearing.

• 7:11Brené Brown?

  I do.

• 7:12Adam Grant?

  I got some really interesting feedback about this difference between us. I'm now realizing a couple of years ago, when I was doing a virtual event with a colleague and afterward I asked what I could do better. And she said, you should answer, you should answer questions more like Brene.

• 7:27Brené Brown?

  Jesus.

• 7:28Adam Grant?

  And I said, oh, tell me more. What do you mean? And she said, Brene pauses and thinks about a question. And you get to, you get to experience her thinking out loud in real time. And she said, you just rattle off the answer.

• 7:49Adam Grant?

  And it doesn't have the same curiosity or engagement or mindfulness to it.

• 7:56Adam Grant?

  And I, I had a hard time parsing it in the moment. And now I'm realizing, some of the time, it's because I already thought through the questions that I expected people to ask and tried to prepare a helpful answer. And now, like, okay, that's my job to deliver that as opposed to the off the cuff, random thought that I had. But it means I wasn't connecting to the audience. Right? I was like, here, I'm just going to deliver to you my pre-planned thought as opposed to, I'm going to work through this with you.

• 8:29Adam Grant?

  And I think that present focus is one of your superpowers.

• 8:35Brené Brown?

  This is, this is really weird and really interesting.

• 8:47Brené Brown?

  Because.

• 8:53Brené Brown?

  I think all of our superpowers and our kryptonite are on the same continuum. Do you believe that?

• 9:01Adam Grant?

  I think the, my favorite definition of a weakness is a strength overused or misused.

• 9:07Brené Brown?

  Okay, so, so, yes, I agree. Yeah, so, yeah, so I think it's really interesting because my team gets feedback every now and then, the people that help, you know, help me get to events and plan them and execute against them and do all the really hard tedious work of making sure they're successful, that the event organizer is not pleased with the fact that they've been told by my team, don't bother sending the questions, she's not going to read them. And I think it's because I don't want to think about them in advance.

• 9:52Brené Brown?

  I want to, I want to be able to, if I'm in a fireside chat with a CEO and the CEO asks me a question, I want to be able to follow up with the 30 questions to that person that I'm going to need to understand better to answer. And I think there's some value in modeling that. Like, I, like, I even put one of those in the book, you know, in Strong Ground. I'm like, I don't know the answer to that. And they're like, well, here's this variable. I'm like, I still don't know. And I think sometimes there's really great learning in that. And I think that I've given my team different direction now, which is, if this

• 10:34Brené Brown?

  is something that's deep in my content area, great. If you think you've never seen this question come by, I may want to see it in advance. So I probably got, I probably have some really important learning to do there, too.

• 10:50Adam Grant?

  But you know what's so interesting about this is? I think in your case, it's really easy to do the same thing with a different framing, right? To say, hey, what I'm hearing is you want a sense of predictability and control.

• 11:05Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 11:06Adam Grant?

  And we're happy to give that to you, but we also want to preserve Brene's ability

• 11:12Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 11:12Adam Grant?

  to be in the moment.

• 11:13Brené Brown?

  Yeah. I just don't read questions in advance and it can make people really nervous. And they have to be okay with sometimes they'll ask me something and I'll say, I actually don't know. And then I'm not sure that's always what they think they paid for.

• 11:31Adam Grant?

  This is the tension between they're excited to learn with you, but they also want to learn from you. And if you take off your expert hat too much, they're dissatisfied.

• 11:41Brené Brown?

  Yeah. And you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of my husband, Steve, who he has taught so many medical students and residents in pediatrics over the years. And he said, one of the most difficult things is to teach them is when you're working with parents, the patient is the child. There are so many occasions when a parent will look at you, you know, all welled up and said, you know, I love that you shared how you're thinking about this as a parent. I love that you talked about the decisions that you would make. And this is why I come here. And this is, you're amazing. And there

• 12:23Brené Brown?

  are other times when I came here because you damn well better be God and you better tell me right now what to do. I don't give a shit. You know, like, you know, it's like sometimes they just want the all knowing God when they're scared. And sometimes they want the empathetic kind of, and it's something that pediatric residents really have a hard time. And when they, they'll know when they make it wrong, right?

• 12:47Adam Grant?

  Yep.

• 12:47Brené Brown?

