Pod Insights On with Kara Swisher Brené Brown on the State of Leadership in America Today About this episode Acclaimed researcher, podcaster and best-selling author Brené Brown joins Kara to unpack her vision of leadership, as outlined in her latest book, "Strong Ground." They discuss the dangers of "power over" leadership, why courage and vulnerability are essential traits for real leadership, and how turbulent times can pave the way for bad leadership. They also explore the impact of AI on human connection and the challenges faced by leaders in navigating a world of uncertainty and paradox. Brown shares her research on the self-conscious effects of shame and humiliation, and both she and Kara reflect on the qualities of effective and ethical leadership.
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Transcript 11,903 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 I'm fixing to change your life.
0:03 Kara Swisher? Okay, I'm ready.
0:04 Speaker 00 Your wife and your kids are gonna be like, "New Kara."
0:07 Kara Swisher? Doubt it.
0:07 Speaker 00 Hashtag, "Brené Brown saved us."
0:09 Kara Swisher? Literally, same person since 1962. But go ahead, try.
0:26 Kara Swisher? Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is Brené Brown, a professor at the University of Houston and the University of Texas, the author of six number-one New York Times bestsellers and the host of the podcasts Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead. Brené has a new book called Strong Ground that explores what courageous and collaborative leadership looks like during these turbulent times. Her work is grounded in rigorous academic research and work she's done consulting Fortune 500 CEOs and leaders around the world, and I'm excited to talk to her because I just love Brené Brown. We met many years ago. She was a fan of Pivot, and she contacted me. And we've done several interviews. She's interviewed me, and I just think she's such a fresh thinker
1:09 Kara Swisher? about a lot of things we disagree on, a lot of things, including being vulnerable. She thinks I am. I disagree with her vehemently. But before we get into our interview, On with Kara Swisher is nominated for a Signal Award in the News and Politics category. Today is the last day to vote, so go to vote.signalaward.com and help us win. I'm also doing a live Pivot tour with my co-host, Scott Galloway. The live tour runs November 8th through the 14th, and it hits Toronto, Boston, New York, DC, Chicago, San Francisco, and LA. All right, let's get to the interview. Our expert question comes from the other BB, Bobby Brown, so stick around.
1:59 Speaker 02 Support for this show comes from The Guardian and their new show, Stateside, where journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman use the entire independent reporting resources of The Guardian to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what is actually happening in the world. Join Kai and Carter three times a week as they utilize all the reporting resources The Guardian has across news, international coverage, climate, culture, wellness, and more. And The Guardian's not owned by a billionaire, they fearlessly report the facts without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.
2:44 Speaker 02 Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow, none of them ever talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in. An all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try it today for free at Odoo.com/Kara. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash Kara.
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4:09 Kara Swisher? Renee, thanks for coming on On.
4:11 Speaker 00 Thanks for having me on On. Anytime that I have the opportunity to get vulnerable with you, I'm in.
4:16 Kara Swisher? Oh, God. You need to stop with the vulnerabilities. I'm tough, I'm resilient.
4:20 Speaker 00 Have you ever watched yourself talk about your children?
4:23 Kara Swisher? I know, it's true, I'm vulnerable about my children. We're going to talk about Strong Ground, which is a book about leadership, which comes at a perfect time, actually, because what a leader is, is really changed. And even if they're leading, they may not be good leaders, et cetera. It's chaotic. Social media has upended how we communicate. AI is threatening to upend how we work. And President Trump is reshaping both the presidency and the country in ways that can be very difficult to undo. You could argue that we're in a leadership crisis and Trump is leading America down a treacherous path and the country's most powerful CEOs line up to flatter him presumably so that he doesn't regulate their products. It happens every day. It just happened the other day with Google in terms of payoffs. It happens with pretty much everyone. But talk about your assessment of the state of American leadership right now, and you can go global if you want to.
5:09 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think, I think when I think about leadership today, the first word that comes to my mind is power.
5:19 Speaker 00 And kind of Mary Parker Follett's work, she was an early mother of leadership and organizational development work, and she talked about different types of power and how power on its own is fairly neutral, but the use of power kind of falls into different categories. Power over, power with and to and within. And I think politically around the world right now, what we're seeing is power over. And power over operates from the belief that power is finite, like pizza. So if I give you a slice, I only have seven left. Power with and power to work from the idea that power is infinite and grows when shared.
6:00 Speaker 00 I think this is, I've written about this for probably 15 years, these types of power. What I never really fully understood until right now was one of the tenants of power over is that...
6:17 Speaker 00 Keeping people afraid is very difficult because neurobiologically, we're not hardwired to stay in fear. So when you make us afraid, our nervous system reacts, we make terrible choices from fear, but then we settle in and we either hyper-normalize or we kind of get complacent. So this is the part that has been shocking to me, to watch reality completely mirror theory, which is, in order to maintain power over, you have to engage in pretty consistent bouts of cruelty to remind people what's at stake.
6:59 Kara Swisher? Watch out, daddy is watching, as Saturday Night Live said this week.
7:02 Speaker 00 Right. Oh, God, that was, it was so good. And I gotta say, I'm such a Bad Bunny fan that like, I'm already practicing my Spanish for the Super Bowl. Yeah, so I think, again, and this doesn't have to just be on a political stage, even in an organization, if you want to maintain the power over the team you're leading, occasionally, you have to demonstrate a deep capacity for cruelty.
7:23 Kara Swisher? If you want that format of power.
7:25 Speaker 00 If you want to maintain that format of power. So I think it's the coward's path, because it requires very little discipline, very little accountability, and very little courage.
7:37 Kara Swisher? So, listen, this is not a new thing.
7:40 Speaker 00 No.
7:41 Kara Swisher? This has gone on since the beginning of time. So why is it sort of more powerful now, I guess? Why, largely because of Trump, correct? Because that's how he practices scarcity? Not, or maybe not?
7:50 Speaker 00 I don't think so. I think, you know, I'm a listener of your podcast and your podcast with Scott, and sometimes I find myself just violently agreeing, and sometimes I want to come through my headphones and be like, I don't think so. I think we're susceptible to power over right now uniquely because we're in uncertainty and pain. And so, I think when you have a citizenry who's lonely...
8:22 Speaker 00 Economically unstable.
8:24 Kara Swisher? Mm hmm.
8:26 Speaker 00 And riddled with uncertainty because of technology and social media. You bait, I mean, it's, I could never get into the chicken egg argument. I'd be curious, what do you think? Do you think driving power over?
8:42 Kara Swisher? Mm hmm.
8:42 Speaker 00 No, no, I don't actually think it comes first. I think what comes first is geopolitical instability, uncertainty, social media, AI, and income inequality.
8:56 Kara Swisher? Right. I, I think it's always attractive. I think a strong man is always attractive, even if you didn't have those things. And when you're in a vulnerable position, you, you, it's more attractive because it has answers to very complex questions.
9:09 Speaker 00 Yes.
9:10 Kara Swisher? You know what I mean? Like that's, I, I think it's just easier if someone tells you, you know, like Bill Clinton said, when people are insecure, they would rather have strong and wrong than weak and right. Right? That's better.
