Pod Insights The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant Brené and Adam on What They Will Never Agree On About this episode Welcome to The Curiosity Shop! In the inaugural episode, Brené and Adam discuss how a public disagreement about authenticity almost ended their relationship before it began. For the first time, they discuss where they went wrong, why they changed their minds about each other, and what they learned about repair and trust. They also explore what healthy authenticity looks like, and dive into the many things they may still never fully see eye to eye on – from email vs. texting to remote work to faith.
Show Notes
Unless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice - Adam Grant 2016 NYT Op-Ed
The Fine Line Between Helpful and Harmful Authenticity - Adam Grant 2020 NYT
Authenticity Is a Double-Edged Sword - Adam Grant 2020 WorkLife with Adam Grant Podcast
My response to Adam Grant’s New York Times Op/ED: Unless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice - Brené Brown LinkedIn 2016
The Dangers of Being Authentic - Adam Grant LinkedIn 2016
In Tough Times, Psychological Safety Is a Requirement, Not a Luxury - Michael Blanding 2025 HBR
Jecker & Landy: Liking a person as a function of doing him a favour - Jecker & Landy 1969 APA PsycNet
Adam Grant on The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know - Brené Brown and Adam Grant 2021 Dare To Lead Podcast
Brené Brown on What Vulnerability Isn’t - Adam Grant and Brené Brown 2023 Re: Thinking Ted Audio Collective
A Whole New Mind (Right-Brainers will Rule the Future) - Daniel H. Pink 2005 Book
The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain Is Different and How to Understand Yours - Chantel Prat 2022 Book
Dr. Harriet Lerner on I’m Sorry: How to Apologize and Why It Matters, Part 1 of 2 - Brené Brown and Dr. Harriet Lerner 2020 Unlocking Us Podcast
Happy Gilmore Scene - I’m Stupid You’re Smart - Happy Gilmore 1996 Movie
Shame and Guilt - June Price Tangney 2002 Book
Daniel Kahneman: Doesn't Trust Your Intuition - Adam Grant and Daniel Kahneman 2021 Re:Thinking
But yes, Blue Jays are master mimics
Sponsor List
Thank you to SAS and Canva!
Chapters Titles + Timestamps
0:00 - Introduction
3:26 - Our First Disagreement
18:45 - Our Path Here
28:31 - Approach to Repair an Apology
51:02 - Closing Question
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Transcript 10,748 words · 9 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:02 Speaker 02 I'm Anna Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Chloe Mal. We talk all about her taking on the top job at Vogue, finding her personal style, and her favorite lunch order in the iconic Condi Ness cafeteria. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers.
1:38 Brené Brown? Welcome to The Curiosity Shop.
1:40 Adam Grant? A show from the Fox Media Podcast Network.
1:47 Brené Brown? Hi, everybody. Welcome to The Curiosity Shop. I'm Brené Brown.
1:51 Adam Grant? And I'm Adam Grant.
1:52 Brené Brown? We're glad you're here. We're here.
1:55 Adam Grant? I'm glad we're here.
1:56 Brené Brown? I'm glad we're here.
1:57 Adam Grant? Minor miracle.
1:58 Brené Brown? I'm shocked we're here.
1:59 Adam Grant? Really surprising.
2:00 Brené Brown? We did it.
2:01 Adam Grant? Well, we're doing it.
2:02 Brené Brown? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's not get too excited. Two things that I think we should talk about today for our first podcast, Made in Voyage. One, how we got here and almost didn't get here.
2:17 Adam Grant? Are you sure we want to go there?
2:18 Brené Brown? I think we should. And
2:23 Brené Brown? if this absolutely goes to hell.
2:27 Brené Brown? What our best predictions are about why it'll go to hell. How about that?
2:31 Adam Grant? I definitely look forward to that one.
2:34 Brené Brown? Yeah, so let's jump in.
2:35 Adam Grant? Okay, before we do that, I want to take a quick moment to thank our launch sponsors. We have SAS, powering better decisions with data and AI. You can learn more at SAS.com, that's S A S dot com.
2:47 Brené Brown? And if you're looking for a partner in design and productivity, you can also check out our other launch sponsor, which is Canva. You can learn more at Canva dot com. I love, I'm self-teaching myself Canva. It's really fun. If you can't find me sometime, it's because I'm trying to make cool things. That's Canva dot com. And thank y'all both for being launch sponsors. That's exciting.
3:11 Adam Grant? We're obviously thrilled to have them on board and you'll get to hear more about them as we go.
3:15 Brené Brown? Yeah, let's do it. So tell the story about how we first encountered each other.
3:22 Adam Grant? Well, I remember meeting in a green room backstage before an event that we were both speaking at. And we probably chatted for five minutes.
3:30 Brené Brown? This was before our desktop?
3:31 Adam Grant? Yeah, yeah, this was a decade ago, probably.
3:34 Brené Brown? Oh, wow, okay, I don't remember.
3:36 Adam Grant? Maybe, no, it was longer. I think it was 2013, 2014.
3:40 Brené Brown? Yeah, I don't remember.
3:41 Adam Grant? I think we were in Arizona and we met backstage or, no, it was a green room. And I think we chatted for five minutes and that was the end of it. And.
3:51 Brené Brown? I clearly left a bad impression because you took me down in your online article. Your article from the New York Times. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. Clearly, that was not a good meeting. This was not a good meeting, folks.
4:01 Adam Grant? It was, I thought the meeting was fine.
4:03 Brené Brown? Okay, so let's talk about how.
4:04 Adam Grant? I actually left it feeling like I was awkward because I felt like I knew who you were and you didn't know who I was.
4:13 Brené Brown? I would be surprised if I didn't know who you were in 2013.
4:15 Adam Grant? I don't know. I just, I just walked in and introduced myself. I don't, I don't know if she knows who I am. And I don't know if I should introduce myself as if she does or doesn't and didn't know what to do with that.
4:26 Brené Brown? So you guys probably, because when I'm in a green room, I'm locked in. And that's probably why I'm locked in, because I'm praying.
4:32 Adam Grant? To whom?
4:35 Brené Brown? God, I am praying. I have a prayer that I say every time before I speak.
4:39 Adam Grant? Before a speech?
4:40 Brené Brown? Before a talk or anything.
4:41 Adam Grant? Really?
4:42 Brené Brown? Oh, yeah.
4:42 Adam Grant? Oh.
4:43 Brené Brown? Yeah.
4:43 Adam Grant? Okay, so I had no idea. So I was I was trampling on your prayer.
4:47 Brené Brown? No, no, no, you weren't trampling. But I'm probably locked in in a green room.
4:51 Adam Grant? Okay.
4:51 Brené Brown? And maybe back then even more so.
4:53 Adam Grant? I believe that.
4:54 Brené Brown? Yeah.
4:55 Adam Grant? But, you know, other than just not being sure how the interaction went, I didn't really think about it.
5:01 Brené Brown? So then let's talk about what happens next.
5:03 Adam Grant? Okay, then I was writing an article about what I consider problematic advice for people at work, which is be yourself.
5:12 Brené Brown? Agreed.
