Houston Southard
a name that looks so fake you'll care just as little to learn it's not
dare to lead
brene brown
Introduction
Leader - anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.
behaviors that get in the way of organizations
Avoiding tough conversations. Choosing our own comfort over hard conversations is the epitome of privilege, and it corrodes trust and moves us away from meaningful and lasting change.
The Heart of Daring Leadership
Embrace the suck - A rumble is a discussion, conversation, or meeting defined by a commitment to lean into vulnerability, to stay curious and generous, to stick with the messy middle of problem identification and solving, to take a break and circle back when necessary, to be fearless in owning our parts, and, as psychologist Harriet Lerner teaches, to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.
Be nice to yourself because who you are is how you lead
Feeling fear isn't the obstacle, but how we respond to it.
Section 1 - The Moment and the Myths
Vulnerability is not winning or losing. It’s having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome
If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I’m not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their lives but who will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgment at those who dare greatly. Their only contributions are criticism, cynicism, and fearmongering. If you’re criticizing from a place where you’re not also putting yourself on the line, I’m not interested in what you have to say.
We have to avoid the cheap-seats feedback and stay armor-free.
Square Squad: Get a one-inch by one-inch piece of paper and write down the names of the people whose opinions of you matter. It needs to be small because it forces you to edit. Fold it and put it in your wallet. Then take ten minutes to reach out to those people. "How do I act when I'm feeling vulnerable?"
James Smith & Sons”—the famous umbrella shop that’s been around since the early 1800s
6 Myths of Vulnerability
Vulnerability is weakness
I don't do vulnerability - "When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability"
I can go it alone - "we don’t derive strength from our rugged individualism, but rather from our collective ability to plan, communicate, and work together. Our neural, hormonal, and genetic makeup support interdependence over independence."
You can engineer the uncertainty and discomfort out of vulnerability - I’m talking about relational vulnerability, not systemic vulnerability.
Can you imagine how hard it can be to wrap your brain around the critical role vulnerability plays in leadership when you’re rewarded for eliminating vulnerability every day
Trust comes before vulnerability
Use sentence stems in training - I grew up believing that vulnerability is:
Give people marbles when they take the time to remember stuff about you.
trust is earned in big moments and through really grand gestures, not the more simple things like a friend remembering small details in your life
For those who are unfamiliar with Gottman’s work on marriages, he was able to predict an outcome of divorce with 90 percent accuracy based on responses to a series of questions. His team screened for what he called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt, with contempt being the most damning in a romantic partnership
Trust is the stacking and layering of small moments and reciprocal vulnerability over time. Trust and vulnerability grow together, and to betray one is to destroy both
Vulnerability is disclosure
psychological safety makes it possible to give tough feedback and have difficult conversations without the need to tiptoe around the truth. Thus psychological safety is a taken-for-granted belief about how others will respond when you ask a question, seek feedback, admit a mistake, or propose a possibly wacky idea
What does support from me look like?” When you put this question into practice, expect to see people struggling to come up with examples of supportive behaviors. We’re much more accustomed to not asking for exactly what we need and then being resentful or disappointed that we didn’t get it. Also, most of us can tell you what support does not look like more easily than we can come up with what it does look like
Say more
Stealth intention - self-protection need that lurks beneath the surface and often drives behavior outside our values. I can protect myself from rejection, shame, judgment, and people turning away from me and thinking I’m a bad person
Stealth expectation - a desire or expectation that exists outside our awareness and typically includes a dangerous combination of fear and magical thinking. They won’t turn away from me and think I’m a bad person.
To feel is to be vulnerable. Believing that vulnerability is weakness is believing that feeling is weakness.
We are not necessarily thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think.”
Section 2 - The Call to Courage
Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. Feeding people half-truths or bullshit to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind.
People armor themselves because they think they're not around others who we think think they're enough. But it's easy to feel enough once you realize you're in the same boat as everyone else. No one thinks they're enough. Once you know that you can have courage because you're always looking at a bunch of deer in headlights. They're just deer with shoulder pads and shields.