9:21 Speaker 00 Right. And here's, here's what's really interesting. We're not wired in our DNA, in our brains, to handle nuance and paradox.
9:29 Kara Swisher? Mm hmm.
9:30 Speaker 00 Even though intellectually, we know it's right. We know the ability to hold two competing ideas at one time and straddle that tension until something clear emerges is the right path. When we're in fear, worn down, can't pay our rent, have a kid who's, you know, struggling with addiction, opioid addiction, you're like, fuck the paradox.
9:54 Kara Swisher? Right. Let them take over.
9:56 Speaker 00 Let just, just tell me the next thing and give me.
10:00 Kara Swisher? Or I don't want to think about it.
10:01 Speaker 00 Right. Or give me an enemy to blame for my pain, preferably someone who doesn't look like me.
10:10 Kara Swisher? Right, right. Which is classic. So your book is about leadership, though. It talks, tells leaders to slow down and do the work to ensure their personal foundation is strong. And only then they can transform their organizations by having a courage and clarity to break down old systems that don't work or remaining true to their core values. Talk about how you think about where executives are right now, if they're in the leadership positions in corporations or any organizations, political or otherwise.
10:38 Speaker 00 I think what's hopeful for me is I'm surrounded by great leaders. I work with great leaders in organizations all over the world right now. And I see people who are showing up. Despite what the site guy says is popular in terms of leadership and doing the next right thing every day, even when it's tough. And I think that's so hard right now because I, let me, can I, I'm gonna ask you a question. This is always my favorite part when we talk, when I turn it on you. How do I balance the paradox of being a tech optimist and feeling completely hateful about what's happening right now with tech leaders, social media?
11:23 Speaker 00 I mean, I really think this stuff is the devil. How do I, how, how do I straddle that?
11:28 Kara Swisher? Well, let me use a different technology, a knife. You can really like a knife. It cuts an apple really great. It does all kinds of things that'll help you throughout your life as a tool. And you can also say, I hate those fuckers holding that knife, shoving it into my ribs and killing me and cutting off my head and da-da. I think the issue is that the people who are in control of it without any ability for you to control it have no responsibility and are the first to take a dive from a leadership perspective when things get going and they use excuses like shareholder value, et cetera, because they don't have any core values of their own. I mean, that's, that's the thing. But let's talk about some of these key leadership concepts that you identify in Strong Ground. The first is vulnerability.
12:12 Kara Swisher? You spent your career researching it and you called it a source code for courage because the word sounds touchy feely and can cause people, especially men's, eyes to glaze over and mine too. So explain what you mean by vulnerability and why it's so fundamental for your understanding of leadership.
12:28 Speaker 00 And vulnerability has a really, we have millions of pieces of data at this point, and the definition holds. Vulnerability is the emotion we experience when we're in uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure, which is every day when we wake up, we're in uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. And I had to spend a lot of time convincing people about the relationship between courage and vulnerability until a singular day when I was at Fort Bragg, working with special forces troops. And I asked the soldiers a simple question. Give me an example of courage from your life. One example that you either did yourself or you witnessed, one example. Of courage that did not require uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.
13:12 Speaker 00 And this heavy silence fell over the room and people started putting their heads down and then hands came up. And then finally, one soldier actually stood up and said, there is no example of courage that doesn't require vulnerability, three tours.
13:28 Kara Swisher? Right, but they didn't want to use that word.
13:30 Speaker 00 And then, a week later, I was with Pete Carroll and the Seahawks. I asked the team the same question, give me an example of courage that doesn't require vulnerability. They huddled up, they came back and they were like, not on the field or off the field. If you want to be brave, you're going to have to be vulnerable. So, look, I'm not advocating for taking pleasure in vulnerability or seeking vulnerability. What I'm saying is that if you think you're being brave in your life or your work, and there's no uncertainty and no risk and no exposure, you're not being brave. If you know how it's going to turn out, that's not courage.
14:03 Kara Swisher? No, and it doesn't require courage because you know the outcome, correct? I mean, you know, the outcome. You also don't take a risk, you're risk, right? If you're not, if you're not, you tend to play it safe. That tends to be, when you're like that, when you're playing it safe, you don't get the rewards, the risk reward profile, presumably, as a business leader.
14:23 Speaker 00 And what I see right now is that, not just as a catchphrase or, you know, the leadership theme of the moment, we're backsliding on vulnerability, we're backsliding on courage because of the level of complexity and uncertainty. This tech super cycle has everyone panicked. I mean, we're seeing from MIT Sloan and some other researchers that 90% of early investments made in the Q4 of 2023, first couple of quarters of 2024, 90% of the ROI has been negative on AI investments in companies. Why? It's very simple. Because people are not settling the ball. Have any of your kids played soccer, like, at five?
15:05 Kara Swisher? Yes, I was a soccer coach.
15:07 Speaker 00 Okay.
15:08 Kara Swisher? Renee.
15:09 Speaker 00 Okay, great. Walk me through this metaphor, let's go.
15:11 Kara Swisher? It was like herding cats, but go ahead.
15:12 Speaker 00 It was so fun, though. I would, I would look for Ellen, I couldn't find her, and she'd be sitting crisscross applesauce making a daisy chain on the field next to where we were playing. It was so great. But here's what, here's the leadership metaphor for right now with AI. And courage. It sounds a lot like this because I work predominantly with C suites and then their level of direct report leaders. Kara, get me an AI strategy. I want it on my desk next week. Okay, Brene, what do you want it to do? I don't give a shit what it does. Just get me one. You know, that's so. When five year olds are playing soccer, the ball comes in at head height.
15:47 Kara Swisher? Right.
15:48 Speaker 00 The kid receiving the ball puts their foot up to head height and tries to kick the ball. A good soccer player, a skilled soccer player, takes the ball into the chest, lets the ball hit the ground, puts their foot on the ball to maintain possession, settles the ball, looks down the pitch, understands what play they're running, and then kicks the ball to where the striker is going to be, not where the striker is. So if you take that set of skill sets that I just talked about, and you translate them to leadership skills, here's what we're talking about. Leaders today, anticipatory awareness, situational awareness, temporal awareness, self-awareness, strategic thinking, systems thinking.
16:33 Speaker 00 These are the skill sets. This is the collection of skill sets that emerge from our data as necessary today. It is no joke. It will require massive relearning and unlearning. And so what do we do when we're faced with not having the answers?
16:52 Kara Swisher? We just kick the ball.
16:53 Speaker 00 We just kick the ball.
16:54 Kara Swisher? We just wherever.
16:55 Speaker 00 Wherever.
16:56 Kara Swisher? Right, right.
16:57 Speaker 00 And so.
16:58 Kara Swisher? Like a bunch of five year olds. That's right.
16:59 Speaker 00 Yeah.
16:59 Kara Swisher? Let's just give me the ball. Give me the ball.
17:01 Speaker 00 Give me the ball. Yeah.
17:02 Kara Swisher? And you know where it's going.
17:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, and just think about that, like, if you coach soccer, what age do you think a player would have to be to take a high ball into the chest, settle it, put their foot on it, and look down the field and guess where it's going?
17:18 Kara Swisher? Over seven.
17:19 Speaker 00 Right, yeah, right.
17:20 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
17:21 Speaker 00 Yeah, they're going to have to have a lot of new cognitive skills.
17:26 Kara Swisher? Right.
17:26 Speaker 00 We don't have them today, Kara. We, in the C suite. Very few leaders, paradoxical thinking that we start our conversation with, the ability to hold competing ideas and not tap out because it's uncomfortable.
17:39 Kara Swisher? Well, a lot of that is fear, obviously, because there's a fearfulness, not just from Trump, but fearfulness of missing out, the whole, all this. It's an inescapable emotion for all leaders. But according to your book, the goal shouldn't be avoiding fear, even overcoming it. It's just the self-awareness to recognize it when they're afraid and make rational decisions. Because then, if not, fear hijacks judgment and makes decisions emotional without even realizing, get me an AI strategy. And you call this the above-below-the-line practice. Talk about how that works and how anger intersects with fear.
18:11 Speaker 00 I'm fixing to change your life.
18:14 Kara Swisher? Okay.
18:14 Speaker 00 Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, like, your wife and your kids are gonna be like, new Cara.
18:20 Kara Swisher? Doubt it.
18:20 Speaker 00 Hashtag Brene Brown saved us.
18:22 Kara Swisher? Literally, same person since 1962. But go ahead.
18:26 Speaker 00 Okay.
18:26 Kara Swisher? Try, go.
18:27 Speaker 00 So I get on the phone with my coach after a particularly shitty meeting. And I was like, oh, my God, Courtney, I was such an asshole. I mean, I was so out of my integrity that I don't, like, circle back and apologizing from my first book is not going to cut it. Like, I am embarrassed by my behavior. And she said, it sounds like you were really under the line. And I said, what does it mean? And she said, the line is fear. And we're in fear all the time, every day. And she said, when you're above the line in fear, you know you're in fear. You can name you're in fear, but you're driving. You're driving.
19:02 Kara Swisher? Right.
19:02 Speaker 00 You're making good decisions.
19:03 Kara Swisher? You're okay in fear.
19:05 Speaker 00 When you're under the line, she didn't say this because it's very Texan, but I think of it as, fear's driving, you're not riding shotgun, you're hogtied in the trunk.
19:14 Kara Swisher? Oh, wow.
19:14 Speaker 00 Yeah.
19:15 Kara Swisher? Okay, Texan.
19:16 Speaker 00 I mean, fifth generation, what can I do?
19:20 Speaker 00 Since 1965.
19:21 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
19:22 Speaker 00 So I said, how do you know when you're under the line? And she said,
19:27 Speaker 00 Listen to your language and look for one of three characters that emerges from you. The hero, the victim, and the villain.
19:34 Kara Swisher? Ah.
19:35 Speaker 00 And I said, what does that sound like? And she said, well, a lot of times what I hear you say when you're under the line is, fuck it, I'll do it myself. Ah, the hero. Or I'll say, no one gets how hard this is on me. Like, my name's out there. You know, the victim. Or, I don't care if everybody hates me. This is what we're gonna do. Ah, the villain. And she said, when you're above the line, and this is, this actually tracks to the drama triangle. When you're above the line, there are three different kind of personas, not personas, but three different actions you take on. Coaching, co-creating, and challenging productively.
20:13 Kara Swisher? All right, so what do those sound like? Because right now, I'm the villain, just all the time, but go ahead.
20:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, no.
20:21 Speaker 00 I don't, I don't know, but I, I, I, when I, like, I see dead people. I see squishy Kara. Like, I see mom.
20:29 Kara Swisher? Okay, all right, okay, all right. But what is the three of the positive, above the line? What do they sound like?
20:34 Speaker 00 Can we figure this out together? Co-creation. Or coaching. You know what, Kara? You worked your butt off on this. It's slightly off. I don't think I set you up for success. Let's talk about how we get there.
20:44 Kara Swisher? Oh, okay.
20:45 Speaker 00 You know, co-creating, coaching, and then challenging. I'm not tracking, but you seem sure. Can you help me get there? So productive, challenging.
20:54 Kara Swisher? Oh, I see.
20:54 Speaker 00 And so now, it's really interesting, because when Steve and I will get into a crunchy place.
21:03 Speaker 00 Especially about our kids, because I can get panicked really easy. I don't think you do this. You, you, you're not fearful about your kids as much, right?
21:09 Kara Swisher? I'm not, no.
21:11 Speaker 00 But I'm always like, oh, my God, is that dangerous? What's gonna happen?
21:14 Kara Swisher? Oh, yeah, that's my wife.
21:15 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's usually one. Yeah. And so, he'll say, well...
21:21 Speaker 00 I can be anxious. I just don't know that I have enough information or that I'm taking from the information we have enough to panic. And I'll be, and I'll say, am I under the line? He's like, maybe, you know? And so now I bet five times a day, I'll be in a meeting with my leadership team and someone will say, you know what? I'm under the line.
21:40 Kara Swisher? Oh, okay.
21:41 Speaker 00 And then we'll just take a 10 minute break and come back and I'll say, thanks, Cara, for calling the timeout. Do you want to talk about how you got under the line? And the last time I did that, the person said, yeah, I can tell you how I got under the line.
21:52 Kara Swisher? Is there any plus in leadership to say, fuck it, I'll do it myself? Like, that's a hero and a villain. A villain is hero, essentially.
22:00 Speaker 00 Oh, it is. It's like, it's like the best, it's like the best Voldemort that we have. Yeah, I'll do it myself.
22:06 Kara Swisher? What if you're actually better at doing it yourself?
22:08 Speaker 00 Well, I think that's great, as long as you want a tiny little impact in a tiny little company where you can do all the tiny little shit, your tiny little self.
22:16 Kara Swisher? Right, got it. Okay, that's why I'm asking for a leader, because a lot of leaders do have exhibit that, right? That's a very classic. Both of those things are classic.
22:24 Speaker 00 Well, you know who they're classic for?
22:25 Kara Swisher? What?
22:26 Speaker 00 They're classic for founders.
22:28 Kara Swisher? Founders, right, yeah. Founders, that's right. You're right, you're correct.
22:31 Speaker 00 I am going to check your email. I am going to pick the fonts. I, you know, this is my company.
22:37 Kara Swisher? Right.
22:37 Speaker 00 Yeah.
22:38 Kara Swisher? They are. That's exactly right. And the victim one is very classic now for tech people. They always feel that they are being victimized as leaders, and therefore they react to everything in that way.
22:50 Speaker 00 Yeah.
22:52 Speaker 02 We'll be back in a minute.
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26:31 Kara Swisher? So you zero in on what you call the tenacity of paradox, and you write that, quote, "Paradoxes embrace ambiguity, expose our intolerance for uncertainty, push our boundaries, and if we hang on long enough, often force us to deny the comfort of our ideologies for a deeper wisdom and as more honest reflection of the human experience and the human spirit." Talk about this in a practical sense. How can leaders embrace paradoxical thinking when they're constantly faced with the binary, the zero sum, this or this, budget priorities, spending money, giving in to Trump? You know, everything feels binary in a paradoxical world.