5:13 Adam Grant? And I was looking, well, I wrote the article, basically, just trying to capture some evidence about how people who are too obsessed with being themselves end up making bad impressions and getting worse performance reviews and not getting promoted. And I finished the draft of the article, and my editor said, you need a definition of authenticity. And I started looking up definitions, and you had the best one by far, by far. I mean, nailed it in a sentence. And I thought, this is it. And I thought it was a shout out, like, hey, you know, Brene has done the best work on authenticity. Let me quote her. What I did not do, and I regret having not done it, was read the rest of the work
5:58 Adam Grant? and understand your definition in context, because I think I would have framed the article very differently. But it didn't it didn't cross my mind. I thought it was, hey, Brene has done great work on authenticity. Here's how she defines it. And here's how the advice to be yourself can get you in trouble. And that is not how it came across to you, I think, because I woke up the next morning and my social channels, my email, even some texts, all of it was blowing up saying, Brené Brown just smacked you down. I was like, what? What? I was shocked. You were not happy.
6:36 Brené Brown? But didn't let me let's find it. We should have prepped for this. What is the? What is the? Let's see.
6:44 Adam Grant? You're looking for the title?
6:45 Brené Brown? Yes.
6:45 Adam Grant? I did not write the headline.
6:47 Brené Brown? No, let's go ahead. Go and tell tell folks the title.
6:49 Adam Grant? I think the title was, unless you're Oprah, be yourself is terrible advice.
6:56 Brené Brown? And then, but where was the part? I'm in the LinkedIn.
7:04 Brené Brown? What was the part about me? No, there was, no, no, no, we should, we should look, hold on, let's look. This is the LinkedIn.
7:14 Adam Grant? By the way, we've, we've never really talked about this.
7:16 Brené Brown? No, we've never talked about it. No, I think.
7:18 Adam Grant? Only around it.
7:19 Brené Brown? No, I think what happened was, what year was that?
7:24 Adam Grant? 2016. It's not that one.
7:28 Brené Brown? It's not this one?
7:29 Adam Grant? It's the Oprah one. Go back up.
7:33 Brené Brown? Hold on, we're looking right here.
7:35 Adam Grant? That's it.
7:36 Brené Brown? Yeah.
7:36 Adam Grant? Right there. January 2016.
7:39 Brené Brown? Okay. Yes, yeah, so, so it was a smackdown of authenticity.
7:53 Adam Grant? I didn't mean it for, for it to be a smackdown of authenticity, though, right? I was trying to say the, the be yourself advice as a way of expressing authenticity.
8:04 Brené Brown? But I actually believe, but I actually believe that authenticity, this is, this is such a, this is such a wild thing that we ended up here. We did not plan for this. Then this is, every time we sit down, this happens. Like, you have no idea how many times we've scripted what we're gonna say, and it never works. Here's the thing that's frustrating to me about the perception of my work. Be vulnerable is the takeaway, but no one reads the, the next three sentences, which says vulnerability minus boundaries is just inappropriate disclosure.
8:43 Adam Grant? Right.
8:44 Brené Brown? People read the definition of authenticity, but built into the definition of authenticity is boundaries.
8:49 Adam Grant? Yep.
8:49 Brené Brown? Boundaries. The cost people have, look, I, I, I've worked in unsafe places. Like, literally, my first boss outside, out of my MSW program threw a glass paperweight at me. Like, no, I have worked.
9:05 Adam Grant? Are you serious?
9:05 Brené Brown? Oh, yes, I have worked in really tumultuous, and let me tell you, like, I graduated from high school in 1983.
9:14 Adam Grant? I was two.
9:15 Brené Brown? Yeah. Fuck off.
9:18 Brené Brown? When, for me, sexual harassment was the price of entry for work.
9:25 Adam Grant? I'm so sorry.
9:26 Brené Brown? No, yeah, but it's for most women my age. We, you know, I, the whole idea that I would tell people, you know, without any boundaries, be vulnerable, be, you know, read the rest of it. Don't weaponize the first line if you don't understand the second. I can't fix, I can't fix the fact that people don't read the whole thing and leave with a single message. Any message taken out of context is dangerous.
9:55 Brené Brown? When I was a young academic,
9:59 Brené Brown? I, I was authentic by my definition, which was I was brave. I was boundaried. I trusted my instinct about who to trust with, you know, things that I wanted to share and not share. So the whole thing is that no one talks about the emotional weight of not being authentic. You know, so I, I, I, I think authenticity is a very complex thing that includes being boundaried and building internal systems where you count on yourself intuitively to trust when you can share and what you can share and with whom.
10:41 Adam Grant? And I'm completely on board with that and clearly did not capture that in this short piece where I quoted you out of context.
10:48 Brené Brown? Yeah, and so I think that, so when I read that, probably my ire toward you, is that right? The right word? Yeah, like my-
10:55 Adam Grant? Oh, I think it was stronger than ire.
10:56 Brené Brown? You do?
10:57 Adam Grant? I mean, look at some of the sentences you wrote in your response.
11:01 Brené Brown? Oh, but people complimented us on our, our, our back and forth, right? People were like, wow, this is how more people should argue this way. But I think we debated, I was absolutely pissed because
11:14 Brené Brown? I think you represented a larger wholesale issue with the weaponization of work.
11:21 Brené Brown? That, and it's not just my work. We, you know, we were with Astaire Porel last night because, you know, coming off a South by Southwest event.
11:33 Brené Brown? The hardest, one of the most difficult things about emotional resonance, when you write with emotionally resonant language, is it succeeds in doing the thing the writer wants, which is to internalize it and make it your own. It's emotionally resonant. It finds a compartment in your heart where it can live. It gets cozy. It gets a blanket. It snuggles into the sofa in your heart and thinks, yeah, this speaks to me. This is true. Then you make it your own. And then you regurgitate it through your own lens. And that's why people are like, psychological safety. So you're basically, what Amy Edmiston is telling people is if it doesn't feel comfortable,
12:17 Brené Brown? then it's okay to say you're unsafe. No, she never said that.
12:21 Adam Grant? The opposite, in fact.
12:23 Brené Brown? She's a hardcore performance researcher. Right? And so I think you, and it didn't help that you were a dude.
12:32 Adam Grant? Oh, wait, so I got stereotyped as one of those men?
12:35 Brené Brown? Yes. That you, yes, I think my initial reaction, I don't think I had the language back then.
12:40 Adam Grant? Quantitative social scientist jerk.
12:42 Brené Brown? Yeah, mansplaining my work and taking it out of context. So then I was like, I'm done with you. I was just like, I can't. And God, in a way.
12:56 Adam Grant? It was more than that, wasn't it?
12:58 Brené Brown? No, I don't think so, because I'd never.
13:00 Adam Grant? Because we didn't talk for four years after that.
13:01 Brené Brown? But we had never talked before that.
13:03 Adam Grant? That's true.
13:04 Brené Brown? Yeah, so it's not like we were friends and I broke our friendship.
13:06 Adam Grant? No, but we, I mean, I wrote a pretty strongly worded rebuttal. And then you responded again. And then we just, that was the end of it.
13:16 Brené Brown? Yeah, and I remember somebody, I don't know, it was Seth Godin or someone was like, hey, y'all, there's a desktop on LinkedIn. I was like, oh, please. But, yeah, I just wasn't doing it. But I have to tell you that.
13:34 Brené Brown? It was probably a disproportional response.
13:39 Adam Grant? You think?
13:39 Brené Brown? I'm sorry about that, yeah.
13:40 Adam Grant? Oh, thank you. Well, I'm sorry that I failed to read your definition in context because I would have written really differently about your work and how it actually is the solution to the problem with be yourself advice not part of the problem.