  But it's, you know, sometimes they want us to know everything. And then the other time they're so grateful that they were human beings and we don't know the answers, but we've got great questions. And what we study is how to be curious and ask the right questions. But if people are in scarcity, they want the expert with the answer. And I have to say, like, just if you're listening, I can, I think I have a lot to offer in terms of how to get underneath what you're really worried about and what's keeping you up at night and how to ask the right questions.

• 13:24Brené Brown?

  You and I can both source research, but I don't think the definition of a great leader is someone who has all the answers. You know, it's just questions.

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• 14:54Adam Grant?

  This connects so well to one of my favorite topics in Strong Ground.

• 14:59Brené Brown?

  Uh oh, I'm curious.

• 15:00Adam Grant?

  Which is, which is presence.

• 15:03Brené Brown?

  Oh.

• 15:05Adam Grant?

  So one of the things, we have a lot to talk about here, but one of the things, one of the things that you excel at, and clearly Steve does too, is, is, is a form of presence that I think, you know, with it brings a high degree of situational awareness. And it's different from the ways that we normally talk about presence in leadership. So I think the kickoff question for, for this conversation has to be, tell me what you have against executive presence.

• 15:41Brené Brown?

  Oh my God, no, I'm going to rat you out. I'm going to rat you out right off the bat.

• 15:47Brené Brown?

  So, oh, man, where do I start? So, sports metaphors. We talked about this last episode. We both use them. We both love them. We both believe that sports can be an amazing kind of leadership theater, where you can really point to where in the chain things go wrong, from ideation, strategy, execution, evaluation. You know, it's helpful. I think we're both committed to doing better jobs with a setup so that everyone can follow the metaphor, because that's probably a key to being able to use them.

• 16:26Brené Brown?

  But I'll tell, I'll tell people who are listening right now, actually, what happened is I was raised by a father who was a football player, played in college, played in high school. He was on the O-line. He was someone who would protect the quarterback when the offense had the ball. And I grew up with a really interesting understanding of this term, pocket presence. And in American football, the quarterback, who's the kind of the leader of the offense, who immediately gets the ball, runs with it, throws it, needs to move the ball down the field to score a goal, to score a touchdown. Pocket presence is how you evaluate

• 17:10Brené Brown?

  a quarterback's ability in this pocket. So when the play starts, all the big guys protect the quarterback. They form a little pocket around him so that he can figure out what he's going to do with the ball. And a quarterback that has good pocket presence is someone who has a very strong internal clock, anticipatory awareness, situational awareness, major, major trust building with the line of folks that are protecting him. And so...

• 17:48Brené Brown?

  Through a series of events, I talked to Steve Sarkisian, the coach at University of Texas football, Hook 'Em Horns, that's my team, about what is pocket presence? Because I was very curious if, I was really curious about the skill set that made up pocket presence. And it started with a conversation, I was on the sideline of a game and I was standing with Emmanuel Acho, who played for the Longhorns and ended up playing professional ball and now is a writer and a speaker, doing really interesting work. And I looked at him during the game and I said, hey, how would you define pocket presence? I'm curious.

• 18:31Brené Brown?

  And he said, "The ability to read the entire field without seeing it and the trust in your team to get something done, move the ball down the field." And I thought, man, I think what leaders need today is pocket presence. And I was talking about with my team and they said, "Is that like executive presence?" And I was like, "Jesus, I hate executive presence." But I was scared because there are a lot of people who study executive presence, you know? So I texted Adam, "I'm gonna tell on you. If you think, if I'm going down, if I'm going down on this sinking executive presence ship, I'm taking your ass with me, dude."

• 19:15Adam Grant?

  Happy to come along for the ride.

• 19:17Brené Brown?

  Yeah, we can both swim, luckily. So I texted you, what did I say in the text? I can't remember. Let me see, I'm gonna try to find it in the book.

• 19:30Adam Grant?

  Yeah, it's in here somewhere. I read it.

• 19:33Brené Brown?

  Hold on. It was funny, wait, I'm gonna look. Oh, there it is. "When I texted my friend Adam Grant," I'll read from the book, "saying, 'I'm going to talk about the problem with executive presence in this book, and I asked his thoughts, the first thing I got was the dreaded three-dot iPhone response." Like, I'm like, "Oh, my God, he's writing something, it's taking a long time. Maybe he's gonna be mad that I'm taking down." And then after waiting...

