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

Brown’s research proves vulnerability enables courage, connection, and innovation—providing frameworks for the human side of technical leadership where psychological safety determines success.

Who This Is For

Managers building psychologically safe teams. Executives driving cultural transformation. Team leaders navigating difficult conversations. Entrepreneurs creating authentic organizations. Anyone recognizing that technical excellence alone doesn’t create high-performing teams.

Key Takeaways

• Rumbling with Vulnerability: practice showing up authentically in uncertainty without guarantees of outcome, creating space for difficult conversations by modeling openness about mistakes, fears, and learning edges rather than projecting invulnerability.
• Living Into Values: identify and operationalize two core values with specific behaviors, using them as decision-making criteria and accountability measures to ensure stated values align with demonstrated actions across all organizational levels.
• BRAVING Trust Framework: build trust systematically through Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault (confidentiality), Integrity, Non-judgment, and Generosity—making trust tangible and discussable rather than assuming it exists or emerges organically.
• Clear is Kind: replace vague feedback and avoiding hard conversations with specific, honest communication about expectations, performance gaps, and consequences—recognizing that withholding truth to avoid discomfort creates bigger problems downstream.
• Learning to Rise: develop process for recovering from setbacks through recognizing emotional responses, challenging stories we tell ourselves about situations, and writing new narratives based on curiosity and data rather than assumptions and self-protection.