13:54 Brené Brown? Yeah, because I think people who understand my work know that my bottom line is be yourself with people who've earned the right to see yourself. Share your story with people who've earned the right to hear your story.
14:09 Adam Grant? Wait, say that again.
14:11 Brené Brown? Be yourself with people who've earned the right to see yourself, you know, to see you, and share your story with people who've earned the right to hear your story and with people with whom you've built a relationship that can bear the weight of the story. You know, that's like, and it's so, this is really interesting because people, this is so interesting because people also say, wow, you're telling people to take their armor off at work. And I said, no, actually, when we do a Dare to Lead intervention, the reason why a lot of CEOs after the first meeting with me say, I'm not working with you, is if you want us to come and do the work, I'm happy to do that. We're going to start by identifying
14:53 Brené Brown? the people with the least formal, the least amount of formal power and the least amount of proximated power. And then we're going to start with one question, why is armor required or rewarded here? And if you're willing to hear what information we collect from that process, you're a great fit for this work. If you don't want to know what you and other leaders are doing to make armor required and rewarded here, you're not going to like working with me.
15:18 Adam Grant? So powerful.
15:19 Brené Brown? Yeah, so very few people make it through that litmus test because most people are like, and then you can imagine if I'm working with a CEO that says, I want to know.
15:26 Adam Grant? Yeah.
15:27 Brené Brown? Because the armor is not only killing them, it's killing innovation, it's killing trust, and it's killing performance.
15:32 Adam Grant? It's shocking to me that there are leaders who wouldn't want to know.
15:35 Brené Brown? Oh, the majority.
15:36 Adam Grant? I mean, one, that I think long term is a choice to fail.
15:41 Brené Brown? It is a choice to fail, but it is a choice of self-protection and ego over winning.
15:45 Adam Grant? Yeah. And secondly, I mean, I think it's just morally irresponsible.
15:51 Adam Grant? To not care about the impact you have on other people.
15:52 Brené Brown? This is where we go so wrong because I'm like, but isn't the protection of power and privilege morally irresponsible?
15:59 Adam Grant? Yeah, it is.
16:00 Brené Brown? Yeah, so that's where this lives. So I think I was, and I have to say, it was an embryonic moment in my career when this happened, that I was just starting to see people bubbling up, taking the work out of context, and it was at a larger scale than I could whack a mole down. Because at first, I was just responding to every tweet, every everything. No, no, that's not this. You missed this part. No, no, this. And then there it is in the New York Times, you know, and I'm like, shit.
16:32 Adam Grant? Well, I, look, I think, you can say your response was disproportionate, but I'm the one who caused the response in the first place with what I wrote. And being careful in my writing and being respectful of other people's work are core priorities for me. And I'm sorry that I failed to live up to those standards. I think a couple of things are occurring to me as we talk this through. It's strange that we've never talked about this. Like, in full.
17:05 Brené Brown? I think we've never talked about this. We've never, we've walked around it, we've never walked into it.
17:10 Adam Grant? No. And I'm trying to figure out why, which I want to talk about. But I think one, you know, one thing that hit me after I got some distance from your response was, what I should have said, and what I actually think we agree on, is that authenticity without empathy is selfish. That it's not just about saying, well, this is who I am, let me express myself, but also I need to do that in ways that show regard for other people's values and well-being.
17:38 Brené Brown? Yes, I think empathy, I think authenticity without empathy and boundaries fails to be authenticity. And I think authenticity should be in service of connection. So I think there's, it's very difficult in a work perspective, from a work perspective, to be authentic in an environment where conversations about power and identity are not okay.
18:06 Adam Grant? Yeah. Yeah, I think, I mean, it's remarkable how aligned we could have been on that.
18:11 Brené Brown? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:12 Adam Grant? So why have we never talked about this? Because I came out of that thinking...
18:19 Adam Grant? I will never talk to this person again.
18:21 Brené Brown? Same, oh, for sure.
18:23 Adam Grant? Really?
18:23 Brené Brown? By design, yeah, I mean, just, yeah, no.
18:27 Brené Brown? I, I don't know, so for the, over four years, over the course of the four years, several people came to me and said,
18:38 Brené Brown? I know you and Adam had like a real disagreement, it was pretty public. I think you would weirdly get along. And, and it's not that they said, I weirdly think you would get along. They said, I think you would weirdly get along, which we weirdly get along.
18:57 Adam Grant? Sometimes.
18:57 Brené Brown? Yeah, sometimes. I mean, we think we always get along. I mean, there's been hiccups, but not, they're not hiccups, I don't want to, there, there's been moments of frustration and then repair, frustration on both sides.
19:11 Brené Brown? I,
19:15 Brené Brown? I don't know, we, I just wasn't interested because, we've never talked about this before, because I think in the four years that followed the article, this became one of the heaviest and hardest things in my life. This kind of misuse and weaponization of my work.
19:35 Adam Grant? And I was an avatar of that.
19:36 Brené Brown? And you were an ava, you were an early avatar of that, yeah. And so I think I just was like, hmm, and it was coming in, it felt sandwiching for me because on the one side, I got, you know, you're not, you're not understanding what it's like for some people that are not in your position, what it means to be vulnerable. And I said, you know, God. And then on the other side, I remember I got to revise and resubmit on an article that said, you've oversampled, especially black women. And so, yeah, and so it was 48% of one of my samples. But, but I think it was like, because that's who's being targeted right now. And so it's not an over sample, it's a, you're an under stupid.
20:20 Brené Brown? I mean, like, I just had this bad reaction. So I think.
20:26 Brené Brown? I just was disinterested. The hard thing for me that was felt misaligned is I was reading all of your work.
20:36 Adam Grant? I was reading yours too.
20:38 Brené Brown? Yeah, I was reading your work, highlighting your work, challenging myself with your work. I was respecting and appreciating your work. So then I get the call four years later from you. Do you want to talk about that?
20:47 Adam Grant? I don't know.
20:49 Brené Brown? Yeah, just go ahead. You called for, you asked me for a favor.
20:52 Adam Grant? I asked for help. Yeah, I was, well, yeah, I was, I mean, I was reading and learning so much from your work and watching your talks and every, the other thing that happened was everywhere I went, you had spoken.
21:08 Brené Brown? Same.
21:10 Adam Grant? And I kept hearing, I actually, I have a, I have two questions I always ask when I, when I'm either speaking at an event or visiting an organization. One is, what can I do better? The other is, who's the person who's had the most impact? And every single place I went, when I asked, who has most helped your organization or your people? The answer was Brené Brown. And at first, I was like, damn it. I hate that. This is terrible. Exactly. Newman. It was, it was such a Seinfeld moment for me. Newman. And then it happened enough times and I had been internalizing much more of your work and I found myself
21:50 Adam Grant? quoting you, saying, as Brené Brown says, clear is kind. And I think I begrudgingly had to admit that there was value in your work. And I find it really hard to fully separate the art from the artist.
22:04 Brené Brown? Same.
22:05 Adam Grant? I think your values are infused in, in what you create. And so I, I started coming around to the idea, this person has a lot to contribute. She probably has a lot of virtues. And yeah, then I was, during COVID, I was working with a women's sports team and having a hard time getting them to engage with some of the, the, the research and ideas that I thought would help them. And I decided to create a little speaker series, because nobody could go anywhere during, during COVID.
22:37 Brené Brown? Yeah.