27:04 Speaker 00 Right. So what's interesting is I'm going to use your metaphor to talk about this. So the knife that you talked about. I need this knife. It's a tool for my life. It can keep me alive. I can cut food. I can do, you know, I need this knife. This knife is getting shoved into my stomach by people. So if you can hold on to a knife is a tool, it's being misused. A knife is a tool, it's being misused. What people, how we tap out is we say, oh, it's good and bad. That's, that's the tap out. Hold on longer. Hold on longer. Oh. It's a tool. It's being used to hurt people.
27:49 Kara Swisher? Mm hmm.
27:50 Speaker 00 We've got a knife holder issue.
27:52 Kara Swisher? Right, exactly.
27:54 Speaker 00 But you have to hold on to that paradox long enough to know, it's like fire. You can keep yourself warm or burn down the barn.
28:00 Kara Swisher? Right.
28:00 Speaker 00 And so I think, I would say this. With the most senior leaders that I'm around today, all over the world, if there were two, maybe three things that I say that they have, that a lot of leaders are struggling with right now. The ability to hold paradox until something new emerges. Systems thinking, which I don't know how systems thinking fell out of favor. But now, given the complexity inside and outside of organizations, if you can't see things in terms of systems that are connected in inescapable ways, you're going to fail.
28:39 Kara Swisher? Right.
28:40 Speaker 00 And then the third one, which I'd be interested in your take on this. Self-awareness.
28:46 Kara Swisher? Well, yes. That's, that is, yeah.
28:50 Speaker 00 That was ominous.
28:52 Kara Swisher? I often, I often, I just recently I was with some tech people and they started saying things I went, huh? And they're like, what? I go, are you even listening to yourself? Do you have any amount of self-awareness? Like victim, victim, victim mentality. And I was like, you don't look like a victim to me. You could have me disappeared in five minutes if you really, you know, put your mind to it. And it was, it was really interesting. The second one, no, I think is systems thinking. You're right, they don't see beyond the, the bigger picture. Or that things can be confusing in weight, that the sort of lack of ability to wait.
29:24 Speaker 00 Yes.
29:24 Kara Swisher? For things. And I think that's hard. I mean, I actually think I do this very well when people, when people are like, what's going to happen? I'm like, I don't know yet. I, I gotta think about it. Like, it's, it's very complex. But when you think about that, why are there fewer people doing that? What has happened into our brains that? Because a lot of the famous business leaders, that was part of it, is seeing a network, seeing a, seeing the bigger picture, I guess. That's sort of the old version of it.
29:51 Speaker 00 Here's how I think this is going to play out. And this is why I'm optimistic for those of us who want something different and, and want more power with to and within.
30:02 Speaker 00 Systems in order to survive, whether they're cellular systems or organizational systems, team systems, have to have permeable boundaries. And they need permeable boundaries for feedback to flow in and out.
30:14 Kara Swisher? Sure, yeah.
30:15 Speaker 00 When boundaries become impermeable, which you're seeing across the tech world, especially right now, systems become self-referencing.
30:22 Kara Swisher? Mm-hmm.
30:23 Speaker 00 Like, we just are by ourselves.
30:28 Kara Swisher? Right, or with enablers that agree, violently agree with us, right?
30:32 Speaker 00 Right, right.
30:33 Kara Swisher? Which is tech people to a T.
30:34 Speaker 00 Right, and so impermeable systems that are self-referencing.
30:37 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
30:38 Speaker 00 Are we great? I think we are great. Well, I think we're great too. Those impermeable boundaries, the step after self-referencing becomes atrophy.
30:50 Kara Swisher? Right, but you call it armor. You said the various defense mechanisms that leaders use to avoid doing that. So according to your research, it's the main impediment to strong and effective leadership. People who are hardwired to self-protect, it's very difficult to let go of armor. And you've talked to a lot of leaders. How do you get them to put down their armor?
31:08 Speaker 00 It's really interesting. I hypothesized early when we started this research on leadership, 17, 18 years ago, that the biggest barrier to courageous leadership was fear. I was wrong. And in fact, some of the most courageous leaders that we interviewed, political leaders, NGO leaders, corporate leaders, when I said, here's my hypothesis, they said, listen, if you're going to put together a list of daring leaders who are not afraid, don't put me on it, because I wake up afraid.
31:33 Kara Swisher? Mm-hmm.
31:34 Speaker 00 I go to bed afraid. I'm afraid every day. And I was like, but what I learned is it's not fear that gets in the way of being brave, it's armor. When we're afraid, what armor do we put on to self-protect? And so the way we help, you know, over the last six years, we've taken 165,000 leaders through Dare to Lead, 45 countries. The quickest way to have people understand who they are when they're afraid or feeling vulnerable is to have them identify their armor. And it's a really painful exercise. So for me, I micromanage, I get perfectionistic, and I get completely overly decisive. So if we're, if we're in a meeting, I'll be like, and I get fearful.
32:20 Speaker 00 I don't get analysis paralysis. I say, shut it down, move her to this team. Don't do this reinvest here. Then I'm like, shit, I think I'm afraid. Don't do any of those things. And my team's always like, we don't write anything down when you're like this. You know, like we don't, don't worry, we're not, we're not moving on anything when you go into the space because we know you're under the line. So I think identifying the armor, if you're really ballsy, you can ask someone that loves you.
32:47 Speaker 00 Who am I when I'm afraid?
32:49 Kara Swisher? Ah, interesting, interesting. Yeah. I ignore things.
32:53 Speaker 00 Oh, you do?
32:54 Kara Swisher? Pretend they aren't happening.
32:55 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
32:55 Kara Swisher? I just, and then they change like.
32:58 Speaker 00 You outweigh them.
33:00 Kara Swisher? I do. I'm like, huh? Like someone says something like, I don't know. I don't know. Huh? Like that kind of thing.
33:06 Speaker 00 Oh, I like it. It's a skill set.
33:08 Kara Swisher? Yeah, it works. It actually is a very good skill set. And with the fear thing, it's interesting because people do put up armor either armor. You can armor fear with fear, actually. I was talking to my daughter and she was scared of something that wasn't scary. And I said, it's okay to be scary. Some things are scary. You should be fine with it. You should be fine with it. And then I taught her my famous line, which is the darkest afraid of me when she was scared of the dark. I'm like, the darkest, and she laughed and it was fine. But one of the things that that I think is difficult, that we sort of we bleach out of kids is fear of the dark, fear of it's okay to feel those like you're not, most parents go, don't be scared. Like, don't be like, that's the thing I've said as a parent many times, don't be scared of that.
33:49 Kara Swisher? Or this week, my daughter was scared of, she loves all the music from K-pop Demon Hunters, loves it, but can't watch the movie. That scares her. So it's a really interesting problem because she loves it so much, but can't watch it because she's so scared, which is somewhat.
