Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

The courage to be vulnerable is not about winning or losing, it’s about the courage to show up when you can’t predict or control the outcome.

The definition of vulnerability as the emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure

What I’ve found through research is that trust is built in very small moments, which I call “sliding door” moments, after the movie Sliding Doors.4 In any interaction, there is a possibility of connecting with your partner or turning away from your partner.

Stephen Covey’s sage advice still stands: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Courage is contagious. To scale daring leadership and build courage in teams and organizations, we have to cultivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations, and whole hearts are the expectation, and armor is not necessary or rewarded.

In the past, jobs were about muscles, now they’re about brains, but in the future they’ll be about the heart.1 —MINOUCHE SHAFIK, director, London School of Economics

THE MOMENT THE universe put the Roosevelt quote in front of me, three lessons came into sharp focus. The first one is what I call “the physics of vulnerability.” It’s pretty simple: If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall. Daring is not saying “I’m willing to risk failure.” Daring is saying “I know I will eventually fail, and I’m still al

great example of rumbling with vulnerability. The leader is naming some of the unsaid emotions and creating what we call a safe container by asking the team what they need to feel open and safe in the conversation.

Our research led to a very clear, very hopeful finding: Courage is a collection of four skill sets that can be taught, observed, and measured. The four skill sets are: Rumbling with Vulnerability Living into Our Values Braving Trust Learning to Rise