• 20:05Brené Brown?

  Because my thought was like, maybe this is like sacred territory in the leadership world. Finally, your text came up and it said, yes, please. Executive presence is cover for discriminating against women and introverts. And then half a second later, he followed up with, and while you're at it, could you do a smackdown of charisma too? I was like, this is why we're friends. I don't like executive presence because I don't. I think the world right now, especially on the political stage, is full of people who would check, tick all of the executive presence boxes. You know, like blustery and, you know, your tie and your commanding.

• 20:49Brené Brown?

  And they're saying nothing. And what they are saying is terrible. And so I don't know that executive presence, to me, I don't know what that means. To me, it is a prescriptive way of how you think a leader looks and sounds. Where you and I both agree that the quiet nerd in the meeting, he or she normally has the best answers of the group, right?

• 21:22Adam Grant?

  Yeah, this captures so effectively what's bothered me about executive presence for a long time is it's all style, no substance. Executive presence is all about style. And it says nothing about whether there's any substance behind it. Yeah, so do you look the part? Do you act the part? Do you talk the part? But what are you actually saying? What's your contribution to the meeting? Not clear. And I think, I guess, we haven't talked about this yet, other than that little text exchange. But I've seen it, I have seen it used as an excuse to say, well, you know, we can't promote her yet because she's not ready. She doesn't have the executive presence we're looking for.

• 22:07Adam Grant?

  So what does that mean? Like, talk to me about what she's missing. And the most consistent answer I get when that happens with women is, well, there's just an air of confidence that we're looking for. Bravado. I'm sorry, how is that relevant to being an effective leader? Is she competent? Is she caring?

• 22:27Adam Grant?

  Has she demonstrated an ability to live by her organization's values and make other people around her better? Yes, yes, and yes. Promote her.

• 22:38Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I agree 100%. And I think

• 22:44Brené Brown?

  you have to go back to a very dangerous leadership origin story to understand how

• 22:56Brené Brown?

  how the quote unquote "style"

• 23:02Brené Brown?

  was first formulated. And I do think it's really hard for women. And I do think it's hard for Black and Brown folks. I do think it's hard for introverts. I do think it's hard for LGBTQ people. Like, the definition, I think, of presence has been built on

• 23:24Brené Brown?

  a leader from a 1950s movie.

• 23:29Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I just, pocket presence to me is more interesting because, you know, I was really, like, when I was thinking about it, the ability, you know, anticipatory awareness, strategic thinking, critical awareness, internal clock,

• 23:44Brené Brown?

  which we never talk about, temporal awareness in leadership. And it's so huge. It's so complex. And it was interesting because you've read the book now, so you know. But when I had to guess how much time a quarterback has in the pocket before the defense is on top of them, do you know what I guessed?

• 24:07Brené Brown?

  40 seconds.

• 24:11Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 24:13Brené Brown?

  What would you have guessed? Do we know the, I'm not talking about, what would you have guessed?

• 24:17Adam Grant?

  I mean, I spent way too much time on fantasy football as a kid.

• 24:23Brené Brown?

  Okay, got it.

• 24:24Adam Grant?

  Like, I would have counted like 3 seconds probably, or 4 seconds max.

• 24:29Brené Brown?

  It's 2 point, it's usually 2.8 to 3.5 seconds before they're clobbered by, you know, 1,200 pounds of fury and rage. And so I was trying to think, well, is does the does the metaphor work? You know, or does it does it work to think about leaders and pocket presence? But I do because I don't think you have 1,200 pounds of fury coming at you as a leader and have three seconds. But I think you have 1,200 pounds of pressure coming at you all the time. And I do think you have to make quick decisions. And I think the skill set of pocket presence is is really important. And I'd much rather have a leader that has pocket presence than executive presence.

• 25:08Adam Grant?

  Me too. I think the concept of pocket presence is so powerful. How do you think about building that?

• 25:18Brené Brown?

  Well, what's interesting is that takes years to build in a quarterback. So if we want to go to the original source of the metaphor, it takes years to build that, that internal clock, the footwork, the being able to read a field without being able to see it. They said, you know, they said, I don't know how you feel about the Tom Brady. I was not a Patriots fan, but you can't, if you watch American football, you can't discount how good Tom Brady, what a good quarterback he was, right? They said that he was able, without seeing the offensive lineman protecting him, he knew where they were and how much time he had by the vibrations through his feet on

• 26:03Brené Brown?

  the ground.