22:38 Adam Grant? So I said, let's do this virtually. I'll bring in speakers. Who do you want? And the number one request was Brené Brown.
22:46 Adam Grant? And I thought, what do I have to lose? Worst that happens is she still hates me. And we don't talk. We already don't talk. She probably already hates me. And I was so surprised. I reached out to you and you said yes immediately by email. You responded to an email.
23:02 Brené Brown? I did respond to an email, yeah.
23:04 Adam Grant? And I remember you showing up and just, one, you know, just imparting so much wisdom to the team. And two, making it clear that you wanted to help even somebody you didn't like. Like, who does that?
23:24 Brené Brown? Yeah, because I felt hypocritical because I think you probably, that email caught me right in the middle of reading one of your books. And I think I was talking to my kids about your work, too, because I thought it was really helpful. And so I was just like, this is so, this is just stupid. I don't know, I don't know what we're, I mean, like, like, life is too hard at this point because we were in the middle of COVID. Just stuff was hard. I thought it was really generous to reach out to me. I mean, it's, it's interesting. The first time we did a Dare to Lead intervention was at the Gates Foundation. And we asked, that was the first place we asked this later, this, this group of leaders, this question. And we've since asked over 10,000 leaders.
24:03 Brené Brown? And what is the thing that your direct reports do that build trust for you? Like, what, someone's reporting to you, what's a behavior they engage in? And I, everyone always thinks it's going to be reliability, like, you can dependability or reliability. And the number one thing is always they ask for help. When someone who reports to me asks for help, my trust for them sky rocks, skyrockets. So I think when you asked for help, I kind of felt like, this is, this is, this is, first of all, hypocritical internally. Does that make sense to me?
24:39 Brené Brown? He can't be the avatar for a general frustration I had because I because I am the avatar for so many people's frustration and that's so unfair and hurtful. And so I was like, this is a great opportunity.
24:54 Adam Grant? Wow.
24:55 Brené Brown? Yeah. But we've never talked about this. It's so weird.
24:57 Adam Grant? Well, OK, so a couple of things. One, you're reminding me of a classic paper by Jecker and Landy, 1965. Fact check that later. The paper is about liking a person as a function of doing a favor for them and how when you are asked for help, when you help the person, if you weren't forced or obligated to do it, you come away thinking, well, I must care about them or like them. Otherwise, why in the world was I doing this?
25:22 Brené Brown? God, that's interesting.
25:24 Adam Grant? Obviously, it did not cross my mind. I was just desperate to try to get through to this team when I reached out to you.
25:29 Brené Brown? I have to tell you, that was a that was a tough gig.
25:32 Adam Grant? It was. It was definitely challenging and it was a hail mary pass to you, which you kindly caught.
25:37 Brené Brown? Ran down the field and boom.
25:39 Adam Grant? Touchdown, Brené Brown.
25:42 Brené Brown? No, I didn't actually. I actually experienced that. I didn't care as much of the outcome of how impactful our conversation was. That was not my goal for the interaction. My my goal for the interaction was more repair with you and connection and just kind of build something.
26:01 Adam Grant? Wow.
26:01 Brené Brown? Yeah, because I it wasn't the first time I'd worked with that specific group of people, you know, or at least in individual capacity, and I knew it was going to be tough.
26:10 Adam Grant? Yeah. Well, then that was it was extra generous of you to take it on.
26:13 Brené Brown? No, it was great.
26:14 Adam Grant? Given what you were walking into. But I think it's I remember being unsure at the time. We talked probably for five minutes before we went on the virtual stage.
26:23 Brené Brown? Yeah.
26:24 Adam Grant? And I wasn't sure if I should apologize and try to repair the relationship then or if just.
26:31 Adam Grant? It felt like there wasn't enough time. And I decided instead just to show my genuine appreciation for you being willing to do this.
26:38 Brené Brown? It was great.
26:39 Adam Grant? And help them. And I think, I'm curious now, if I had apologized then, would it have played out differently than just kind of getting to know each other on a different level through working a little together?
26:55 Brené Brown? I think I was very hopeful that this would never come up again. I was just like...
26:59 Adam Grant? You didn't want to talk about it?
27:00 Brené Brown? No, I didn't. I don't think I wanted to talk about it then. I was like, let's just lock in and help this team.
27:04 Adam Grant? You're in task mode.
27:05 Brené Brown? Yeah, I was in task mode. And I was also like, let's just move on. And I don't think we would have, I don't know that we would have, I don't know that it would have been helpful in that. It's almost like me not remembering that I met you in the green room. Like, when I go, I have my list of questions before I do something. Like, you have your list of questions. My questions are, what's a homerun look like? What's the greatest lift that I could do for you right now? If, you know, and sometimes someone will say, if you could make a connection between these two things, it'd be really helpful. If you could do this or this. And then sometimes I have to say, I actually don't believe that's true, so I won't be able to do that next.
27:43 Adam Grant? Yeah. You do not actually want what you think you want.
27:46 Brené Brown? Yeah.
27:46 Adam Grant? Or maybe what you think you need. Let me tell you what I think I could do that might be more helpful.
27:49 Brené Brown? Exactly. And if that's what you need, ooh, I'm not your right person. Like, yeah, so...
27:54 Adam Grant? That's such an interesting Jerry Maguire moment. Like, help me help you.
27:57 Brené Brown? Yeah, help me help you. And zero chance that I'm going to do your bidding for something. And, and yeah, it's not going to work like that.
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29:07 Speaker 05 Are you tired of hearing about business, tech, and finance from the bros? We are the Tiger Sisters, a top business podcast with the Vox Media Podcast Network. Tiger Sisters releases every Monday, and we decode money, power, and love. And who doesn't love all those things? We are the internet's Wall Street and Silicon Valley big sisters. Tune in every Monday for late-night sister talk meets boardroom strategy. Check out Tiger Sisters on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Tiger fam.
29:37 Adam Grant? Okay, so you wanted to move forward.
29:39 Brené Brown? So I just wanted to move forward.
29:40 Adam Grant? That's, okay, that's helpful to know. I felt like it was an elephant in the room, not talking about it. And I think we, I think our next interaction then was months later when you invited me onto your podcast, which was shocked when you did. And I think I probably just said, you know, I regretted the way that I, you know, I captured your work in that article and I, you know, I don't think we aired it, but I just said, you know, I committed to making that right, moving forward. And that was, we haven't talked about it since.
30:14 Brené Brown? I'm going to tell you one thing that I think is weird, that is weirdly surprising about you that I've learned in the last couple of months. I don't think I've ever been, like, I think the shtick that people think about us who know us together or have been working on the podcast is like, I'm the emotions person, you're the data person, I'm the left brain, you're the right brain.
30:40 Adam Grant? Reverse.
30:40 Brené Brown? Yeah. Oh, wait, no, I'm the right brain, you're left brain. Yeah. I'm qualitative, you're quantitative, you know, you're empirical evidence, I'm lived experience, you know, with, you know, empirical rising, because that's just grounded theory. But I will say, one of the things I found really surprising is I don't think I've ever been across from someone. Who has, who, that I have experienced taking more full accountability in a repair situation and issuing a more thoughtful apology than you.
31:13 Adam Grant? Thank you.
31:14 Brené Brown? That has been a very big learning for me about what I could do better.
31:18 Adam Grant? Really?
