Mission vs. Ego: The Dangers of Narcissistic Leadership

This week, Brené and Adam are live at SXSW! They explore why so many people are vulnerable to narcissistic leaders. The conversation covers the conditions that breed narcissistic leadership, the roles of shame and fear, and how to survive a narcissistic boss, and what it means to lead with mission over ego. You can find The Curiosity Shop on YouTube and Instagram (@thecuriosityshop). Chapters: 0:00 - Introduction 3:14 - Why People Are Vulnerable to Narcissistic Leaders 12:21 - Shame-Based Fear 18:04 - Do We Think About Emotions Wrong? 19:21 - Undue Credit and the Narcissistic Leader 26:00 - Mission Over Ego 29:52 - How to Manage a Narcissistic Boss 39:18 - Anxiety as a Path to Narcissism 47:45 - Judging Impairs Judgement 1:02:20 - Closing Show Notes: Adam Grant, Why We Fall for Narcissistic Leaders, Starting in Grade School, NYT 2025. O'Reilly et al. 2001 When 'Me' Trumps 'We': Narcissistic Leaders and the Cultures They Create, 2021. Brené Brown, "Shame shields" in The Dare to Lead Glossary: Key Language skills, tools, and practices. (pg. 15-16) Bagozzi et al. 2003 (A study on cross-cultural differences in reaction to shame) Brené Brown, Dan Pink on The Power of Regret, Dare to Lead, 2022 We're The Millers (Trailer) 2013, Awkward Roadtrip Moments: No Ragrets George Saunders, "Failures of Kindness", Convocation Speech, 2013 Emily Grijalva et al. 2020 (A study of the impact of narcissim on NBA team performance) How Brené Brown and Lumen CEO Kate Johnson Sparked This Telecom Comeback, WSJ Leadership Institute, 2025 (11:25) Adam Grant, Unless You're Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice - Adam Grant 2016 NYT My response to Adam Grant’s New York Times Op/ED: Unless You're Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice - Brené Brown LinkedIn 2016 Watts et al, 2014 (A study of grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism in U. S. Presidents) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:02Speaker 00

  I'm Ina 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 Khloe 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 Conde Nast cafeteria. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Hey, everybody. It's Sue Bird. I'm back this week with a brand new episode of Bird's Eye View. I'm joined by Emmy-winning basketball analyst, Lachaina Robinson, to discuss the themes that defined the 2026 WNBA season and her commitment to uplifting the next generation of women in sports broadcasting. But first, Lachaina and I break down the wild momentum swings that have made Dishar's WNBA Finals an absolute fight. So check out Bird's Eye View on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  Welcome to The Curiosity Shop.

• 1:08Adam Grant?

  A show from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  This episode was filmed live in Austin, Texas, at South by Southwest on March 15th. Let's jump in.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  Hey.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  How's it going?

• 1:37Speaker 00

  OK, y'all want to hear something fun?

• 1:40Speaker 00

  This is not really a talk.

• 1:43Adam Grant?

  See, you all are going to be really disappointed.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, this isn't really a talk. We're actually officially announcing a new podcast right now. Yes.

• 1:54Adam Grant?

  Can't believe we're doing a podcast together.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  I know. It's cra-. Hashtag same.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  I'm excited.

• 2:03Adam Grant?

  The excitement is mutual. But I feel like it's a little unfair because we're on your home court here in Texas.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  Let's go. Where are my longhorns? Let's go.

• 2:13Adam Grant?

  Not to get competitive.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  No, just to win.

• 2:18Brené Brown?

  Okay, we have an interesting conversation for you today. We're gonna talk about why we are so vulnerable to narcissistic leaders.

• 2:31Adam Grant?

  Wait, "we"? "We"? I don't follow narcissists, do you?

• 2:35Brené Brown?

  Um, no, but I think the collective "we." Like, I think people in general can, we can be somewhat vulnerable to it because it, when we're scared and uncertain, the traits that ladder up to that kind of, that type of leadership can, at first blush, seem comforting before they turn into catastrophic. But they can seem, I think, at first blush. So you wrote an op-ed. Tell us about your op-ed. I thought it was really interesting.

• 3:08Adam Grant?

  Oh, well, thank you. I, um, I have to, I have to think through whether I agree with everything I wrote in or not. But the, the place I started was, I was thinking about Greek mythology. And we all know the myth of Narcissus, who falls in love with his own image, and then he withers away. And I was just struck by the fact that that was what happened in ancient Greece, but in modern America, he ends up, and he sort of lands in the corner office and maybe occasionally even in the Oval Office.

• 3:38Brené Brown?

  Every now and then.

• 3:40Adam Grant?

  And there's something wrong with that picture. And I wanted to try to understand it. And you have been studying this your whole career.

• 3:48Brené Brown?

  Well, I haven't, well, one thing I want to say, and this is really important for folks watching or listening, and for those of you in the room. I'm a social worker, and this is where it gets really important to say this out loud. I'm a social worker. Adam's a psychologist. We are not talking about diagnostic, diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. We're talking about patterns that we've observed in leadership that share some things in common, that very much align with some of the traits that we can see in narcissism. So I want to be really careful about that because we're not talking, we're not, neither one of us are clinicians, so we're not talking about the clinical disorder. We're talking about a pattern of leadership.

• 4:33Brené Brown?

  When we started throwing around the word, "Oh, she's such a narcissist, he's a narcissist," every podcast was, you know, "Were you raised by, you know, a narcissist?" And it made me, it made me nuts because when I looked at it through the lens of vulnerability and what I study, what I saw, or what I still see is those traits are, what I would say, are the shame-based fear of being ordinary.

• 5:04Brené Brown?

  So, have to say it again, I like that. Um, so-

• 5:07Adam Grant?

  Someone's taking my job here, thank you for that.

• 5:10Brené Brown?

  You can come with every-

• 5:11Adam Grant?

  Yeah, Brene, can you say that again?

• 5:12Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 5:13Adam Grant?

  That was a really insightful observation, I want to hear it twice, so it lands.

• 5:18Brené Brown?

  We're taking you everywhere we go out there.

• 5:21Brené Brown?

  Through a vulnerability lens, I think narcissism is the shame-based fear of being ordinary. And what's interesting and scary about that, that I want to get into with you, is in actually psychoanalytic clinical work, there's a thing called, when they, when they write and people theorize around narcissism, the terror of ordinariness. A sheer terror of being ordinary. How does that fit, just for those of you who don't know our work well, we spend 90% of our time in organizations, working with C-suites and senior leaders, so we see a lot of firsthand kind of leadership traits.

• 6:06Brené Brown?

  So, how does that fear of being ordinary fit for what you see?

• 6:09Adam Grant?

  Well, first of all, Brene, everyone knows your work well, so-

• 6:12Brené Brown?

  Well, that's not true.

• 6:13Adam Grant?

  No, no explainer needed. But, to weigh in on your question, I think, you know, when you were, when you were talking about the shame-based fear of being ordinary, I would say also of appearing ordinary, because it's, it's image, not just ego. And-

• 6:28Brené Brown?