• 26:05Adam Grant?

  Talk about strong ground.

• 26:07Brené Brown?

  Talk about strong ground. I mean, yeah. And so I think it takes years to develop this. I think it does take a lot of metacognition, meaning your ability to think about your thinking, self-awareness, the ability to build trust. And then you have to hone situational awareness and anticipatory awareness skills. I think that takes time.

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• 28:31Adam Grant?

  Rene, how did you build your pocket presence?

• 28:37Brené Brown?

  I feel really lucky. I think I have pretty decent pocket presents.

• 28:42Adam Grant?

  Pretty decent.

• 28:44Brené Brown?

  I do. I think it's one of my strengths.

• 28:46Adam Grant?

  Understatement of the century.

• 28:48Brené Brown?

  Well, I attribute mine to social work because that's my education, bachelor's, master's, and my PhD all on social work. And the foundation of social work is actually systems theory, weirdly enough. So I've studied a lot of systems theory. And so I think built into understanding how systems work is anticipatory and situational awareness. I think you understand if you move A, you're going to have repercussions in B, C, and D. And understanding the timing of those things is critical. So I think it's the way I think. And I'm a very, and social

• 29:29Brené Brown?

  work is also about contextualized practice. So I think when we teach it in organizations, you know, because I'm using this metaphor of strengths, strengths building in the, in the book, I say that there are some kettlebell exercises that we talk about. So one exercise that hits 10 muscle groups, you know, as a kettlebell, a good kettlebell exercise would do. I think there are some exercises that we teach that really hit everything from situational awareness, temporal awareness, systems theory, critical thinking. And one of those is the five Cs. So we teach people how to talk about the five Cs of delegation, strategy, operations,

• 30:14Brené Brown?

  which are help me understand context, connective tissue, color, context, and consequence.

• 30:23Adam Grant?

  Same again.

• 30:24Brené Brown?

  Yeah. So the five Cs are give me context, connective tissue, color, talk to me about the consequences involved in this decision, and the costs.

• 30:36Brené Brown?

  And it's so ingrained in our culture now that if a brand, you know, we hired someone about a year ago, right out of college. And we were in a meeting and all I said to her was, can you pull some data for me? And she looked at me and she goes, can you give me the five Cs? And I was kind of pissed off, to be honest with you. I was, I was looking for more of a yes chef.

• 30:57Adam Grant?

  Who do you think you are?

• 30:57Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I was looking for more of a yes chef response in that moment. And I said, I'm sorry. And she said, I, it would be helpful if I had the five Cs. And I was like, oh, my God, you know, be a good leader. So I said, here's the context. I'm going into a meeting at three o'clock. I need to be able to present this data. I'm trying to persuade the people of this. This is what I think we need to do next. Here's some more color on how this is playing out across our organization. Here's the cost of getting it wrong. Here's the cost of getting it right in terms of potential revenue. And here are the consequences. And then she says, straight out of our playbook and our training, can I play back what I think you're saying? I was like, oh, my God, yes, please.

• 31:41Brené Brown?

  So she plays back everything. She said, you want me to pull this data for you because you've got a meeting at three o'clock with this group of people? You want to help them understand this because you're trying to persuade them to make this decision. Here's what this decision would mean for our organization. And here's what this decision, if we don't, if it doesn't go in our favor, would mean. And I said, that's correct. And she looked at me and she goes, you're asking for the wrong data.

• 32:05Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 32:07Brené Brown?

  And I said, what? And she said, you're asking for the wrong data. If that's what you want to do, the data you're asking for are not going to give you that. I would pull these data and I would slice and dice them this way.

• 32:21Brené Brown?

  She was right.

• 32:27Brené Brown?

  But that process 20 times in, you know, a six month period, you're developing pocket presence.

• 32:38Adam Grant?

  I mean, talk about pocket presence. Here you are coming at her with a very specific and urgent request.

• 32:45Brené Brown?

  I am the 1,200 pounds of defensive lineman.

• 32:49Adam Grant?