31:19 Brené Brown? Yeah, and so I think at the top of that podcast, we, I chose not to air it. They actually, they asked me, like, wow, that was so beautiful. Do you want to put this, include this on the podcast? Because we were already recording.
31:32 Adam Grant? Wow.
31:33 Brené Brown? Yeah, and I said, no, it was personal.
31:34 Adam Grant? Do you still have it?
31:36 Brené Brown? I doubt it. I doubt it. I don't know. I don't, I don't know. Do we keep those things? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I doubt it.
31:44 Adam Grant? No, I'm curious to listen to it and learn from it.
31:46 Brené Brown? Yeah, no, I think it was, well, you mean your own apology?
31:49 Adam Grant? Yeah.
31:50 Brené Brown? Oh, I've got one in, another one from you in writing, more recent.
31:54 Adam Grant? Very recent. That was extremely recent.
31:56 Brené Brown? Yeah.
31:56 Adam Grant? Which you have not responded to.
31:58 Brené Brown? Because we did it over the phone.
32:00 Adam Grant? I know, but I wanted to document it, to make it really clear that I understood the mistake I made and I was going to correct it moving forward. And I also wanted you to have it to share with your team because I think I left them feeling a little devalued.
32:15 Brené Brown? But you reached out to them individually and did that?
32:18 Adam Grant? Not all of them.
32:19 Brené Brown? But, okay, well, I didn't-
32:20 Adam Grant? And I didn't even know who was affected.
32:22 Brené Brown? Okay, well, I just want to say that I think your repair and apology, Harriet Lerner, who I did this podcast with on apologizing, she's just one of the greatest mentors and teachers, would be like, damn, y'all, this is, this is a masterclass in repair and apology.
32:39 Adam Grant? Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
32:41 Brené Brown? Where does that come from?
32:43 Adam Grant? I, I think it comes from, it comes from two places. I think, I think I, I grew up in an environment where people didn't know how to repair. And I just, I don't, I don't know.
33:06 Adam Grant? I don't know. Actually, I'm not trying to. I'm trying to make sense of this. I think the short version is, let me. Let me try this again. I think there's something about being a child of divorce that led me to say, I'm gonna be the peacemaker. I'm gonna make sure everyone always gets along. And someone I learned, like, one of my core values is, you know, is kindness and generosity. And you can't always make sure that your behavior lands the way you want it to. And so if you don't get good at righting your wrongs, then you're gonna have a lot of damaged relationships. And so I think that was that was in the background. I think I struggled early on.
33:51 Adam Grant? I really like being right. You know this about me. Yeah. And admitting that I was wrong is it's really hard for me. And when I struggle with something like that, I feel like I have to overcorrect in order to to to build the the skill that I'm trying to build. And so I actually, it's something I started practicing. Allison would give me a hard time. Because, you know, I didn't want to kind of admit that I was wrong in an argument. And then the next day, I would have to very sheepishly come to her and like, do my little Happy Gilmore routine. Do you know this scene? No. OK, so I'd come in and I'd be like, you were right. I was wrong. You're smart.
34:36 Adam Grant? I'm stupid. Oh, no. You're good looking. I'm not attractive. Oh, no. It's a it's a scene right out of Happy Gilmore. And we'd both start cracking up. Yeah. And I had to do that a bunch of times to get used to saying, you were right, I was wrong. And being OK with that. I'm still I can I can be a good person and admit that I did a bad thing. I can be a smart person still and admit that I got something wrong. Like, I don't have to get an A plus on everything. That was a that was a hard thing for me to learn. And once I learned it, I felt like this is something I have to get good at if I care about people and I care about relationships.
35:14 Adam Grant? You're not a therapist, but thank you for inviting me to your...
35:19 Brené Brown? No, I am definitely not. Another thing people get wrong about me, for sure, I have a therapist. Two couples and individual.
35:29 Brené Brown? I'm just blown away by
35:34 Brené Brown? the application of your
35:39 Brené Brown? rigor.
35:43 Brené Brown? The same application of your rigor around organizational and behavioral science to becoming a better person. And I think I just have like a big learning, which happens every time we talk about hard things, I think. Which is, I, it's not hard for me to be wrong. At all.
36:02 Adam Grant? Oh, I want to know more about how you got to that.
36:04 Brené Brown? I don't think I repair and apologize as well as you do. Because like I'm going to get better at that. I'm going to work on that because
36:17 Brené Brown? it's an interesting experience. I'm like, I am wrong. That's so great. Like I take a lot of, like I take a lot of comfort in knowing
36:27 Brené Brown? that I'm comfortable being wrong. Like I like the fact, I like that about me. Like I can own stuff very quickly. But I think sometimes I don't look at the damage that being wrong did.
36:43 Adam Grant? Why not?
36:45 Brené Brown? Maybe because that's the feeling part of it that I don't like. And so I can definitely cognitively be like, oh, I was so wrong. You're right. But I apologize. But your repairs are very specific.
37:02 Brené Brown? They feel, they don't let, they don't let you or me off the hook in terms of accepting them. You name very much.
37:11 Brené Brown? I apologize for this. I'm wondering if this left people feeling like this. That was not my intention. There was a gap between my intention and my impact. I see that. I apologize for it. I own it. I will course correct.
37:23 Adam Grant? I mean, I read the research on how to make amends and then
37:26 Brené Brown? Yeah, I know. This is what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. Like, I just feel like everybody in the room like masterclass in apologizing and repair. Everybody's like, wow. Yeah, it's impressive. So, thank you.
37:38 Adam Grant? Thank you for that. I think it's, okay, so I want to go back to authenticity for a second.
37:46 Brené Brown? Yeah.
37:47 Adam Grant? You said earlier, I was just thinking about this, actually, in the context of apologizing. I think when people put on armor, I think there are workplaces and families where people can't apologize because apologizing comes across as weakness.
38:03 Brené Brown? Yeah, for sure. My family.
38:05 Adam Grant? And
38:06 Brené Brown? Yeah.
38:06 Adam Grant? Yeah. And I just look at that and I think if you have wronged somebody or hurt someone or even done something that just had an impact that was different than what you meant, refusing to apologize is not a sign of strength. It's a sign of narcissism.
38:25 Brené Brown? It's so interesting how we, I think one thing we share in common is I do think about the data when I think about who I want to be. Like, I do think about research when I think about.
38:37 Adam Grant? Yeah.
38:37 Brené Brown? And so you do too, obviously. Yeah. I do, I don't know that it's a form, I don't know that I agree with the narcissism part. I think that it can be shame to apologize because I think when you're raised in a shame-bound family, that there's no difference between I did something wrong and I am wrong.
39:09 Adam Grant? Yes.
39:10 Brené Brown? I'm not, I'm a bad person, not I did a bad thing.
39:13 Adam Grant? So you never get the adaptive effects of guilt?
39:16 Brené Brown? You don't get the adaptive effects of I am a good person who made a choice that was hurtful to other people. I need to repair and make a different choice moving forward. You get a, I am not a good person. I am not worthy of love and belonging. So I think for a lot of people, which is interesting, in shame-bound families, I think there, what the research shows us is there are more disconnections and disruptions and ruptures and less apologizing for them.
39:43 Adam Grant? Wow.
39:44 Brené Brown? So I think, and I think in my family, again, fifth-generation Texan, you know.
39:52 Adam Grant? Culture of honor.
39:53 Brené Brown? Culture, culture of honor and shame.
39:56 Adam Grant? Yeah, well, I think, I think of shame as the flip side.