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 6:31Brené Brown?

  It's not just the fear of being ordinary, it's the fear of appearing ordinary, because it's not just ego, which is the fear of being ordinary, it's image.

• 6:42Adam Grant?

  I don't want other people to think that I'm not special.

• 6:44Brené Brown?

  Okay, yeah, that's huge.

• 6:45Adam Grant?

  I'm gonna miss their validation then, and I'm gonna miss out on the sense of superiority that I want, that I seek through claiming power and seizing status. So, when you describe that, I start thinking about a whole body of research in psychology on narcissism as part of the heart of bullying. And I, I think everybody, how many people were bullied in the audience growing up?

• 7:08Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 7:09Adam Grant?

  I mean, no one cheers for that, by the way.

• 7:11Brené Brown?

  No.

• 7:11Adam Grant?

  You ask other questions, people are like, woo, yeah, me.

• 7:14Brené Brown?

  No, people.

• 7:14Adam Grant?

  How many people are bullied, it gets really quiet, eh, I guess I was. I was, and I remember my mom saying, you know, they just feel bad about themselves, and they're trying to feel better about themselves by putting you down. And I got to college, I started studying psychology, I dove into some of the research on that, and I'm sorry, Mom, but you were wrong. It turns out that narcissists do not suffer from low self-esteem. They suffer from high but unstable self-esteem. They have an inflated view of how great they are, but it's fragile. It's like a balloon that could puncture at any slight. And I think that seems really, that seems so complimentary to the shame-based fear

• 7:57Adam Grant?

  of being ordinary is, like, I have this desire to see myself as great and important and unique, but maybe I know deep down that I'm not, and I'm extra sensitive to any signal that calls into question that fragile view of myself. Discuss, please.

• 8:21Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I'm taking it back because I don't know what mental picture you have in your head. I have several political pictures in my head. I have a full-on frickin' Mount Rushmore of narcissistic leadership in my head. One thing I would say is, I wrote this note in preparing for today. While clinicians might ask, does this meet the criteria for a narcissistic personality disorder, I think you and I, check this out, yes or no? You and I are saying, does this pattern of leadership reliably corrode trust, accountability, and shared reality inside of a system?

• 9:04Brené Brown?

  Like, that's what we're looking for in the leadership world, right? So here are the things I would think that I want to ask you about. So when I think about the leaders that I've worked with or the leadership I've seen, when I think about this kind of narcissistic trait, the first thing I think about is structural impact. Trust erosion.

• 9:25Brené Brown?

  The things, the kind of the structures that we can depend on are broken down even purposely. And then the, there's really weird incentives. Like, the incentives change from goodness to like egomaniacal incentives. What do you see? Like, what does the research say? Or what do you, what do you see when you write about it?

• 9:47Adam Grant?

  I think that, that aligns pretty well with the evidence I've read. So narcissistic leadership seems to have, seems to have three predictable consequences. One is that leaders put their ego above the mission. And that means people redirect their effort away from, how do I contribute productively and effectively, and toward what is going to please the boss. And so you see a lot of, of a lot of brown nosing, a lot of kissing up, also a lot of backstabbing of people who might threaten my standing with the boss. And I think that goes to the second pattern, which is narcissists encourage cutthroat cultures. O'Reilly and Chapman, among others, who've studied this. And what they, they show is basically that narcissists want to do whatever they can to feel special.

• 10:31Adam Grant?

  And that includes cutting corners. And they, they end up normalizing that behavior at lower levels of the organization. And then the third piece is they end up really undermining collaboration and cooperation. And I think that's the trust piece you were talking about.

• 10:45Brené Brown?

  For sure.

• 10:46Adam Grant?

  And it's, you know, it's not to say that there aren't times when narcissists succeed. But I think that they often succeed in spite of their self-love and egos, not because of it.

• 10:59Brené Brown?

  Yeah, because when I think about the shame-based fear, how many of us are good in shame? Like, zero. Like, you know, like, I'm thinking about Hartley, Linda Hartley's research on, and the Stone Center at Wellesley did this incredible research on shame and that how we defend against it, we move toward by people-pleasing. We move against by using shame and violence to combat shame. Like, we, we don't make good choices when we're in shame. You know? And so that's, that comes to this relational patterns.

• 11:35Adam Grant?

  Can I ask you a question about that? I've always wondered, there's a, there's a paper that Rick Bagozzi published a while back, looking at cross-cultural differences in reaction to shame. And the finding that always stuck out at me was that in the Philippines, salespeople performed better after they felt shame. And he was suggesting that, if I remember correctly, in a collectivistic culture, that people were able to harness shame to repair as opposed to fight or flight. And that never sat right with me, and I wondered if you could explain it or help me make sense of it. Can we ever derive benefits from shame?

• 12:15Brené Brown?

  So, from an evolutionary biological perspective, shame worked when you were a danger to a collective society. When you kept making a mistake that put us in danger, we would just shun or shame you until, basically, you died because you depended on the community to live, right? Today, it's just too far blunt of an instrument to work because shame is the threat or belief that we're unlovable and unworthy of connection with other people, unworthy of belonging. And it moves us into some very... How many of you... Let me just see, like, a show of hands. How many of you are parents? How many of you had some of your

• 12:56Brené Brown?

  worst parenting moments when you were in your own shame? And you just responded, you acted out. You know, it's like, we're not good from that place, because one thing is, we're not... When shame happens, it's such a primitive emotion that it hijacks the limbic system. And it's not like we're in the prefrontal cortex where we can think through, rationalize, and regulate. We are in fight, flight, and parasympathetically freeze. So, the cross culture studies on shame are so important, I don't envy any researcher taking that on, for a very interesting reason. English is the only language that we know of in the world where there's a singular word for shame.

• 13:36Adam Grant?

  Really?

• 13:36Brené Brown?

  Yeah. Because if you go into French, or you go into Spanish, you go into any other language, there are multiple words that are very nuanced. And I'll tell you why. We were... How many of you are Spanish-speaking in here, or speak Spanish? So, when we were translating the curriculum, it took two years because there was an on... We had... We had native Spanish speakers from four different countries working on the translation and they could not agree. First, they said, they couldn't agree. They were like, Yeah, no, they're like, they're like, it's begado. It's the word for sin. They're like, no, no, no. It's but it ended up being berwinza, which we use for embarrassment because the context is different. So like if I fall over and I'm like, like I'm embarrassed. But if I

• 14:20Brené Brown?

  walk down the stairs and my mom or grandmother look at me and go, no, ten in berwinza because I have on a short skirt, that goes right into the shame category. Right? And so I think cross-cultural studies of shame are difficult because the language is very hard.

• 14:37Adam Grant?

  Okay, lightbulb moment.

• 14:39Brené Brown?

  Okay, great.

• 14:40Adam Grant?