  And she has the wherewithal to stand there and ground herself.

• 32:55Brené Brown?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:56Adam Grant?

  And help you realize, in fact, you don't want what you're asking for.

• 33:02Brené Brown?

  I mean, that's, yeah, and we'll end on this note.

• 33:07Brené Brown?

  One of the things we talk about when we do Dare to Lead Transformations is you've got to build systems that are braver than people. Because it's human nature to tap out of hard things sometimes. We just, you know, we're weary. I'm weary. Everybody gets weary. But when she was on boarded into our organization, she was taught that if you're not given those, you must always ask for the five Cs.

• 33:35Brené Brown?

  She was taught if someone says something to you that's complex, you have to ask for a playback. You have to say, can I playback what I think I'm hearing? So we're going straight into James Clear. We don't rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. So to me, the kettlebell exercises that were in play there that really saved my ass. And by the way, that meeting went exactly how I wanted it to go and exactly how it would not have gone had I had my way.

• 34:05Brené Brown?

  But the kettlebell exercises there are two. One, the five Cs. Number two, the playback. Can I playback what I think you're saying?

• 34:14Adam Grant?

  Well, Brene, this is my big aha from this conversation is I came into it thinking about pocket presence as an individual skill. But what you've just spelled out is that it's actually a collective capability. It's enhanced by the systems that you build into your team and the norms that then a group of people follow together that allows each individual to have that presence.

• 34:42Brené Brown?

  Oh, my God. You just put icing sprinkles and an edible flour on my cupcake of pocket presence. And I actually understand it different right now. Will you say it again?

• 34:54Adam Grant?

  Well, let me say it differently, which is if we go back to your Tom Brady example, which of course I have to love as a Michigan Wolverine.

• 35:03Adam Grant?

  Pre-Patriots.

• 35:06Adam Grant?

  The description that you gave was not just of Tom Brady being cool under pressure. It was about his relationships with his offensive line and knowing that they had his back and knowing what they would do if a blitz came in or if there was a bad snap. And that was a system, right? He had faith in that system and that allowed him to be present. And so I think that, I really think that part of what differentiates pocket presence from executive presence is not just substance versus style, it's also individual versus collective. Pocket presence is embedded in a system, not just in a person.

• 35:51Brené Brown?

  If you're buying a copy of Strong Ground, please write this paragraph in on page 218 because I meant to say this, it just slipped my mind.

• 36:04Brené Brown?

  This is so good, Adam. This is so good.

• 36:08Adam Grant?

  That was such a fun realization that crystallized.

• 36:13Brené Brown?

  Yes, because it is a, pocket presence is a collective effort made by a team that trains on these things together.

• 36:32Adam Grant?

  And it might manifest in an individual or it might look like an individual decision or set of behaviors, but it's actually, yeah, it's a collective capability.

• 36:43Brené Brown?

  It's a collective capability and you know I'm gonna be saying that shit from the stage wherever I go talk about this book. I will attribute and send you a quarter every time I do it, but oh my God, this is so helpful. I have in here, you gotta trust your team and trust what you've built, but it's bigger than that. It's a collective capability and executive presence is party of one.

• 37:09Brené Brown?

  We are thumbs down. Adam Grant, Brené Brown, thumbs down on executive presence.

• 37:17Adam Grant?

  I'll just say one other thing, just quickly here.

• 37:19Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Adam Grant?

  We can edit this out or not, but this is part of why we need book clubs, not just individual reading.

• 37:26Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 37:27Adam Grant?

  Like, you sat down and wrote the book. I sat down and read the book and we just had a eureka moment talking about it that neither of us had independently.

• 37:40Brené Brown?

  Because I will go on the record here by saying I do believe that skills building happens in relationship.

• 37:49Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I don't think you move from knowing something to integrating it and becoming it without relationship.

• 37:59Brené Brown?

  I'm really grateful for this conversation.

• 38:01Adam Grant?

  Oh, so fun.

• 38:02Brené Brown?

  All right, next time, we've got three more episodes left. I can't wait.

• 38:07Adam Grant?

  Looking forward to it.

• 38:08Brené Brown?

  Grateful for you. Thank you.

• 38:10Adam Grant?

  Right back at you.

• 38:13Brené 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.

• 38:34Speaker 00

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• 39:05Speaker 06

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