34:04 Speaker 00 But I think you just said something that's really important. It's in its, I'm always cautious to draw, to draw lines between parenting and leadership because I don't want to infantilize adults. But some things just hold, which is it's okay to be afraid. Just don't be an asshole to other people when you're in fear, especially if you have power over those people. If you have some kind of influence over their jobs or their pay or their job security, like, somebody asked me in an interview, I think it was Dan Harris, I can't remember, but they said, if you wanted to go back to yourself in your early twenties, what would you say to yourself?
34:46 Speaker 00 I think what I would say to myself is it's okay to be afraid.
34:52 Speaker 00 Watch it because you're going to become scary when you're scared.
34:55 Kara Swisher? Ah, that's a good line.
34:57 Speaker 00 Yeah, and I can become scary when I'm scared. But I grew up in a family where you could always be angry. Anger was always okay. You could never be afraid. And you could never be in pain, have your feelings hurt.
35:14 Kara Swisher? Well, anger is scared.
35:16 Speaker 00 Right, anger is scared and anger is having your feelings hurt. But the expression of that was only, the only thing allowed for that is you can be pissed off. And so when I ask a group of leaders, how many of you find it easier to be pissed off than hurt?
35:31 Kara Swisher? Yes.
35:31 Speaker 00 Every hand goes up.
35:33 Kara Swisher? Right, especially men, they don't want to be.
35:35 Speaker 00 Oh, men and women.
35:37 Kara Swisher? Right.
35:37 Speaker 00 Men and women.
35:38 Kara Swisher? Well, women can't and men feel uncomfortable.
35:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, because for women, I cannot fulfill every shitty stereotype you have about me. That jeopardizes my ambition and my career.
35:49 Kara Swisher? Right, I've heard from so many women leaders, especially political ones, I can't do that, men can.
35:54 Speaker 00 Right, oh, yeah.
35:55 Kara Swisher? And sometimes, but sometimes I'm like, come on, just do it anyway. Like, and they're like, we're gonna lose no matter what we do. Interestingly, I'm interviewing Kamala Harris this week live. And I think, I'm thinking about that a lot because she had to live in so many different paradigms, right? She was too tough, she was too tough. If she wasn't tough enough, she was not tough enough. You know what I mean? It's just like, all of them, did she say enough? Did she push enough? If she pushed, it's just an interesting question.
36:21 Speaker 00 Oh, I mean, it's, it's the classic double bind. And then you've got a woman, but you've got a black woman and a black Asian woman. So then you've got the double binds and the vices become so tight on both sides
36:36 Speaker 00 that the squeeze is death.
36:38 Kara Swisher? Yeah, right, it's, it's true, it's really hard. So every episode, we get an expert to send a guest a question.
36:43 Speaker 00 Oh, shit.
36:44 Kara Swisher? Let's hear yours, it's a good one, don't worry.
36:46 Speaker 04 Hi, Brene Brown. It's Bobby Brown here. You and I are both on book tours now, and I feel like we've been following each other. I hope we get to meet someday soon. My expert question for you is this. I'm a founder and entrepreneur who sold my first namesake brand to a very big corporation. I was often in a boardroom with a lot of men in suits who had a ton of opinions on what products we should launch to be competitive in the beauty market, and mostly how women feel. There was even one executive who told me, "No one wants to take beauty advice from a soccer mom." The problem was, I was a soccer mom, and I just didn't agree with him. Let me tell you, it was interesting times.
37:31 Speaker 04 Your new book is based on the work you've done in Fortune 500 companies and the conversations you're having with CEOs about how leadership styles need to change as we navigate through rapid and destructive change. I'm guessing you've been in a lot of corporate boardrooms with these same guys. And my question is, are you seeing any real change? Because I'm still seeing a lot of mansplaining. How are you hoping to shift this dynamic? And what kind of changes are you seeing that makes you feel optimistic about the leaders of the future? Thanks, Brene, and I'll see you on the book tour circuit.
38:07 Kara Swisher? I wanted to get a Brown.
38:08 Speaker 00 I mean, but wait, my whole face? Brought to you by Jones Road.
38:12 Kara Swisher? Me too.
38:13 Speaker 00 I'm like a huge fan.
38:15 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
38:16 Speaker 00 I mean...
38:17 Kara Swisher? She was talking about Estee Lauder there, where they started to take over her brand, her name, actually.
38:21 Speaker 00 Yeah, Bobby Brown, of course. And then that "no compete" was like, oh my God. I was so excited when Jones Road came out, because I was like, thank God, a woman at the helm of stuff that women wear.
38:31 Kara Swisher? Right, which is what her original company was.
38:33 Speaker 00 And I mean, raise your hand if you've ever been a soccer mom.
38:36 Kara Swisher? Mm-hmm. Yes, me too.
38:38 Speaker 00 Right. So, I'm still in those rooms on occasion.
38:44 Speaker 00 You know, it's interesting that because in strong ground, I really take down the idea of executive presence and say, you know, I don't know, that is really covert, often covert, language for diminishing the talents of women, people of color, introverts, shy people, people who process longer. I am hopeful because I do see that the best leaders among us, across gender, across race, understand that the key to innovation and impact, revenue
39:28 Speaker 00 growth, is productive challenge on teams. And those leaders, despite their discomfort, want to be surrounded by different ideas and different people who challenge and represent the market segments that they serve in different ways. Those are the best of our leaders. Has this new administration given a green light to returning to old ways of working? The command and control. The command and control. And the, and look, if you do anything with this clip, make sure that this is hyphenated. Don't take these words apart from each other. White,
40:07 Speaker 00 male, power, over. Not white, male, power, with. There are tons of great white men leaders that are saying power, with, productive challenge, inclusivity. But a very specific model of power, which is white, hyphen, male, hyphen, power, hyphen, over, is not good for growth, revenue, impact, or innovation.
40:39 Kara Swisher? But it's easier.
40:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's definitely easier. That's the definition of privilege.
40:45 Kara Swisher? But you said you felt optimistic. She was asking, what make, what, what are you seeing? Give me an example that makes you feel optimistic about future leaders.
40:53 Speaker 00 I'm, I'm seeing leaders across multiple different industries across the world, having the option to return to a way of leading that's in the zeitgeist right now and saying, I'm not doing that.
41:08 Kara Swisher? Right.
41:08 Speaker 00 Not for moral reasons. Because it's bad business.
41:12 Kara Swisher? Right, even if it might be personally satisfying.
41:14 Speaker 00 Yeah, even if it's easier for me.
41:16 Kara Swisher? But interestingly enough, speaking of this masculine energy, the values you write about, like vulnerability and empathy are often coded as feminine in our society. But a lot of, say, tech CEOs right now are invested in performative masculinity. Same thing with Pete Hegseth's speech to the military. It was all about looks and manliness, and which means only one thing to me is that it's very small on Pete Hegseth. But Mark Zuckerberg telling Joe Rogan that he wants more masculine energy in corporate America is the obvious example. It goes beyond that. Elon Musk talked about so-called civilizational suicidal empathy, the idea that excessive compassion undermines societal cohesion, values and security. From us' point of view, the West has become too accepting and empathetic, and it's a weakness. Talk about, you know, it's, a lot of it right now comes from tech.