  So I just, as you're describing the evolutionary perspective, I just realized what never landed for me before in that study, which is, if I remember correctly, they were studying anticipated shame. And that was where they found a function that worrying that you were gonna be unlikable or unlovable with your colleagues was enough to prevent you from making a big mistake. And I can see that being more adaptive.

• 15:04Brené Brown?

  That's well, that's different. But anybody raised in a faith community that used that to keep people in line would tell you that that does not work so well. That ends up with a lot of like, God scars or whatever kind of scars. I mean, like, that is shame is a form of social control. I don't think anyone argues about its short term efficacy in a sales call room.

• 15:30Adam Grant?

  Yep.

• 15:30Brené Brown?

  Which is the research here. I'm familiar with the research. The long term result of that is a very different story.

• 15:39Adam Grant?

  So it's like fear in that way.

• 15:40Brené Brown?

  It's like fear in that way. You can shame me into following cultural or community norms. But the impact of that is lifelong.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  I'm Bridget Reed.

• 15:56Speaker 05

  And I'm James Walsh.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  The Alexander Brothers moved in a world of multimillion-dollar homes, exclusive parties, and powerful people.

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• 16:38Speaker 06

  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.

• 17:09Speaker 07

  The people of the great nation of Texas have not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, but this year, that might change. James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, schoolteacher, self-confessed cringe progressive,

• 17:22Speaker 08

  yes, I was doing it, maybe in an annoying way.

• 17:24Speaker 07

  is leading in most polls. His opponent, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, is facing two headwinds: the price of gas and everything. Also, Paxton has done some very, very bad stuff. So Republicans have been trying some messaging, questioning whether Talarico is man enough for Texas.

• 17:41Speaker 09

  Low-T Talarico, two weeks from Texas. Tofu Talarico?

• 17:47Speaker 07

  They're questioning some other things, too.

• 17:49Speaker 10

  I love you too, sir. In a totally platonic way, to be clear, I'm the Vice President, not James Talarico.

• 17:58Speaker 07

  Memaw would be appalled. But what do Texans think? Are they buying it? On Today Explained from Vox, we pay a visit.

• 18:08Speaker 07

  Today Explained drops every weekday.

• 18:11Adam Grant?

  Okay, before we go back to narcissism, this is the curiosity shop, so I'm allowed to explore any curiosity I have.

• 18:15Brené Brown?

  Any go.

• 18:16Adam Grant?

  Okay, so I read, I read this paper years ago that argued that we think about emotions wrong. And it's exactly on this point. I think most of us assume that emotions are supposed to drive behavior, right? So I feel guilt, I repair. I feel gratitude, I show appreciation. The argument was that most emotions don't actually exist to drive action. They exist so that we can learn the consequences of our action and then anticipate what we need to do differently next time. And I think this was especially for negative emotions. So the thought was, like, regret isn't supposed to change your behavior today. It's supposed to teach you about the systematic mistake you're making in your decisions, so you can learn to avoid that the next five times you're in a similar situation.

• 19:01Adam Grant?

  And it really shifted my thinking a little bit and led me to wonder if most of the way that we deal with emotion, in terms of processing, what does this mean for what I do today, is actually short sighted. And if we should be asking more of, okay, like, emotions are teachable moments. Like, is, you know, is regret a master class in making better decisions? Is guilt a whole tutorial in learning how to right wrongs or avoid committing them in the first place? Is embarrassment a cue that I need to be a little bit more attuned to how other people perceive me? And I'd just be so curious to hear your take on our emotions' anticipatory tools as opposed to immediate action causes.

• 19:47Adam Grant?

  And I know you're gonna say they're both.

• 19:48Brené Brown?

  They're both.

• 19:49Adam Grant?

  Damn it!

• 19:50Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think that, you know, it's, I think it was an atlas of the heart. Dan Pink and I align on regret as a very useful emotion. I think regret is, you know, I always think about, what was the movie with Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis? We Are the Millers?

• 20:13Brené Brown?

  Yeah, and, and the daughter brings home this guy and he's got a tattoo and it says, "No regrets" and it's misspelled.

• 20:21Brené Brown?

  And Jason Sudeikis is like, "No regrets?" And he's like, "No, sir." And he's like, "Not one?" And he goes, "No, sir."

• 20:31Brené Brown?

  And Jason Sudeikis goes, "Not even a single letter." And so, I don't, I, I, I always write that I think regret is a tough but fair teacher.

• 20:42Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 20:43Brené Brown?

  So, I do think in some ways it's retrospective about, I mean, I think regret's a function of empathy. For me, often, it's like, wow.

• 20:54Brené Brown?

  I'm going to another quote, I think it was George Saunders that gave the commencement dress, that, that said the things he regretted most in his life were failures of kindness. You know, and so, I think, I think they can be retrospective, I, I think they can be predictive, in a way, like, um, you know, like, I always tell you, like, I have a spidey sense, it's probably, a psychology person would probably say, strong pattern recognition intuition, but I, but I think they can be reflective, predictive, and just also in the moment.

• 21:29Adam Grant?

  I like it. Okay, take us back to narcissism.

• 21:31Brené Brown?

  Okay. What about this? This is like, how, how narcissism or traits of that can affect relationships. I was very freaked out when I read this in the research. Taking undue credit is related to narcissistic leadership patterns. Do you think that's true?

• 21:53Adam Grant?

  Okay, so, when I was studying givers and takers, I was confronted with the question of, okay, we all would prefer to be surrounded by generous than selfish people, but there must be some value of, of the selfish people, otherwise, they wouldn't exist. And so, I started combing through the research to try to figure out, okay, like, what do, what do givers take and what do takers give? And the only thing that I could find out of that was, givers really love to give credit and take responsibility, and takers are really good at taking credit, but they also give something. Blame.

• 22:35Brené Brown?

  The takers, the givers.

• 22:38Adam Grant?

  No, I mean, I think that a huge part of narcissism is credit hogging. Or it's a major consequence of narcissism, anyway, because it's part of how you show that you're not ordinary. I think the NBA data on this are so striking. There's a study where Emily Griehalva and colleagues, they actually code NBA basketball players' tweets on a narcissism scale. So, and I realize this may be a world in which the base rate of narcissism is somewhat higher than the average in the population at large. But you can still see variations, right? There are some players who tweet and say things like, you know, "Tough game yesterday. I really let the team down." And others who, this was an actual quote, who post a shirtless photo themselves that

• 23:21Adam Grant?

  says, under it with a caption, "When I look at myself in the mirror, all I see staring back is greatness."

• 23:32Brené Brown?

  Me too.

• 23:35Adam Grant?

  So, I mean, there's the credit taking, right? The question is, what does that mean for the team? Well, the higher the average narcissism level on your team, the more stagnant your team's performance is over the course of the season. Because narcissists are hogging the ball, they're hogging the glory, they're taking the credit, they undermine collaboration, as we were talking about earlier. And that is especially true if the point guard is a narcissist. Having a self-centered person move the ball up the court and control the offense is deadly to a team's ability to become more than the sum of their parts. And I think the credit-taking dynamic is probably part of that.