39:58 Brené Brown? As the flip side of, yeah, yeah. It's, it's actually not the flip side of honor. Shame and honor live on the same side of the coin. I, I, I think-
40:05 Adam Grant? Because they're both excessively image focused?
40:08 Brené Brown? Managing self-perception.
40:10 Adam Grant? Yeah.
40:10 Brené Brown? And duty over commitment.
40:14 Adam Grant? Wow.
40:14 Brené Brown? Yeah, I mean, I think in shame-bound families, there's a duty to not talk about certain things. There's a duty of, there's duty and not, and duty is very different than commitment.
40:25 Adam Grant? Uh, because duty is externally imposed and pressured.
40:29 Brené Brown? Yes.
40:29 Adam Grant? And commitment is internally chosen and intrinsic?
40:32 Brené Brown? Yes, exactly. And duty, the lot, and in duty, if you make a mistake, it's not a failure of choice or behavior. It's a failure of your humanity.
40:44 Adam Grant? Wow.
40:44 Brené Brown? Yeah.
40:45 Adam Grant? Okay, so connect this back to authenticity now. You were saying earlier that we don't talk enough about the price people pay for having to not bring their true selves to work or to home.
40:58 Brené Brown? Well, yeah, I think compartment, I mean, I think there's a, a lot of interesting research on, you know, switching, code switching. I think there's a lot of really important work done in that area already.
41:11 Adam Grant? Yeah.
41:11 Brené Brown? But the price, unfortunately, is not just emotional and cognitive, the physical price of that kind of, of that kind of having to be different people all the time is so high.
41:29 Adam Grant? Well, I, I was thinking in particular about Patricia Hewland's work on facades of conformity and how when, when you feel like you have to put on a mask in order to succeed professionally, you see then higher rates of burnout. You see people becoming alienated from themselves. You see extreme stress. I was starting to think that's what happens in shame-bound families, too.
41:53 Brené Brown? Oh, for sure.
41:54 Adam Grant? You go to Thanksgiving dinner and you have to, you're, you're basically an actor playing a role. And what toll does that take?
42:03 Brené Brown? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really, that's why I think, I was gonna try to pull up. Let me pull up and see what the definition, let's see.
42:13 Brené Brown? Oh God, I'm scared to look at it, y'all. I may not agree with my own definition anymore. Do you ever feel like that?
42:19 Adam Grant? Yes, and then, and then I think, wait a minute. This is a great learning opportunity because
42:25 Brené Brown? Oh, do you?
42:25 Adam Grant? Yeah, I think about Danny Kahneman all the time, who, who said to me, when I realize I was wrong, it means I am now less wrong than I was before. I've learned something. Great.
42:37 Brené Brown? I like that. I think, oh shit. That's what I think.
42:42 Brené Brown? Let's see.
42:45 Adam Grant? And we, we need to get to our, what, what, what does this look like if it goes wrong?
42:50 Brené Brown? Yeah.
42:50 Adam Grant? Do we have time for that?
42:52 Brené Brown? Should we do that on the next?
42:53 Adam Grant? Say that in episode, for episode two?
42:54 Brené Brown? Yeah, because I really want to go through. So we are both big fans of
42:58 Adam Grant? Wait, don't do it now. Because if we're gonna do it in episode two,
43:00 Brené Brown? Okay, let's do it. Okay.
43:03 Brené Brown? I can't even find the definition, which is really
43:06 Adam Grant? We can edit that out.
43:07 Brené Brown? Yeah.
43:11 Brené Brown? Oh, yeah. No, it's being, it's being one's true self and setting boundaries to protect one's true self. So like, I think it's, it's both the courage to be real, letting go of perfectionism. It's a daily practice. It's a, it's a collection of choices. So I think it's still what I think.
43:30 Brené Brown? You're rarely gonna find me not having boundaries attached to some definition.
43:35 Adam Grant? I think that's so important.
43:36 Brené Brown? Yeah, but it's usually left out.
43:38 Adam Grant? It is, and I left it out. My mistake.
43:40 Brené Brown? But I think we do too sometimes in our own work.
43:44 Adam Grant? Well, I mean, it's, it's hard to communicate in shorthand. Right?
43:48 Brené Brown? It is.
43:48 Adam Grant? Capturing all the nuance in a few words is, is always a challenge. But
43:53 Brené Brown? It's really interesting that you say that because we have a writer, like when we do podcasts, that, why are you laughing already?
44:02 Adam Grant? Just keep going.
44:02 Brené Brown? Yeah. That we have to approve all clips.
44:08 Brené Brown? Because right before I went off social media for almost a year, if I saw myself come up in a feed, in my own feed, which is a nightmare. Do you ever see yourself come up when you're scrolling? And you're like, shit.
44:18 Adam Grant? Oh, why, why am I there?
44:19 Brené Brown? Yeah, why am I there? But I think the thing I hated about it the most is how people were clipping me to seem so certain.
44:28 Adam Grant? And eliminating all the pauses and all of the
44:31 Brené Brown? All the complexity. They had asked me a question like, you know, does the blue jay call resemble the call of a red bird? And I'd be like, it's a really good question. I'm not sure. In my experience, which is limited, they're very different. And then the answer would be like, does the blue jay? And they're very different. Like, and I was like, what about the part where I was like, I'm unsure, you know, like, I don't know. And then the part behind it that says, but I don't really, I'm not a birder. So you should really ask a birder. Like,
45:05 Adam Grant? And that's all edited out.
45:07 Brené Brown? Ah, sucks. That's why I just went off social media because I was like, I don't even trust me in these things. The advice, first of all, I hate giving advice, but just what is a research show, what am I learning? What's worked in my life? I will share. But like,
45:24 Brené Brown? don't trust what's coming out of my mouth when it's been clipped like that.
45:30 Adam Grant? Okay, so no one should clip the curiosity shop out of context?
45:33 Brené Brown? No, I mean, I hope you don't. But I mean, you're going to. What do you do?
45:38 Adam Grant? I think you hope that people will engage with the long form and that the the short form is it's a teaser. It's not the whole, it's not the whole concept. Not the whole idea.
45:50 Brené Brown? Yeah, it's not even the teaser. It's like a, I don't know. It's, yeah, I mean,
45:58 Adam Grant? It's dessert, but don't skip the meal.
45:59 Brené Brown? Yeah, maybe. Or it's part, it's like, it's the plate that holds the ideas that you've clipped the plate, but not shared the real ideas that are on the plate. That's dumb.
46:12 Adam Grant? Yeah. But I also, I also think we have a responsibility to take complex research and distill it in a way where people can, you know, in short time, take an idea and say, oh, I never thought about that. Let me now see if, you know, if that leads to a change in my experience, my choices, my behaviors.
46:33 Brené Brown? I disagree.
46:33 Adam Grant? I'm all for that. Really?
46:34 Brené Brown? Yes. Well, I think we have the, I think we have a harder job. Which is to communicate complexity through story and analogy and metaphor that makes it understandable without reducing its complexity.
46:52 Adam Grant? Oliver Wendell Holmes. You know, this is one of my favorite quotes, right? Okay, so Holmes said something to the effect of, for the, he said, let me make sure I capture this right. He said something like, well, you can wait, no, fact check me after.
47:06 Brené Brown? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
47:06 Adam Grant? Okay, the way I remember the quote is, he said, "For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, I would give anything."