42:01 Speaker 00 Yeah. I'm not going to pretend to understand the smallness from which this comes. I, I, you know, what I can say is empathy is a very nuanced thing. And I think there, for me, there are two explanations why you'd be anti-empathy. One, if you want to hurt people and you don't want any collective pushback, I think empathy would be a problem. Two, I think there's two different kinds of empathy as we think about it in social science. There's cognitive empathy and affective empathy. You call me and you say, Shit, I'm in a hard place. Here's what's going on.
42:43 Speaker 00 And I listen and I connect with what you're saying. I reflect it back to you. You feel seen and heard and believed. And I not, for one second, I don't take on your emotion. I just let you know you're not alone. I see you. I believe you and I understand what it is.
43:00 Kara Swisher? Right.
43:00 Speaker 00 It's, that, that is actually the frickin' source code for democracy.
43:05 Kara Swisher? Right, right. And that is a classic psychiatrist thing, right?
43:08 Speaker 00 Well, it's just, it's cognitive empathy. Every, it's, everybody can do it to everybody. You, you say to your daughter, I really, I love these, this music and I really want to watch it, but I'm scared. And you say, enjoy the music and it's okay to be scared of it. And when you're ready, you can watch it. But enjoy the music. There's nothing wrong. It's probably exactly what you said.
43:25 Kara Swisher? Except now I'm hearing it every single day, five or seven times a day, but go ahead.
43:29 Speaker 00 That's, that's the mom, that's the mom tax.
43:33 Kara Swisher? If I hear take down one more time.
43:34 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah, no, that's the mom tax. Yeah.
43:36 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
43:36 Speaker 00 If you called me and you said you were having a hard time and then I'm like, tell me all about it. And then I start feeling it with you and then you're sad, I'm sad. That's affective empathy and it's not productive. It causes burnout. It actually ends up causing compassion fatigue, but two different kinds of empathy.
43:54 Kara Swisher? And then you get mad about talking to that person, right?
43:56 Speaker 00 Right, right. Now you're enmeshed. That's not empathy. That's enmeshment. I don't know where you end and I begin and now we're just both in the shithole. So that's not good. But I think the masculine energy,
44:10 Speaker 00 it just feels, it just feels really performative to me. I don't even know. I'm not a hundred percent convinced that they believe it or know what they're saying. And they're not just trying to pass the fidelity test. Like, I don't, I don't know, but I can.
44:26 Kara Swisher? Well, explain, what, when you watched, you watched the P. Texas thing. What did you think there?
44:29 Speaker 00 I actually.
44:31 Kara Swisher? That's a leadership moment, right?
44:33 Speaker 00 I don't, this is a really painful, I have not talked about this. Like, this is a really painful thing for me. I think over the past 15 years, I've done a ton of work with the military and all pro bono, just as part of what I feel like is my, just something I care about.
44:52 Kara Swisher? Your duty. It's your duty.
44:53 Speaker 00 It is. It's just, I mean, I think, and
44:58 Speaker 00 I have a lot of conversations with who I believe are amazing military leaders.
45:02 Kara Swisher? There's many.
45:03 Speaker 00 Yeah. Oh, there's so many. I probably can't even engage in a conversation.
45:09 Speaker 00 Where I joke about it because I find it to be very heartbreaking.
45:13 Kara Swisher? Yeah, although they weren't buying it either, Brene.
45:16 Speaker 00 No, no, they weren't. And, and, and look, there are great military leaders and there are dangerous military leaders. There are great corporate leaders and dangerous corporate leaders. There are great NGO leaders and dangerous, great faith leaders, dangerous faith leaders.
45:31 Kara Swisher? Absolutely.
45:32 Speaker 00 The industry in which you work does not define your, your, your goodness. Who you are every day in a room, when you have more power over other people, that defines who you are. And so I can't joke about that because I find it heartbreaking. And because I've done so much work with the military, I find it as a citizen to be frightening.
46:02 Kara Swisher? It is, and at the same time, it was a leadership fail. Like, I don't think it worked. I think it was a performative clown. Like, I don't, I don't think it, it sunk in, I would say. I think most people across the spectrum had the same reaction, including the Trump people, by the way. I don't think anyone thought that worked.
46:19 Speaker 00 You got to remember, if, if you just want the easiest source code for understanding leadership and evaluating leadership, there's a very simple question.
46:32 Speaker 00 When you look at a leader, is it clear to you that they know their job is to serve the people they lead and not be served by them?
46:40 Kara Swisher? Yep.
46:43 Kara Swisher? We'll be back in a minute.
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49:29 Kara Swisher? One of the things you mentioned humanity, human spirit, human experience throughout the book, and you emphasize the importance of taking that human-centered approach to leadership. The same time, lots of CEOs, CTOs in every industry are feeling the need or pressure to incorporate AI into their organizations, which is something you also talked about. Talk about the rapid adoption of AI in the workplace and how leaders can deploy it without sacrificing the human connection, you say, is foundational. Let me just read what you wrote about AI. "I think we're witnessing one of the most dangerous unresolved time paradoxes in modern history when it comes to AI, and it's basically framed like this in the United States. We can't slow down and worry about ethics and safety. We need to beat China. The risks and rewards of putting untested technology into the market have never been
50:14 Kara Swisher? more serious, and we're not seeing the level of daring leadership we need to address these paradoxes related to AI." So talk about what daring leadership would look like and about what's happening right now in this space, because it does remove human connection in a lot of ways.
50:29 Speaker 00 I have a lot of thoughts on AI. I have a lot of thoughts from the research, and I have a lot of, I had a really hard personal experience with it. I'll talk about the research first, which is, you know, I think about Lynda Hill from Harvard, who has studied digital transformation for decades. My favorite quote by her is, "The most difficult part of digital transformation is never the technology, it's always the human beings who are using the technology." And so, one of the things that scares me right now is the platitude, "Don't worry about our relevance, what makes us human will keep us relevant." We are terrible at what makes us human. We are terrible right now at discernment, empathy, connection, courage, because it's,
51:14 Speaker 00 you know, Welchian leadership taught us 30 years ago.
51:19 Kara Swisher? This is Jack Welch.
51:20 Speaker 00 Yes. What makes us human is a liability to growth, revenue, and performance.
51:23 Kara Swisher? Yes, so he's one of the most damaging leaders.
51:26 Speaker 00 Right, right. And so, we kind of bought that, even though there have never been data, ever, to support it.
51:33 Kara Swisher? Yeah, sounds good.
51:34 Speaker 00 It sounds right.
51:35 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
51:36 Speaker 00 So, right now, we find ourselves in a situation where we're not good at what uniquely is us. So, we need to skill up and relearn and unlearn on that. I think...
51:48 Speaker 00 The idea that we're not using AI, it's happening to us in the workforce is killing agency. People have no sense of agency because leaders are not, you know, show me your AI investment, and I'm going to ask two questions. Tell me exactly how this is aligned with your business strategy and show me the line item where the human investment on using AI is proportional to the tech investment. Right. It doesn't exist right now. We'll get there, but we won't get there until there's wasted billions of dollars and traumatized workforce. Right. For me personally, we did something really interesting.