• 24:11Brené Brown?

  Damn.

• 24:15Brené Brown?

  I know how I'm gonna be thinking about the final four. Okay.

• 24:19Brené Brown?

  All right.

• 24:19Adam Grant?

  Wait, no, no, Brandon, I have a question for you on this. So, have you, I mean, it's really easy to see these patterns from a distance. It's hard to deal with these patterns when you confront them on a daily basis. You spend a lot of time coming into organizations and trying to cure them of these sorts of...

• 24:36Brené Brown?

  I don't know how to cure them, but...

• 24:37Adam Grant?

  Trying to heal them, trying to improve the way that they work together. And maybe, maybe, I don't want to say squash egos, but maybe lower the ego, or quiet the ego a little bit of leaders. How do you think about dealing with a narcissist when you see these tendencies?

• 24:59Brené Brown?

  You know, I'm hesitant to say the truth.

• 25:03Adam Grant?

  Always a good place to start.

• 25:05Brené Brown?

  Yeah, like.

• 25:05Adam Grant?

  What I'm about to say is not going to be 100% candid, but bear with me.

• 25:09Brené Brown?

  No, I'm gonna say, no, yeah, no, what I'm gonna say is, when I say that, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say 100% the truth, and it could get me in a shit ton of trouble, is that's usually what I mean. You know, when we go in and do Dare to Lead work, we say yes to those kind of embedded interventions where I'm in there doing work with leaders about 30% of the time. The others are 70% are no. And the first thing, and we go through very rigorous assessments where I interview people in the C-suite, I interview senior leaders, and I interview people with the least power and proximity to power. And so the thing that I'm looking for, for, and it's probably a little bit of like creaming the crop for

• 25:53Brené Brown?

  the intervention, well, it is definitely creaming the crop for the intervention, let me just be straight, that I am looking for, in the C-suite specifically, leaders who want to win more than they want to be right. So if I'm working with a CEO or senior leaders who care more about winning and doing what's right for the organization than they do protecting a self-image, then I'm all in. And in fact, I just did an interview with the Wall Street Journal when I was with Kate Johnson at Lumen, and we've been together, working together for maybe three years, and the Wall Street Journal guy said, "To what do you attribute some of this transformative success?" And I just looked at Kate and said, "She wanted to win more than she wanted to be right." And, you know, and he said, "What does that

• 26:37Brené Brown?

  look like?" And I said, "Showing up at everything we did, leading the way, modeling vulnerability, modeling empathy, modeling rethinking, modeling learning and unlearning, when it was super uncomfortable, when she knew it could come up on an investor call, like, like really just saying, I care more about getting it right than I do about being right."

• 27:02Adam Grant?

  And that, I can't think of a better way to demonstrate mission over ego than that.

• 27:07Brené Brown?

  The mission over ego thing is so interesting. It takes me immediately to an experience I had at, have you ever done work with St. Jude's?

• 27:14Adam Grant?

  No.

• 27:16Brené Brown?

  About 10 years ago, I went to go do work with St. Jude's and I was going to meet with the leaders and they said, "Do you want to get here an hour early to go to tour of the hospital?" And I said, "Oh, I'd love it." And so I got there and I got on the elevator to go to the second floor where I was meeting the docent who was going to give me the interview. And when I stepped on the elevator, the only other person on the elevator was a woman in her kind of mid-60s and she was pushing a cart of desserts. And I said, "Hi, how you doing?" She goes, "Good." And I said, "What do you do at St. Jude's?" And she said, "I cure cancer." And I said, "I'm sorry?" And she said, "I cure cancer. Families, patients, physicians, nurses, staff, don't eat. We can't cure cancer." Wow. Yeah.

• 28:01Brené Brown?

  She said, "I cure cancer." I got up to this and I was like, "Hell, yeah, you do." I was like, "Right, that makes sense." I get up to the second floor and I meet the docent and we're just starting to walk on the tour. And I said, "How long have you been volunteering for St. Jude's?" And she said, "God, I think I've been curing cancer for about 18 months." And it made me realize that that is a culture where the oncologists are not taking credit for curing cancer, that everyone is taking credit and everyone is sharing credit. And that takes a very special kind of deep humility and curiosity in leadership.

• 28:43Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Brené Brown?

  That I would say is the opposite of narcissistic leader trends.

• 28:46Adam Grant?

  Okay. So when you confront the opposite.

• 28:49Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 28:50Adam Grant?

  What do you do?

• 28:51Brené Brown?

  You know, you know exactly what I do. I dig in and figure out how it got there. Who brought it in? How did they build it? How do they operationalize it? How do they? I'm curious about, you can have, I've met singular leaders that are driven by courage and humility that cannot scale that across their organization. They can't even get it in their own teams. So when I see that, I'm curious about...

• 29:18Brené Brown?

  Where that started and how it was built and how it's operationalized every day at every level.

• 29:24Adam Grant?

  Okay, so if I am, if I'm your boss, because it's, one thing that's really striking to me is when we go into organizations, we have very little to lose because we're outsiders.

• 29:36Brené Brown?

  Right.

• 29:37Adam Grant?

  We're sort of brought in to hold up a mirror. And worst-case scenario, people say, we don't want, we don't like the reflection, go home.

• 29:44Brené Brown?

  I get that a lot.

• 29:45Adam Grant?

  But I imagine there are a lot of people with us today who might have to deal with a narcissistic colleague, or a narcissistic boss, or a narcissistic senior executive. And I guess the question is, what do you, what do you say to that person? How do you, how do you manage that dynamic when you're not in a position of freedom or power?

• 30:07Brené Brown?

  Yeah, because I do, I have a lot of walk-away stuff and so, power. I personally think that it's really important to have a mentor and someone in the organization that you trust, that knows that person, that has more proximity to power, that can kind of be a good mentor for you. But I also think those relationships are normally abusive and you should have a plan B. Yeah. Yeah, there have been many times where I couldn't walk out of a job because I needed to, you know, pay my rent, you know, keep my insurance for my kids. And so, you know, when people said, well, you should just leave, then, oh, like, okay. But I think you should

• 30:51Brené Brown?

  start developing a plan B. I think those behaviors are very hard to change. So what I would say is, you know, this is the old union steward in me, document, use a playback as a tool. So like, let's say you're the boss, and you say to me, I need you to do this, this and that. And then I would say, can I play back for you what you're wanting me to do? You need me to prioritize this, this is due on Wednesday, and this is more important than this. Is that correct? And they, and I would probably do the playback in writing, hey, thanks for the time today. I just want to send an email real quick to play back what you're expecting from me. So that's another form of document. Like, in God, we trust, everyone else bring data. You know, like, so.

• 31:36Brené Brown?

  I think that's part of it. The other thing is, I find engaging to be, especially if there's a power over situation, I find engaging with those folks to be somewhat dangerous. Like, I would not, I would try as much as I could not to engage. What about you?