47:20 Brené Brown? I think that's exactly right. Here it is right here.
47:22 Adam Grant? What does it say?
47:24 Brené Brown? Okay, "For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that, I would give you anything I have."
47:37 Adam Grant? Pretty close. Okay, so.
47:39 Brené Brown? What does that mean?
47:40 Adam Grant? Well, I think about that as the difference.
47:41 Brené Brown? For simplicity, on this side of complexity.
47:46 Adam Grant? You're gonna draw it, aren't you?
47:47 Brené Brown? No, I'm thinking about that in my mind, but yeah.
47:50 Adam Grant? Well, I think that, for me, the distinction there is there's a difference between ignorant simplicity and elegant simplicity.
47:56 Brené Brown? Oh, yeah.
47:57 Adam Grant? Ignorant simplicity is naive and it's missing critical information. Elegant simplicity is capturing the nuance in few words or in a really well-drawn two-by-two diagram. It is really hard, but when you do it, it's really sticky.
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50:01 Brené Brown? Okay, I'm gonna share, I'm gonna share one of my favorite quotes. We can end here and we can take our postmortem to another episode, because I think we should do it. I think it's interesting. This is one of my favorite quotes, and this is weird. I'm looking at it because I have it on a screenshot. If I could communicate with you in screenshots, that would be, okay, these are all haircuts, and they're all the exact same haircuts.
50:22 Adam Grant? Are you picking on my hair?
50:23 Brené Brown? No. Oh, my god, no. That's funny, though. You got a good noggin. Can I say that? Am I allowed to say that?
50:30 Adam Grant? I don't know. Are you?
50:31 Brené Brown? I don't know. I think you have a nice noggin.
50:32 Adam Grant? Well, thank you.
50:34 Brené Brown? Okay, I don't know where this quote is.
50:35 Adam Grant? I prefer the apology compliment, for the record. As a bad compliment acceptor.
50:40 Brené Brown? You are the worst.
50:42 Adam Grant? I'm horrible at that.
50:43 Brené Brown? Yeah.
50:43 Adam Grant? I think I did okay today, though, on it.
50:45 Brené Brown? You did. I was trying to find this-
50:46 Adam Grant? Fight yourself, deprecate.
50:49 Brené Brown? No, you didn't.
50:51 Adam Grant? That's growth. I'll take it.
50:52 Brené Brown? Yeah, and I actually, that's, I love it when you do that. I can't find my fun quote, but there, mostly I just have like, my kids playing, oh, wait, I can read this one to you, but it's about the feast of Mary, mother of the church, in today's gospel reading. I will not share that.
51:06 Adam Grant? That's not gonna land for me.
51:07 Brené Brown? Yeah, okay.
51:08 Adam Grant? Okay, wait, so we're gonna, we need to go to our, our closing questions.
51:12 Brené Brown? I really am looking for my quote. Give me two seconds. There are me and Steve at prom. Um, I can't, and I don't even care, like, we don't even have to cut this, because this is what real life looks like, but I don't know where this quote is, but I'm gonna say it, maybe you can, you'll probably know it from memory, it's so irritating. It's a quote by a German philosopher that talks about the reason that complex simplicity is so rare, is because it's mostly grossly misunderstood and requires some information to get. Like, like, I, I'm gonna find it and put in the show notes, but like, this-
51:50 Adam Grant? Please do. I, I, by the way, I love the way you just reframed that as, as complex simplicity. That's a great paradox.
51:58 Brené Brown? But complex simplicity is why metaphor and story and analogy, to say, take something complex and then put it in a dimension that people understand.
52:06 Adam Grant? And poetry, too. And, this is why we're doing the show. The Curiosity Shop is all about trying to reach complex simplicity, in a world that wants easy answers and quick fixes and consumes way too much snake oil.
52:26 Brené Brown? And my God, we should leave it there. We should thank Canva, and we should thank SaaS for being, um, kind of launch partner and sponsors with us. We're grateful for that. Um, okay, so, this is exactly how this shit's going down. We have an agenda, and we get on a rabbit trail of research and, but this is a good conversation. I really appreciated it, and I do really appreciate, um, your commitment to being good at repair and apology. I can say that it's had an impact on me.
52:56 Adam Grant? Oh, well, thank you.
52:57 Brené Brown? Not just on the receiving end of it, but-
53:01 Brené Brown? Getting better at doing it myself.
53:03 Adam Grant? Well, but that only happens because I've started to absorb some of your willingness to rumble and have difficult conversations that I was too much of a chicken to have for a lot of my life. And I just don't want to be that person anymore.
53:17 Brené Brown? Yeah, same. I'll work on it with you. Pinky.
53:19 Adam Grant? Thank you.
53:20 Brené Brown? Oh, like he goes for the fist bump, I go for the pinky, promise. All right. First episode in the can. What do we think?
53:27 Adam Grant? We did it. I don't know. I think we should do our zero to 10 rating and give each other a note on how we can do better next time.
53:33 Brené Brown? Okay.
53:36 Adam Grant? Now, the zero to 10 is gonna seem too.
53:37 Brené Brown? Yeah.
53:38 Adam Grant? No.
53:39 Brené Brown? No, it's not good as zero to 10.
53:40 Adam Grant? What's something I and we can do better next time?
53:44 Brené Brown? I don't know how to use this.
53:46 Adam Grant? I don't either. That's why I didn't bring one.
53:48 Brené Brown? I don't know how to use this, but I want to be able to look up things and get my notes. But maybe that's just like my magical thinking that that's what I want to do. But I do want to use it. But right now, we're just staring at a picture of Hannah Waddingham because I really like her hair. And I was wondering what skin products she was using. So this is not what's supposed to be up here.
54:06 Adam Grant? Focus, Brene, focus.
54:07 Brené Brown? I know, I can't, I can't. Okay, what was your surprise? Okay, so this really is a surprise question, and I have mixed feelings about it already.
54:16 Adam Grant? I can tell.
54:17 Brené Brown? Yeah.
54:18 Adam Grant? Well, you know, I was just thinking about how we got here.
54:19 Brené Brown? Okay.
54:20 Adam Grant? The preview, I guess, is we got here by disagreeing a lot.
54:24 Brené Brown? Yes.
54:25 Adam Grant? And so I was curious about what you think we'll never agree on.
54:34 Brené Brown? What do I think we will never agree on?
54:42 Brené Brown? Every time I have something that I don't think we're gonna agree on, I think we end up agreeing to some, to some degree. But I, I wonder if return to work.
54:58 Brené Brown? But under return to work is I'm wondering if we'll ever agree. Oh, I think there's a lot of things we're never gonna agree on. Okay. I wonder if under some of the things that we'll never agree on will be fundamentally the conflict between.
55:23 Brené Brown? Research and lived experience that
55:32 Brené Brown? I
55:35 Brené Brown? I think so many constructs and ideas and theories and strategies that come out of research, there obviously it's important. I think research is important. I wouldn't be here.
55:45 Adam Grant? Research professor who?
55:46 Brené Brown? Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. But there is, I wonder if we'll agree upon whose responsibility it is to fill the gap between
55:56 Brené Brown? data and theory and then how that shit actually works out on the ground, like the gap between
56:05 Brené Brown? the idea and the practical reality.
56:09 Adam Grant? We might never agree on that.
56:11 Brené Brown? Yeah.
56:11 Adam Grant? I think that's right.