52:32 Speaker 00 I'll be curious what you think about this. For this research in Strong Ground, we ran a parallel literature review process. We did an entire literature review on AI across four different platforms. Then we did a traditional literature review with the research team that was in the stacks doing all the old school stuff. Then we hired a group of college interns. We called them the hallucination hunters. Mm hmm. And their job was to take apart the lit review done by AI. Seventy percent of the citations were hallucinations in the AI lit review. That's not a surprise. I mean, wait, it would say like 2024 Swisher, comma, K and Brown, comma, B Harvard Business
53:16 Speaker 00 Review, volume 24, AI analysis on manufacturing industry. I mean, it was so legit, but that did not exist. It seemed legit. Yeah, that did not exist. Mm hmm. It would take a quote and attribute it to a scholar. And that scholar ended up like being Reddit user at I like my bike.
53:43 Kara Swisher? Ah, wow, yeah.
53:44 Speaker 00 It's very sycophantic.
53:47 Kara Swisher? Yes, very. That's the problem. I mean, it's not dependable. Certain things it is. Certain things that are like, what is this? What is this tick? What is this leave? What is this? Typically, they get it right.
53:57 Speaker 00 Oh, and I use it for that. Yeah.
53:59 Kara Swisher? Yeah, yeah. The utility stuff works, the stuff that requires analysis or any kind of reporting, as you would say, is problematic. So do you see the rush to CEOs doing this as a big problem of leadership? Is it just kick it down the road, or this will save me money, or anything else?
54:17 Speaker 00 Oh, I think it's more simple than that. I think it's like, hey, wait, look over there. Johnny's got a new toy.
54:25 Kara Swisher? Right.
54:25 Speaker 00 And my board is breathing down my neck because I don't have that new toy. And there's no thoughtful adoption tied inextricably to business strategy and leveling up the people who are going to use it in effective ways. And I'll tell you the other thing that's really weird. Have you, like, I use it. I love it.
54:49 Speaker 00 But I use it for like weird things, like probably more utility things. There are three times in my life where I was so disoriented and kind of this weird, depressed anxiety feeling that I had a hard time getting out of bed. One was 28 years ago when I got sober.
55:08 Speaker 00 I thought sobriety was going to bring massive clarity to me, but it really jacked me up for like two or three weeks before I understood, wow, there's no clarity because I don't know who I am and that's what I'm doing this for. Two, I took a social media sabbatical a couple of years ago for a year. It changed my life. It was so disorienting.
55:26 Kara Swisher? Yeah.
55:26 Speaker 00 It was great. I did about 60 days of heavy AI use. I felt like shit.
55:37 Speaker 00 I felt hollowed out.
55:40 Kara Swisher? Mm hmm.
55:41 Speaker 00 And Kate Crawford and I did a talk on AI at Aspen Ideas Festival.
55:45 Kara Swisher? Amazing.
55:45 Speaker 00 I I love her. Do you like her work?
55:47 Kara Swisher? Yes, I do. I love Kate.
55:48 Speaker 00 Yeah, and I think I learned about her actually from you. And I think I heard about Atlas of AI from you and I read it. And when she and I did this talk, I told her, I was like, I felt hollowed out, like empty on the inside. And it lingered past my usage of the instrument. And she said, it's interesting that you say hollowed out because AI is an extraction technology. We extract minerals from the earth. We extract wa- extract water. We extract people's data. It's an extraction technology. So there's something poetic about the fact that when you use it for long periods of time.
56:30 Kara Swisher? You feel hollowed out.
56:30 Speaker 00 You feel hollowed out.
56:32 Kara Swisher? Well, one of the things that I was just noting was years ago, the first technologies of the internet were push technology. Push stuff at you, right? And it was too much for the bandwidth at the time. And so then it became a pull technology as you asked for something, it gave it to you. Right now, AI is a push technology.
56:48 Speaker 00 God, that's interesting.
56:49 Kara Swisher? Pushes. Think about that. There was a company, look it up, called PointCast. And it was it was the first hot company, one of the first, and it just collapsed because the bandwidth was too much of them pushing. Or think about Clockwork Orange. They're flooding you with information. That's it's just as bad. A desert is better than a flood, really, in many ways. It's an information flood. So let me get back to actually leadership. You said earlier, as part of your job, you end up in the room with a lot of these CEOs. And I know you do talk to a lot of tech CEOs. I'm just using them because they're the top CEOs these days. Obviously, I do, too. Were you surprised by the kowtowing, given these are the most powerful people and richest people on earth?
57:29 Kara Swisher? At the White House dinner, the leading luminaries took turns going around grovelling before him as the cameras rolled. You've worked with these leaders. And again, I'm only using them because they're the current top leaders with the top companies. Did you expect this kind of grovelling behaviour? Because you can be arrogant all you want, but it was what they become is more grovelling in a weird way. What is the North Star for CEOs? If there's North Star is shareholder value, everything else comes in second.
57:58 Speaker 00 I think it's a temporal decision. I think it's a time-based decision.
58:03 Kara Swisher? Okay.
58:04 Speaker 00 Um, even if your North Star is shareholder value and you ultimately see your sole responsibility being stock price, value, market cap. I'm wondering if, and I don't know the answer. If these folks are taking a long enough view, even if that's your North Star.
58:35 Speaker 00 I don't know the answer to it. I
58:36 Kara Swisher? I've had one CEO say, actually, it's the worst thing you can do for shareholder value over the long term. That was the only one who said it to me, which was really interesting. And others are like, I have to do it kind of thing, but it has to do with humiliation too. Right. And you wrote a lot about humiliation in your book. And according to Dr. Linda Harding, whose research you include in the book, humiliation may be the most toxic social dynamic of our age. You write about shame and humiliation are not effective tools, especially around social justice and cruelty. Obviously, and humiliation are part of Trump's leadership style. But some on the left have weaponized shame on social medias.
59:13 Speaker 00 Oh, my God. Yeah.
59:14 Kara Swisher? So talk about, I mean, it's more irritating than what Trump is doing, right? His is very quite serious, I think, but it's the same, it's the same coin. Like this idea of humiliation as a tool in American politics, in companies. It can infect the way leaders are presumably.
59:32 Speaker 00 This was one of the biggest change, unlearn, relearn moments in my career. Because for a long time, we, we've always taught the four self-conscious affects. Shame, guilt, humiliation, and embarrassment. Shame, I am bad. Guilt, I did something bad. Shame's a focus on self. Guilt is a focus on behavior. Super important difference, the outcomes for shame-based people. You get an F back on your test, you say to yourself, God, I'm so stupid. That's shame. Guilt, you get an F back on your test and you say, man, going out last night and partying was really stupid. I should have stayed home and studied. Then you've got humiliation and embarrassment. And we always thought humiliation was less dangerous than shame.
1:00:14 Speaker 00 Because let's say somebody says, your leader at work in front of your colleague says, "God, Brene, you're such an idiot."