• 31:57Adam Grant?

  What about me?

• 31:58Brené Brown?

  Well, what would you tell these folks?

• 32:01Adam Grant?

  You know, I had a narcissistic boss early in my career, actually. And to your earlier point, not diagnosed with a personality disorder, just showing normal narcissism signs, which, you know, involve like, sort of airing your grievances like every day as Festivus. If we have any Seinfeld fans in the room. Showing lots of entitlement, believing that you deserve special treatment, lacking empathy for other people, and not ever owning the consequences of your decisions. I had a boss like that, and a bunch of my colleagues were being mistreated. And I basically spent a whole summer afraid to speak up.

• 32:43Adam Grant?

  And finally, I just, I couldn't, I couldn't take being such a coward anymore. And I walked into her office and I said, "I think this is, you know, this is really unfortunate, the way that people are being forced to work overtime without pay, the way that their, you know, their concerns are not being heard. And I'm really worried that we're going to lose them and we can't afford to. They're really valuable." And I got dragged by my ear down the hall into the women's restroom, which is the only room on our floor with no windows. And she said to me, "If you ever speak up out of turn again, you'll be fired along with your coworkers."

• 33:26Adam Grant?

  And that was why I became an organizational psychologist.

• 33:31Brené Brown?

  I did not know that.

• 33:32Adam Grant?

  I do not ever want another person to have power over me again. Academic tenure sounds really safe right now. But one of the things I had to do then was I had to keep working with her. And I will tell you, the single most helpful thing that I did was having conversations with her that were not about work.

• 33:52Brené Brown?

  I could see that.

• 33:53Adam Grant?

  Where she was not interested, where she didn't have to prove that she was special and extraordinary. And I found out that she loved Survivor, and I was watching Survivor. And within a few weeks, I was on her good side again, just from talking about a TV show that was of common interest. And I think that got me through it. And I wrote down, after I finished that job, I will never, ever work in a situation again where someone who believes that, where somebody who puts herself above the organization and above the team, has the power to ruin my day. Never again.

• 34:40Adam Grant?

  So yeah, so now I write books and talk and hope that other people can use these ideas.

• 34:45Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I just want to, I feel like this ethical obligation to pause us right now, like in the, you know, normally it'd just be you and me talking, but in the room, just to say that I want to, like, first of all, I'm really, I'm really sorry that happened.

• 35:00Adam Grant?

  Oh, thank you.

• 35:00Brené Brown?

  No, I am.

• 35:01Adam Grant?

  I'm over it now.

• 35:02Brené Brown?

  No, but I am sorry that happened, because it represents something that I'm sure a lot of us have done. I also just want to acknowledge the fucking emotional labor of having to find what she likes that you can both talk about. And having to, you know, like, I don't know if y'all are familiar with like the eggshell thing, like walking on eggshells? And how traumatic that is for those of us who grew up in houses where you had to kind of walk on eggshells sometimes, because you couldn't predict erratic behavior? And then like having to talk, like, that's not free for people that have to do that. And like, just to get very, and this is going to be opinion, but like...

• 35:43Brené Brown?

  The closer you are away from what power looks like in your organization in terms of gender and race and ethnicity and age, the heavier that load is to pick up and to have to carry around. Like, that is not free. Like, if you're like, "Good morning, Adam Grant, here's your $100 to spend for the day in cognitive lift and emotional lift." You could spend 70 of it, if you were a generous employee, on mission, but you would not have 70 of it to do that day if you're working. And so, you're gonna spend $68.50, or $68.99 trying to figure out what fun thing about Survivor you could talk to her about, and

• 36:28Brené Brown?

  you're gonna have $1.01 left to spend at work. And the hard thing is that the spend that we make, it's not like we walk through the back door at the end of our office day, and then the bank account was like, "Ching, ching, $100 to find the goggles and the shin guards and to see what's for dinner, and your mom lost her meds." And, no, you got 14.50 left, folks. You know, and so, it's like, that's why I would say have a Plan B and document, because in the world today, in the US, I would say, we're looking at

• 37:10Brené Brown?

  some of the consequences of this style of leadership. And, like, people are dying. So, I don't think these are easy behaviors to change. Like, I'm looking at the things I list, at like, taking undue credit, assigning undue blame, devaluing dissent. And then, this is what I thought was interesting. In the research, they call them contextual amplifiers. So, what is the environment in which this thrives, right? Uncertainty, depletion and exhaustion. This one freaked me out. Systems that reward spectacle.

• 37:56Brené Brown?

  And self-promotion.

• 38:00Brené Brown?

  Hmm, it's like I'm at church.

• 38:04Brené Brown?

  But the reason why I thought this was so huge is because as a leader in organization, like I have a team in an organization, I can choose every day whether we build a culture that rewards spectacle. Like what I'm trying to tell my people right now is we've been grinding really hard for the launch of the podcast, but what I'm trying to like build into my team is this should never be normalized.

• 38:32Brené Brown?

  We should not take our endorphins from grind. We should take our joy at work from groundedness, predictability and stability, not from grind.

• 38:43Brené Brown?

  You know what I mean? Like we will have to grind at times. But there's less glory in that than we, what we think. Do you know what I mean? What do you think?

• 38:54Adam Grant?

  I'm having a hard time disagreeing with that, which is a little disappointing, given, given how often we are not on the same page. No, I think, I think that's right. Sorry. What I should have said was, I agree, Brené.

• 39:04Brené Brown?

  Well, good. I have a hard question for you.

• 39:06Adam Grant?

  Uh oh, bring it.

• 39:07Brené Brown?

  I was rereading the op ed. It's in the New York Times. We'll link it in the show notes on the podcast.

• 39:13Adam Grant?

  Oh, we're gonna have show notes?

• 39:14Brené Brown?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:15Adam Grant?

  This is exciting.

• 39:15Brené Brown?

  Paul.

• 39:16Adam Grant?

  Yeah, Paul's gonna do it.

• 39:17Brené Brown?

  Paul's gonna do it.

• 39:19Brené Brown?

  Where would you draw, and this is for my own personal interest. Where would you draw a line between, man, this is a narcissistic pattern of leadership behaviors versus self-involved or ambitious?

• 39:36Adam Grant?

  Oh, that's a good question.

• 39:39Adam Grant?

  That's a very good question. I think, I think ambitious is easier to distinguish than self-involved.

• 39:45Brené Brown?

  God, me too. It's almost the outlier, right? Ambition?

• 39:48Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 39:49Brené Brown?

  So, okay, so let's take ambitious off. Let's take.

• 39:52Adam Grant?

  Oh, wait, you're taking, I was gonna, that was the easy one.

• 39:54Brené Brown?

  Okay, go, go, go, go. Yeah, I know, I know, I know, I know. The other two are more nuanced, don't you think? Like, those are really narcissistic trends versus these are, this person's just really self-involved. That's different, I think.

• 40:06Adam Grant?