Permission slips in meetings.
Brene Brown Netflix
Turn and learn - have both parties in a group write down how long they think it will take to complete a project them have them share their experience with the group.
Section 3 - The Armory
Healthy striving is self-focused: How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused: What will people think? Perfectionism is a hustle.
Why do we insist on dress-rehearsing tragedy in moments of deep joy? Because joy is the most vulnerable emotion we feel.
According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc., 70 percent of the estimated 14.8 million Americans who use illegal drugs are employed, and drug abuse costs employers $81 billion annually.
We cannot selectively numb emotion. If we numb the dark, we numb the light. If we take the edge off pain and discomfort, we are, by default, taking the edge off joy, love, belonging, and the other emotions that give meaning to our lives.
Again, we can anesthetize with a whole bunch of stuff including alcohol, drugs, food, sex, relationships, money, work, caretaking, gambling, staying busy, affairs, chaos, shopping, planning, perfectionism, constant change, and the Internet.
“Leave it to a bunch of drunks in recovery to unlock the secrets of life.” Among them:
Wherever you go, there you are.
You’re only as sick as your secrets.
Easy does it.
One day at a time.
Live and let live.
To thine own self be true.
HALT: Don’t get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.
I basically became an anything-to-take-the-edge-off-aholic. But there are no specific programs for that, so I cobbled together a plan of meetings, a great therapist, and new spiritual practices that work for me.
In the end, the cure for numbing is developing tools and practices that allow you to lean into discomfort and renew your spirit.
In other words, seek things that bring you pleasure and avoid pain. Short-term vs. long-term
Shadow comforts can take any form….It’s not what you do; it’s why you do it that makes the difference. You can eat a piece of chocolate as a holy wafer of sweetness—a real comfort—or you can cram an entire chocolate bar into your mouth without even tasting it in a frantic attempt to soothe yourself—a shadow comfort.
Always knowing => always learning
Name the issue
Make learning curiosity skills a priority
Acknowledge and reward great questions and instances
we use cynicism and sarcasm as get-out-of-contributing-free cards.
Despair is the belief that tomorrow will be just like today
T—Who owns the task?
A—Do they have the authority to be held accountable?
S—Do we agree that they are set up for success (time, resources, clarity)?
C—Do we have a checklist of what needs to happen to accomplish the task?
Paint "Done" for me
The work of Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist, clinical researcher, and founder of the National Institute for Play, would argue that this lack of downtime, this lack of play, has a deleterious effect on our output in the office. In our desperate search for joy in our lives, we missed the memo: If we want to live a life of meaning and contribution, we have to become intentional about cultivating sleep and play. We have to let go of exhaustion, busyness, and productivity as status symbols and measures of self-worth. We are impressing no one.
You can never get enough of what you don’t need.”
Section 4 - Shame and Empathy
Researchers Tamara Ferguson, Heidi Eyre, and Michael Ashbaker have found that “unwanted identity” is one of the primary elicitors of shame. They explain that unwanted identities are characteristics that undermine our vision of our ideal selves.
Sick, unreliable, and undependable are huge unwanted identities for me.
The majority of shame researchers and clinicians agree that the difference between shame and guilt is best understood as the difference between “I am bad” and “I did something bad.”
Guilt = I did something bad.
Shame = I am bad.
Shame is not a compass for moral behavior. It’s much more likely to drive destructive, hurtful, immoral, and self-aggrandizing behavior than it is to heal it. Why? Because where shame exists, empathy is almost always absent. That’s what makes shame dangerous. The opposite of experiencing shame is experiencing empathy. The behavior that many of us find so egregious today is more about people being empathyless, not shameless.
We feel guilty when we hold up something we’ve done or failed to do against our values and find they don’t match up. It’s a psychologically uncomfortable feeling, but one that’s helpful. The discomfort of cognitive dissonance is what drives meaningful change. Shame, however, corrodes the very part of us that believes we can change and do better.