1:00:22 Kara Swisher? Right.
1:00:22 Speaker 00 If my self-talk is, "I'm such an idiot, I'm such an idiot," that's shame. But if my self-talk is, "Screw her, I don't deserve that," that's humiliation. Someone attacked who I am, but it was undeserved. We always thought that was less dangerous than shame.
1:00:39 Kara Swisher? Right.
1:00:40 Speaker 00 Until like probably the last five or six years, when we've done these in-depth studies on humiliation, where studies of school shooters, violent criminals, humiliation's role in violence. And so when we start using humiliation and shame as tools, it's fundamentally dehumanizing. And I don't care whether it's from the left or the right, it's dangerous.
1:01:07 Kara Swisher? Right, as a leadership tool and obviously political violence has resulted and all kinds of violence.
1:01:13 Speaker 00 All kinds of violence. And that's, you know, when you look at dehumanization and you think about, you know, dehumanization researchers talk about moral inclusion, that very close to us is this idea of here are all these people that are morally included in what I think it means to be human. And to hurt people within our circle of moral inclusion is actually, we're not neurobiologically wired for it. To kill, rape, assault, attack people whom we believe are morally included in humanity for us is fundamentally dangerous for us and for them.
1:01:54 Speaker 00 So what happens, and this, this happens at the hands of very expert leaders.
1:02:01 Speaker 00 Is we think, I want to hurt them, or we want others to hurt them. So how can we push them beyond moral inclusion? To be outside of the circle of people we see as human and deserving.
1:02:13 Kara Swisher? Mm hmm.
1:02:14 Speaker 00 So if you're morally excluded.
1:02:17 Kara Swisher? It's easier.
1:02:18 Speaker 00 It's easier.
1:02:19 Kara Swisher? That's classic. In a recent interview, you referred to the person you hate the most as someone who's in politics. Let's assume it's not Pete Hegseth that you're referring to, Trump. But he's someone who seems to reject most, if not all, of the findings in your book. He leads by appealing to negative emotions, primarily feel his power is very clearly coercive control, to borrow a phrase from management theory pioneer Mary Parker Follett. In Strong Ground, you quote from her 1924 book where she wrote, coercive power is the curse of the universe, coactive power, the enrichment and advancement of every human soul. So talk about that. And what effect does his style of leadership have on us, on our broader culture? And then alternatively, Democrats are effectively leaderless right now.
1:03:02 Kara Swisher? Whatever you think of minority leader Chuck Schumer or House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, they're not inspiring the masses. So what would be the key characteristics of a successful Democratic presidential nominee? Or a Republican one who's going to counter Trump? But that's a more difficult situation because they seem to like his style of leadership at this moment.
1:03:24 Speaker 00 I think what I'm looking for, and I can't speak for the citizenry, but I think what would be very appealing to me, and I think the majority of people, is someone is a leader who has the courage to put policies into effect that they have to follow. Right now, we have built in this country, politicians on both sides are creating laws and policies.
1:03:52 Speaker 00 In a very careless way, because they have no intention of following them themselves. There's one group of rules for the citizenry and one group of rules for the politicians. And as long as that remains the truth, I don't think either side is going to be successful in making this country what it can be. I mean, I, I believe in the democratic ideal. I believe in the experiment of democracy. I believe in a multicultural democracy. I'm not sure that that is the goal on the far right or the far left. I'm not sure that either side, on the extremes, a standard deviation out, is interested in democracy as an ideal.
1:04:37 Speaker 00 I really don't think that's true. And so, to me, I don't think character can be underestimated. I don't think truth telling and intellect. I mean, if you go back to, I was able to interview Ken Burns for the new 12-part special on the American Revolution, and I was so struck by this idea from the founding fathers and mothers, because as it turns out, there was a collective group of mothers right behind those fathers. I was so struck by the idea that the, the core pillars of democracy are virtue and education.
1:05:15 Speaker 00 I think the citizenry deserves honest, strong, disciplined leaders, accountable leaders.
1:05:28 Speaker 00 And I think if you put that in front of us, we're going to support it wildly.
1:05:35 Kara Swisher? So, at the most basic level, this is my last question. You've written a book about being a good and decent person. That's what you just described. You know, it says leaders are grounded, open, honest, empathetic, instead of acting like defensive jerks who try to scare people into submission. They'll get better results. And yet, as we discussed, there are countless examples of leaders in business politics who aren't honest and decent, don't, but are still tremendously successful. You're a researcher, so give us the data. Why is being good and decent leader actually more effective or successful than the alternative?
1:06:07 Speaker 00 I've been thinking about this a lot, especially given the climate that we're in globally. This is gonna sound so naive.
1:06:14 Kara Swisher? That's okay.
1:06:16 Speaker 00 I think it depends on how you define success. And I don't really believe in
1:06:27 Speaker 00 my heart that the majority of people want to hurt other people, want to leave the world worse than they found it. I think people care about their legacy. I think people care. I mean, you look at Trump, who's like, you know, just really crazy about the Nobel Peace Prize. Like, I think people want to be good. So if you define success as meeting a metric that could be shareholder value, but also being a good human being to other human beings, I don't think the style of leadership we're seeing right now in this administration is going to do that. So I think by
1:07:12 Speaker 00 the metric that really matters to the majority of people in the world, if you think that you have to choose between being a wholehearted leader and driving growth and revenue and impact, if you think that's the choice, you are missing skills. Because it's not, it's not, it's a false dichotomy.
1:07:31 Kara Swisher? Right. And do you imagine they will return? That there will be a backlash against that? Which is, you're pushing here a different kind of leader.
1:07:40 Speaker 00 Yes. I think courage wins in the end.
1:07:45 Kara Swisher? Vulnerable courage again.
1:07:47 Speaker 00 Well, there's no courage without vulnerability, so I'm for it.
1:07:52 Kara Swisher? Brene, thank you very much.
1:07:53 Speaker 00 Thank you, Kara.
1:07:54 Kara Swisher? This is a fascinating book. It's well worth reading. I, you know, I kept reading and going, I wish people would behave like this. And then they never fail to disappoint.
1:08:02 Speaker 00 But there's so many people who are, so I think that's
1:08:04 Kara Swisher? That's true.
1:08:04 Speaker 00 That's the hope.
1:08:05 Kara Swisher? 100%. But it does, it feels like we're in the Empire Strikes Back.
1:08:09 Speaker 00 Oh, we are definitely in the Empire Strikes Back. But we know how that saga ends.
1:08:13 Kara Swisher? Badly for everybody.
1:08:17 Kara Swisher? Stick with Star Trek. Everything is good. Everything is good in Star Trek.
1:08:21 Speaker 00 Oh, it is better. Yeah.
1:08:26 Kara Swisher? Today's show was produced by Christian Castor-Rosell, Kateri Yokum, Michelle Aloy, Megan Burney, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Bradley Sylvester and Najib Amini. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already fond of the show, you are good and decent and vulnerable. If not, the K-Pop Demon Hunter soundtrack will take you down. You'll understand once you listen to it. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.
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