  Okay, so I think this is, it would be helpful maybe to, to get to the bottom of this by distinguishing between two flavors of narcissism, grandiose and vulnerable. One of them is named after your work.

• 40:18Brené Brown?

  I reject that claim, but go ahead.

• 40:21Adam Grant?

  Well, one of them is named in a way that will feel very familiar to you.

• 40:23Brené Brown?

  Better.

• 40:24Adam Grant?

  I think when, when I, historically, when I've studied narcissistic leadership, I was thinking about the grandiose kind, the larger-than-life, "I am the most important person in the room, it is all about me." That's the, that's the aspect of narcissism that Lyndon Johnson scored highest on when political scientists and historians rated the, the American presidents. It's, it's sort of the Steve Jobs flavor as well. But we forget that there's a vulnerable variety as well, which is the, it's more fear-driven and less ego-driven of, to go back to your, your point at the beginning, it's not just, "I'm afraid of seeming ordinary."

• 41:05Adam Grant?

  It's a, it's, it's a fear of being worse than ordinary, of being inferior. And it seems, from my read of the research, vulnerable narcissists are extremely self-involved, extremely self-involved, but they don't walk around thinking they're God's gift to humanity. They walk around thinking, "Oh, no, oh, no, everybody's judging me negatively, and I've gotta, I've gotta bend over backward to please them and curry favor with them and convince them that, in fact, I'm worthy." And I think that that, that is a way of being self-involved that's different from kind of the grandiosity that we've been critiquing today.

• 41:43Brené Brown?

  Wow, that's really interesting. Yeah, but I think as-

• 41:48Adam Grant?

  It's still narcissism, though.

• 41:49Brené Brown?

  It still is malignant in my mind.

• 41:51Adam Grant?

  Yeah, it is. Okay, so let me, let me try one other way to get at your question then, since you rejected that one just now.

• 41:56Brené Brown?

  Next.

• 41:57Adam Grant?

  She was like, "Ah, uh-uh, I saw it." You're, you're-

• 42:00Brené Brown?

  No, no, I, I get it intellectually, I'm tracking, research-wise-

• 42:05Adam Grant?

  So bad.

• 42:06Brené Brown?

  Not, no, I would never put that label on it. I want more from you.

• 42:09Adam Grant?

  You said malignant.

• 42:10Brené Brown?

  No, I would say narcissism can still be malignant.

• 42:13Adam Grant?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I agree.

• 42:14Brené Brown?

  It's like vulnerable or, or grandiose.

• 42:15Adam Grant?

  Okay, so I think, here's a, here's maybe another, another crack at it, which is, there's a, there's a whole body of evidence on how people become self-involved when they're anxious.

• 42:26Adam Grant?

  So if you start to get stressed or nervous, you worry, you ruminate, your attention turns inward.

• 42:35Brené Brown?

  That's true.

• 42:36Adam Grant?

  And you need to self-protect. And that can be self-involved, but it's not narcissistic at all. And in fact, you may be telling yourself a story that you're protecting other people through your anxiety and the concern that you're showing. And so I think you can get to self-involvement through other paths than narcissism, and extreme anxiety might be one of them.

• 42:58Brené Brown?

  Wow, that's really interesting, because I will say that when I am in peak eldest-daughter anxiety, aren't those memes rude? Instagram's calling me out every third scroll.

• 43:14Adam Grant?

  But can I just point out, there's no love for the eldest son ever. We never even get mentioned.

• 43:19Brené Brown?

  Yeah, but we get mentioned in the... My meme yesterday said, "Were you really a pleasure to have in class?" Or, "Were you the oldest daughter with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder?" I was like, "Fuck you, dude. I don't even know you. I'm looking for shoes on here." Like, so... Be ignored.

• 43:48Adam Grant?

  I think we should take away your Instagram password.

• 43:52Brené Brown?

  Yes, you should.

• 43:52Adam Grant?

  If that's what you're being served, go on.

• 43:54Brené Brown?

  I am. The next one was like, "The oldest daughter could read a room before she could read a book." I'm like, "Okay." Like, hypervigilance has an upside. I always know what's going on. Next door, I can tell you if you need to know. I can keep us all safe. But I do think anxiety... I don't know. Would you say like, the vulnerable... I'm not as familiar with those constructs and the differences, but it seems to me, through my lens, they're ultimately both about self-protection. Right? Ego protection. Whether it's because I'm not good enough, or because I'm better than everyone else. But this is what I always say about that.

• 44:41Brené Brown?

  When I was growing up, my meemaw, my mom's mom, who lived in San Antonio, I would go stay at her house for a week and she would say, "Whatever you want to do, you can do." Like, we could do anything. And I was like, "Put put golf on Monday. We're gonna see PG movies on Tuesday," because I wasn't allowed to see a PG movie till I was 16. Yeah, she took me to, what was the name of that with Sally Fields and Burt Reynolds? The race car? Smokey and the Bandit? Yeah, I mean, like, we did all the bad things. So, she said, "I'll take you anywhere, Brene." She called me sissy, actually. "I'll take you anywhere you want to go, sissy, but not anywhere where I have to stand in one place for too long." And as a child, you didn't understand, like,

• 45:25Brené Brown?

  how standing in one place could be worse than walking? But at my age, I get it now. I can't stand in one place for too long. But I often think about, people always used to ask me, "So, is the opposite of 'I'm not enough,' "I'm better than everyone?" And I said, "That's the pain of standing in the exact same place for too long." Like, "I'm better than anyone and I'm not enough." Two sides of the exact same coin. It's judgment. It lacks complete self-compassion. It lacks grace for yourself. So now I'm like, "Oh, that's why meemaw's legs hurt when she stood in one place for too long."

• 46:08Brené Brown?

  Like, we try to jump out of "I'm not good enough," which is that vulnerable narcissism, to "I'm better than everyone else," which is the grandiosity. Same thing. It's a place of, like, self-protection and woundedness.

• 46:26Adam Grant?

  I want to pick up on this theme of judgment, which I think is so interesting. I think that people are judgmental because they're trying to be discerning. And what they don't realize is that judging actually impairs judgment.

• 46:40Brené Brown?

  Wait a minute. I'm gonna disagree. Hold on. I feel it coming.

• 46:44Adam Grant?

  Oh, good.

• 46:45Brené Brown?

  Wait. No, wait. Judgment? Say that first.

• 46:48Adam Grant?

  Judging impairs judgment. So let me explain what I mean by that.

• 46:51Brené Brown?

  Okay.

• 46:51Adam Grant?

  So the moment that I judge you, I am no longer capable of looking at you through an even close to neutral lens, right? I've already predetermined what you're like. I have identified a list of flaws or shortcomings of yours. And at that point, I can't see you accurately. I can't see you clearly anymore. And so I've judged you instead of actually being an accurate judge of you.

• 47:14Brené Brown?

  But what if I'm right?

• 47:18Adam Grant?

  Then you are too invested in being right.

• 47:20Brené Brown?

  I'm asking for a friend.