People believe they deserve their shame; they do not believe they deserve their humiliation.
Embarrassment is normally fleeting and can usually eventually be funny. It’s by far the least serious and detrimental of these emotions. The hallmark of embarrassment is that when we do something embarrassing, we don’t feel alone. We know other folks have done the same thing and, like a blush, the feeling will pass rather than define us.
So often, when someone is in pain, we’re afraid to say, “Yes, this hurts. Yes, this is a big deal. Yes, this sucks.” We think our job is to make things better, so we minimize the pain. But Suzanne didn’t minimize my pain. She had the courage to reflect back to me the truth of how I was feeling, which was that I was destroyed that I couldn’t be there for this big night for my daughter. She chose practicing empathy with me over her own comfort.
But empathy isn’t about fixing, it’s the brave choice to be with someone in their darkness—not to race to turn on the light so we feel better.
One of the signature mistakes with empathy is that we believe we can take our lenses off and look through the lenses of someone else. We can’t. Our lenses are soldered to who we are. What we can do, however, is honor people’s perspectives as truth even when they’re different from ours. That’s a challenge if you were raised in majority culture—white, straight, male, middle-class, Christian—and you were likely taught that your perspective is the correct perspective and everyone else needs to adjust their lens. Or, more accurately, you weren’t taught anything about perspective taking, and the default—My truth is the truth—is reinforced by every system and situation you encounter.
We cannot practice empathy if we need to be knowers; if we can’t be learners, we cannot be empathic. And, to be clear (and kind), if we need to be knowers empathy isn’t the only loss.
if you find yourself feeling incredibly judgmental about appearance, and you can’t figure out why, that’s a clue that it’s a hard issue for you.
This is an easy concept to understand, for one reason: The vast majority of us find it easier to be mad than hurt. Not only is it easier to express anger than it is to express pain, our culture is more accepting of anger. So the next time you’re shutting down or angry, ask yourself what lies beneath
Ruminating and getting stuck is as unhelpful as not noticing at all.
Everyone knows what that feels like—when you share something with someone that is personal and vulnerable, like a struggle—or even something exciting or happy—and you don’t feel heard, seen, or understood. It’s a sinking feeling, where you feel exposed and sometimes right on the edge of shame. The clinical term for that is empathic failure, though I prefer empathic miss, because it’s not quite as shaming.
Empathy Misses
Empathy vs. Sympathy
Empathy is feeling with people. Sympathy is feeling for them. Empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection. I always think of empathy as this sacred space where someone’s in a deep well, and they shout out from the bottom, “It’s dark and scary down here. I’m overwhelmed.”
The Gasp and Awe
You’re hoping your co-worker is going to say, “Oh, man, I’ve done that. It just sucks.” But instead, this person gasps and says, “Oh, God, I’d just die.” And then you’re rushing in to say, “No, it’s okay.” Suddenly, you need to make that person feel better.
The Mighty fall
The block and tackle
Who is that guy? We’ll kick his ass. Or report him!” That’s a huge empathic miss. I came to you because I’m in struggle about something, and you’re making it easy on yourself by refusing to sit in discomfort—you’re choosing instead to be pissed off at someone else or stand in judgment of me.
The boots and shovel
It's not that bad. Don’t make me uncomfortable.
If you think that's bad….
Competition tragedy.
When you think about those six types of empathy misses, are there one or two that shut you down?
What emotion comes up for you when your sharing meets one of these barriers, and how does that affect your connection with the person?
On the flip side, how do you rate your own empathic skill?
Are there one or two responses that you typically use that you need to change?
How do you practice self-compassion - Talk to yourself the way you’d talk to someone you love.
suffering and personal inadequacy is part of the shared human experience—something that we all go through rather than being something that happens to ‘me’ alone.” This is one of the foundations of empathy and one of the linchpins of the Me Too movement. The more we practice these conversations of connection, the more we learn that we are all connected—in both the good things and the bad
as the poet June Jordan wrote, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”