56:12 Brené Brown? Yeah, I think we'll never agree on it because I think
56:17 Brené Brown? we'll get into a return to work some, we'll do an episode on return to work because I think what where I get stuck is scholars who study it and in order to study it and really have meaning, you have to have some controlled variables. Say, oh, you don't need to be back at work. If productive productivity is fine, blah, blah, blah. But then you have like Tim Cook, who runs a company at a what trillion dollar valuation, who I'm pretty sure knows what he's doing in terms of a creative company and was first to come out and say, everybody back to work. And so there's a conflict between sometimes I think between research and lived experience that I wonder if we'll ever get there.
56:58 Adam Grant? I will always trust the evidence over experience.
57:01 Brené Brown? I
57:02 Adam Grant? If I have to choose.
57:03 Brené Brown? Right. Um, I will always question where the experience or where the research stops being helpful because that's not people's lived experience. And then I don't think I'll attack the research, but I'll say
57:19 Brené Brown? it's hard. I think in our line of work
57:24 Brené Brown? where I don't know, I think it's hard. I think, well, I think this will be a place of struggle.
57:28 Adam Grant? I think so too.
57:29 Brené Brown? Yeah. What, what do you think?
57:30 Adam Grant? Well, I, I thought of two.
57:32 Brené Brown? Okay.
57:33 Adam Grant? One is text versus email.
57:36 Brené Brown? Oh, you're just wrong.
57:37 Adam Grant? No. Email is better than text. It's asynchronous. You can do it on your own time.
57:46 Adam Grant? You can file things away.
57:49 Adam Grant? Texts are just never ending and they grab your attention and they take control of your life.
57:55 Brené Brown? We don't text the same then, maybe.
57:57 Adam Grant? Maybe not.
57:58 Brené Brown? Yeah.
58:01 Brené Brown? Nothing, okay, so here's this. Nothing comes in to my text. Rarely do things come into my texts that are not important. Email, I'm bombarded, 90% of the email, I have to filter to find you.
58:17 Brené Brown? Like, I have to filter to find you. And so, and I get overwhelmed by it. And
58:26 Brené Brown? I guess maybe I also don't share my phone number very much with people. So if you're not like immediate in my life, you don't have my phone number.
58:36 Adam Grant? I don't either.
58:37 Brené Brown? But why don't you like, I love texting, we text all the time, you hate it?
58:40 Adam Grant? No, I mean, I don't hate texting with you. But we're actually having conversations about this show and learning from each other, right?
58:47 Brené Brown? Yeah.
58:48 Adam Grant? I think for me, most of the communication I have with other people would be so much easier to do by email. Because I can sit down and do it when it's convenient and then file it away and know where it is. Email is organized. I know exactly how many tasks I have to do. Text? Just, it's just, it's a mess.
59:10 Adam Grant? I hate texting.
59:11 Brené Brown? God.
59:11 Adam Grant? Don't ever text me.
59:12 Brené Brown? No, that's funny, because we text all the time. Okay, what's the other thing?
59:15 Adam Grant? Okay, the other thing is much, much bigger. Faith.
59:19 Brené Brown? Faith?
59:19 Adam Grant? Faith.
59:21 Brené Brown? I don't, I don't, we've never talked about this before.
59:23 Adam Grant? No, we haven't, but you listed it. When I asked you what your two core values were, you said faith and courage.
59:28 Brené Brown? Yeah.
59:29 Adam Grant? And I was like, oh, we are not going to agree on this one.
59:32 Brené Brown? Why?
59:33 Adam Grant? I don't believe in anything that can't be proven. But I also don't disbelieve in anything that can't be disproven.
59:41 Brené Brown? Okay, I don't believe in anything that can't be proven, okay? And I don't...
59:48 Adam Grant? Disbelieve in anything that can't be disproven.
59:53 Brené Brown? Oh, yeah, we'll disagree on that.
59:55 Adam Grant? Big time, right?
59:56 Brené Brown? Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. I, um, if it's a mystery that surpasses all human understanding, I'm for it.
1:00:06 Adam Grant? I am for being open to the possibility, but never having faith in it.
1:00:12 Brené Brown? Oh, yeah, no, yeah, we won't, we won't agree on that, but I think that's OK. Like, yeah, I think that's great.
1:00:19 Brené Brown? Yes.
1:00:22 Adam Grant? So I think it's a minor miracle that we've gotten to a place where we can be OK about disagreeing.
1:00:26 Brené Brown? Do you believe in miracles?
1:00:27 Adam Grant? No. Definitely not. Not a chance. You, you're just baiting me now.
1:00:34 Brené Brown? No, no. You all tried and did.
1:00:36 Adam Grant? I did.
1:00:37 Brené Brown? It wasn't complicated.
1:00:38 Adam Grant? No, that's fair.
1:00:39 Brené Brown? OK.
1:00:39 Adam Grant? But I do think, I mean, we, we started out not being OK with disagreeing at all, I think.
1:00:47 Brené Brown? Well, I was OK with disagreeing with you because you were wrong.
1:00:52 Brené Brown? What are you, what's something you think we can do better?
1:00:54 Adam Grant? I think, I know, I really enjoyed the, I, I love how free form our riffing is.
1:01:01 Brené Brown? Same.
1:01:02 Adam Grant? I, I always come away with new ideas and, you know, I think one thing we can do more of, this isn't a better yet, but one thing we can do more of is I found myself smiling every time you said, I don't agree with that. And that is, we've come a long way from, I was so pissed off when you wrote that, that piece.
1:01:20 Brené Brown? Yeah, yeah.
1:01:20 Adam Grant? I, I was shaking and I, you know, I rarely emote. It was, it was a, it was an unusual experience for me. And so to be at a place now where you can say, I disagree.
1:01:30 Brené Brown? Yeah.
1:01:30 Adam Grant? And I'm not bothered and I'm actually excited to learn and also, you know, to debate it a little bit. I love that. I think we, we can probably find a little bit more attention intellectually, no?
1:01:41 Brené Brown? I don't think we should look for it.
1:01:43 Adam Grant? OK.
1:01:43 Brené Brown? But.
1:01:44 Adam Grant? We, I mean, we can have meta attention around that.
1:01:48 Brené Brown? I think.
1:01:53 Brené Brown? This is such a great way to wrap it up. I think if we're both authentically who we are.
1:01:59 Adam Grant? Have I earned the right to be authentic?
1:02:00 Brené Brown? Yes, you have.
1:02:01 Adam Grant? Have you earned the right to see my authenticity?
1:02:02 Brené Brown? Yeah, I think I have.
1:02:04 Adam Grant? Six years ago, we were not that now.
1:02:07 Brené Brown? But I think if we're both just ourselves here, the tension is going to be organic.
1:02:12 Adam Grant? Yeah, that's right.
1:02:13 Brené Brown? Because we just don't see the world the same way.
1:02:15 Adam Grant? Nope.
1:02:15 Brené Brown? But we see the same world, which is weird.
1:02:18 Adam Grant? And value the same thing.
1:02:20 Brené Brown? And we value, yeah, mostly. Yeah, I think so. Let's do it. Welcome. We're glad you're here. Come back. We'll still be on our first agenda from Podcast One by the end of the season.
1:02:31 Adam Grant? Probably.
1:02:33 Brené Brown? Fun. Thank you.
1:02:34 Adam Grant? Thank you.
1:02:36 Brené 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.
1:02:46 Adam Grant? We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.
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