• 47:21Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 47:22Brené Brown?

  What if my judgment is spot on?

• 47:25Adam Grant?

  Well, we were texting about this, but we didn't talk about it.

• 47:28Brené Brown?

  Oh, that's right, because you said save it for the podcast. Yeah.

• 47:30Adam Grant?

  Yeah. So, okay, so I think that sometimes you have strong reactions.

• 47:37Brené Brown?

  Oh, shit, you mean this conversation?

• 47:38Adam Grant?

  Yeah, do you want to have this conversation? Sometimes you have strong reactions to people you've just met. Is that a fair statement? Especially if they're influential.

• 47:54Brené Brown?

  I don't like fancy people.

• 47:57Brené Brown?

  When I meet people that are either celebrity, power, influence, I'm gonna be suspect.

• 48:06Adam Grant?

  And I understand the suspicion.

• 48:09Adam Grant?

  But if you've already then sorted them into a box and said, okay, they must be narcissists.

• 48:14Brené Brown?

  No, I don't say that. I don't say that.

• 48:17Adam Grant?

  What do you say?

• 48:19Brené Brown?

  They're dodgy as fuck, man.

• 48:23Brené Brown?

  That's different. I would never label someone as a social worker. I don't believe in pathologizing. I would just say you're dodgy and no.

• 48:32Adam Grant?

  All right. So but then anything else you see them do is gonna be filtered through that lens. And you become, it's confirmation bias. It's a self-provoking prophecy, right?

• 48:40Brené Brown?

  Yes, I knew you were gonna go right into confirmation bias. Adam, confirmation bias grant. Go ahead.

• 48:46Adam Grant?

  And you're doing it right now. I love it.

• 48:53Brené Brown?

  Oh, my God!

• 49:01Adam Grant?

  It's a minor miracle that we're still talking, isn't it?

• 49:04Brené Brown?

  No, I like it.

• 49:06Adam Grant?

  No, what's interesting actually is I think it's, I wonder how much of it is confirmation bias? And how much of it is the, maybe the evil cousin of confirmation bias, which is desirability bias?

• 49:16Brené Brown?

  Desirability bias, yeah.

• 49:17Adam Grant?

  You know this one. So do you all know the distinction between the two, confirmation and desirability bias? Okay, here, this is gonna be a 30-second crash course. You ready?

• 49:24Brené Brown?

  It's powerful.

• 49:26Adam Grant?

  Confirmation bias is, I see what I expect to see. Desirability bias is, I see what I want to see.

• 49:34Adam Grant?

  And I wonder what worldview leads you to want people who are powerful to be dodgy?

• 49:43Brené Brown?

  Okay, so...

• 49:45Adam Grant?

  Do you want that, I guess is the first question.

• 49:47Brené Brown?

  I don't, I don't want that, but let's, let's, let's be, okay, if we're gonna go here.

• 49:57Brené Brown?

  Let's go back to when you and I were together at a conference.

• 50:01Adam Grant?

  Uh oh.

• 50:02Brené Brown?

  And I said, I'm waiting for someone to walk with me to this thing. And you said, why, you know, you don't like to go by yourself, or what? And you was friendly question, and I said, I don't know, it's weird when I go by myself. And you said, why? And I said, because I'm gonna get stopped many times. And especially because this is a conference where there was a lot of powerful people. And they will unload on me, demand things from me, and ask me, and I don't know them, but they'll just be like, you know, and you're like, really? Because we do the same thing, and that never happens to you. And I said, why don't you walk with me? By the time we got there, he was like, hell, no.

• 50:47Brené Brown?

  Who, why are these people stopping you? What, what is going on here? So I think it's, I don't want, it's not desirability or confirmation bias. It's self-protection.

• 51:00Brené Brown?

  Because I don't think people know that I'm super introverted. And if you stop me and you, you tell me really hard and heavy things and then you're, and if, if anyone in here did it, it would probably be, it would be okay. It could be maybe awkward.

• 51:15Adam Grant?

  Well, not everyone, but most people.

• 51:17Brené Brown?

  But, yeah, yeah. But like, but when, but when it's an influential or famous person, they'll say, can I get your cellphone number? I'd love to talk to you about this. You know, and I'm like, I don't have a cellphone. I'm a terrible liar. I'm like, they're like, email? And I'm like, I don't email. Let me, let me give you, let me, I mean, in my,

• 51:38Adam Grant?

  Here's my fax number.

• 51:39Brené Brown?

  Yeah, yeah, fax me. Um, fax you. Um, so I think it's self-protective.

• 51:49Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 51:50Brené Brown?

  But it's also, it's like I see dead people, like that movie. Like, I-

• 51:58Adam Grant?

  Six sets.

• 51:59Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 52:00Adam Grant?

  Spoiler alert.

• 52:01Brené Brown?

  Yes. Um, I see how people sometimes with influence have entitlement and are open to collecting people like me, like they collect tchotchkes. Do you know what I mean?

• 52:17Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 52:18Brené Brown?

  Yeah. And so, I, so I'm sus- I'm suspect.

• 52:21Adam Grant?

  So why, why does that happen to you and not me? I think, I, I can think of three possibilities. One is gender.

• 52:26Brené Brown?

  Okay, we're done.

• 52:27Adam Grant?

  No, but there's more. Two, you know, I, I tend to talk mostly about data and you go deep into people's emotions.

• 52:36Brené Brown?

  That's true.

• 52:38Adam Grant?

  I think that maybe creates a more personal or parasocial connection. But then, three, also, you're a social worker. You actually help people. You can, right? And they think you're a therapist.

• 52:51Brené Brown?

  I mean, people do think I'm a therapist, which I'm like, would you want me to be your therapist? I mean, like, I have a therapist. But would you want me to be your therapist? No, you would not. I'd be like, and he said, what? No. We're done. Let's text him right now. You know, like, I would be terrible at that. You're the psychologist.

• 53:13Adam Grant?

  Yeah, but not, not the kind who actually helps anyone, so.

• 53:17Brené Brown?

  That's not, raise your hand if you've been helped by Adam's work. Like, that's not true. I think it's the topics I study. But I think it's gender.

• 53:25Adam Grant?

  Yep.

• 53:26Brené Brown?

  I think a lot of it is gender.

• 53:27Adam Grant?

  Okay, so then the question is, you make a judgment of that person when they very inappropriately dump vulnerability on you and maybe also show some entitlement and even some narcissism in what they ask of you. But is that, is that a, is that a, is that an indication of their character? Or is that a moment that showed you a problematic tendency they have, which may coexist also with some virtues along with that vice?

• 53:54Brené Brown?

  Or do I give a shit which one of those it is? Like, but honestly, that is the question. Like, do I care if that's your character? Do I care if it's a temporary lack of judgment? I don't care. Just keep walking. Like, just, I, I actually, I actually, I am a, I am a good person. FYI.

• 54:16Adam Grant?

  You don't have to defend that.

• 54:17Brené Brown?

  No, but I, I, I don't love it. And I don't, the only thing, I can tell you this. The only time I felt like this before was when I was pregnant.

• 54:28Adam Grant?

  Oh, and everyone wants to touch you with no permission.

• 54:32Brené Brown?

  And people would come up and touch me. And I was like, ooh, a pregnant body's not a public body. A pregnant body's not a public body. You know, like, you're, you know, back then when we were learning all the new language? Like, this is my safe space.

• 54:44Adam Grant?

  Quick aside, I had no idea that even existed until Allison was pregnant with her oldest. And the first time someone made a beeline to, to rub her tummy, I was like, wait, you, you think you can touch a stranger just because she's pregnant? And I, I was like, can I, can I go up and just, like, start rubbing other, like, how is this suddenly okay? And so I, I started drafting an op-ed that was called, Please Stop Touching My Wife.

• 55:09Adam Grant?

  And it's nothing came of it, but this is horrifying. And so you, you feel this when, when, yeah, I, okay, I, I get it. So here's the question.

• 55:19Brené Brown?

  So I'm being diagnosed by the psychologist in real time.

• 55:23Adam Grant?

  I'm not qualified to diagnose you and I don't have a diagnosis. I think the, the self-protective instinct is, is understandable. I think the question is then, what do you do with it? Because I think your impulse is to just not be in the room. And

• 55:36Brené Brown?

  We're talking, let me, let me decode. We're talking about, do you want to go to this event? Where there's a lot of people like this?

• 55:44Adam Grant?

  Right.

• 55:45Brené Brown?

  And I'm like,

• 55:46Adam Grant?

  No.

• 55:46Brené Brown?

  Never in my career I've ever been, do I, nor do I want to start going now. I'm waiting for Longhorn football season. I'm waiting to start tubing when it gets warm. No, I don't want to be with these people. At the same time, it's an amazing, the, the one time I've done something like that, it was a really interesting learning experience. But you know what? You know what I don't like? This is happening in real time. Is it awkward?

• 56:09Adam Grant?

  What is now?

• 56:10Brené Brown?

  Well, no, but no.

• 56:11Adam Grant?

  It wasn't before.

• 56:12Brené Brown?

  But you know what I don't like? I don't want to be a part of a world of exchange and transaction. Like I have no interest in power, celebrity. I can, you know, make my own money. And so I think I worry that that world is transactional. And that we see evidence today of people that made very dangerous decisions to get close to power.

• 56:50Adam Grant?

  And this is, this is what narcissists do, right? They use people for their own gain.

• 56:54Brené Brown?

  Yes, that's it.

• 56:55Adam Grant?

  That's the connection.

• 56:57Brené Brown?

  I knew it was going to tidy up in a bow. A big Texas taffeta bow.

• 57:03Adam Grant?

  Here's the thing though, I think, so your self-protective response is mostly to opt out when you get invited to address a group of world leaders or, you know, CEOs or Hollywood people. And I get it. And there are people who will say, don't, you know, you, you don't, you should not be in that room. And there are people who, who always are in that room. I don't want that room to exist without voices like yours in it.

• 57:32Brené Brown?

  Oh, sweet.

• 57:36Brené Brown?

  I mean, that's really thoughtful. That's really kind.

• 57:40Adam Grant?

  You all are with me, so I'm just gonna pile on a little bit more because I want to be able to say later, Brene, remember when all the people at South by were cheering for you showing up? Where is the moral compass if you opt out? And only the transactional people show up? And they run the world? That scares the hell out of me.

• 58:03Brené Brown?

  Bummer.

• 58:06Brené Brown?

  Can we do it not during football season?

• 58:10Adam Grant?

  I'll settle for that one.

• 58:11Brené Brown?

  Yeah, no, I do, I have watched you do it and navigate it really well. And you are the least power proximity person. You.

• 58:20Adam Grant?

  What's the opposite of a star fucker?

• 58:24Brené Brown?

  A star runner. Join me.

• 58:28Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I think it's probably my reaction, even when we're talking about narcissism and leadership. It's just, it feels so dangerous because at the inside of it, whether we're talking about US politics, we're talking about global leaders, we're talking about leaders and organizations. At the bottom of it is dehumanization. And it's about transactional access to power, access to influence. And I feel like that is just never, it has always been so cautionary to me. And I don't, and I think part of it is like my pathological introversion, that I'm not good in those situations.

• 59:12Brené Brown?

  I mean, I am, you know what? I am actually very good.

• 59:15Adam Grant?

  You're not not good in those situations. You don't like them.

• 59:17Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I'm very good in them, at them actually, but it's very costly for me privately. And I think, I remember the first time, I was the first Random House author in the history of Random House to do a book tour without a book signing. And so the first time I went, like it launched in LA, the book tour did. So I looked up and I said, I won't be signing books today. I'll be happy to stay an extra 30 minutes or 45 minutes and talk to you about the work. But I'm not gonna sign your book because there's nothing, my signature has no value. And I need to go home whole to my kids and my husband. And that leaves me less than whole. And in that second...

• 59:59Brené Brown?

  Every woman in the room jumped to their feet and started clapping. I wasn't paying attention to what the guys were doing, but because I just saw women.

• 1:00:07Adam Grant?

  Because there were four guys in the room at that time?

• 1:00:08Brené Brown?

  No, there were, there were a lot, including, I think, the Seattle Seahawks. But, um, but I think the women were like, it goes back to the bank account. You know, it goes back to, I can go to those rooms and I can talk and, you know, do those kind of things. And I don't, like, I wouldn't mind if they were here and I talked and I left, but the cost for me is high.

• 1:00:32Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I just, I've never known you to be someone who is unwilling to pay a temporary price for potential lasting contribution.

• 1:00:43Brené Brown?

  No, I'm not. I'm happy to send them a book.

• 1:00:46Adam Grant?

  That's fair.

• 1:00:47Brené Brown?

  And listen to the podcast, The Curiosity Shop, wherever you listen to your podcasts or on YouTube.

• 1:00:57Brené Brown?

  Okay, so I think, I think this, this recording is going to launch as our third podcast. So just, I'm curious because we have 22 seconds left. What do y'all think? Podcasts?

• 1:01:11Brené Brown?

  We, we don't always get along. We always get along. We always get along.

• 1:01:17Adam Grant?

  Mostly.

• 1:01:17Brené Brown?

  But we, but we don't always agree. But I think that's okay today, right? People need to be able to get along and not agree, potentially. But I'm grateful for you.

• 1:01:27Adam Grant?

  The gratitude is mutual. I'm not going to make a cheesy

• 1:01:31Brené Brown?

  Aww.

• 1:01:31Adam Grant?

  heart symbol. I like you. I really do.

• 1:01:35Brené Brown?

  I know y'all had a lot of choices about where to go with your, your fancy badges, but we were really excited about launching the podcast at South by Southwest and really excited to do it with y'all. And so we're grateful. So thank y'all.

• 1:01:51Brené 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.

• 1:02:01Adam Grant?

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