Brené and Adam Grant on Rewarding Effort With Time

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dare to Lead with Brené Brown

Episode: Brené and Adam Grant on Rewarding Effort With Time
Date: October 22, 2025
Host: Brené Brown
Guest: Adam Grant

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Overview

This episode is the finale of a six-part special series accompanying Brené Brown’s book Strong Ground. In conversation with renowned organizational psychologist Adam Grant, Brené unpacks the challenges of rewarding effort — especially when outcomes fall short — in settings of high complexity and instability. The discussion dives deep into the nuances of coaching, prioritization, decision-making, and leadership communication, with both hosts sharing candid reflections and actionable insights for leaders and organizations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Problem with Rewarding Effort Alone

• Adam’s NYT Op-Ed Origins ([02:31])

  • Adam describes how his experience as an MBA instructor led to his NYT op-ed “No, You Don’t Get an A for Effort.”
  • Students were upset their grades didn’t mirror their exertion. Adam notes:

    “We don’t grade effort, we grade excellence...I was really curious about why they expected to be rewarded for hard work alone as opposed to mastery.” ([02:52])

  • He traces the issue to a misapplication of Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset,” highlighting that praising only effort—disconnected from results—can reinforce ineffective strategies.

• Brené’s Perspective on Rewarding Effort

  • Brené agrees with Adam but rejects a binary approach:

    “If I see you really busting your ass ... and the ball’s not leaving the 50 yard line ... I’m not going to call that a touchdown ... [but] I am going to reward you with my time ... let’s talk about why the ball’s not moving.” ([05:24]-[08:04])

  • She identifies the easy (but less effective) solutions as either over-rewarding or ignoring effort.

• Coaching versus Judging

  • Adam concurs:

    “You’re just a judge, not a coach.” ([08:04])
    “If somebody’s putting in the energy and they’re not getting the result, then that’s the ideal moment for coaching.” ([08:34])

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2. Effort, Prioritization, and Organizational Clarity

• The Crisis of Prioritization

  • Brené observes that the biggest performance obstacle for leaders is not lack of effort, but lack of prioritization skills.

    “When we get underneath why there’s ... so much effort and no result ... the problem identification always lands on prioritization. The lack of prioritization skills.” ([10:16])

• Adam’s 2x2 from Jeff Bezos on Decision-Making ([12:07]-[14:50])

  • Adam recounts a pivotal conversation with Jeff Bezos, who frames prioritization along two axes:
    1. How consequential is the decision?
    2. How reversible is it?
  • Bezos focuses only on highly consequential and irreversible decisions; the rest receive delegated, fast, or flexible attention.

    “He said there’s only one quadrant ... I spend real time and energy on. It’s the highly consequential, irreversible decisions...” ([12:36])

• Leadership Cascading and Alignment

  • Brené points out that different organizational levels perceive consequence and reversibility differently, leading to misalignment.

    “If I’m in the C suite, I have a different understanding ... than if I report up to someone who reports up ... to the C suite.” ([15:14])

  • She reflects:

    “I have not shared with them what I believe is consequential and inconsequential and what’s reversible and not reversible. I do not think my team is aligned.” ([16:07])

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3. The Power of Reflection & Emotional Signals in Leadership

• The Impact of Leaders’ Emotional Reactions

  • Adam notes how offhand leader comments (or strong emotions) can distort team priorities:

    “People overweigh the offhand comments that leaders make. ... Is there a signal you sent that said this thing that’s inconsequential and reversible is actually really important to me?” ([17:39])

  • Brené admits:

    “I can be undisciplined in my emotional reactions ... therefore people are spending wild amount of time on something that I had an emotional reaction to because there was a dangling modifier ... it’s about my emotional responsiveness ... And then my response is perceived as, oh, shit, this is life or death for Brené.” ([18:29])

• Course Correction and Coaching Above the Line

  • Brené reiterates the importance of coaching from a place of “coach, challenger, creative” – or “above the line” – rather than victim, villain, or hero roles.

    “Above the line is coach Challenger and creative. So my job as a leader ... is I can clean it up with a note to the person and say, you know, so sorry we did this, I apologize. Or ... I’d love for you to reach out and make it right. Which is so much more rewarding for that team member.” ([28:00])

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4. Rewarding Effort With Time: The Feedback Loop

• Effort as an Invitation to Coach

  • Both guests stress that real coaching begins when effort is visible but impact is lagging.
  • Adam recounts a formative experience from college, where being told his effort wasn’t translating into the right outcomes inspired him to shift his approach:

    “It’s whether you can use and extend the course concepts ... she had taught me how to redirect my effort.” ([24:42])

  • Brené frames this as a leadership imperative:

    “Start with myself and say, did I set this person up for success? ... with a clear understanding of what are the priorities, what’s consequential, what’s reversible and what’s not, and what is success going to look like?” ([26:01])

• Time Investment and the Reluctance of Leaders

  • Both acknowledge leaders’ hesitancy due to perceived time demands:

    “Their first comment ... is they’re going to say, ‘Well, that shit takes a lot of time. Getting that right takes a lot of time.’” ([29:46])

    • Adam retorts:

      “Do you want to invest a little time now to save a lot of time later? Your choice.” ([29:54])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Misapplied Growth Mindset:

  “If you only praise effort, what you’re essentially doing is you’re rewarding students for only their inputs and ignoring their outputs.”
  — Adam Grant, [04:01]

• On Leadership Comfort and Rewarding Effort:

  “If you see effort, don’t reward it and call it excellence or success because that’s a lie. And that’s usually about your own comfort.”
  — Brené Brown, [08:07]

• On the Reality of Prioritization:

  “He said, there’s only one quadrant ... I spend real time and energy on. It’s the highly consequential, irreversible decisions.”
  — Adam Grant (channeling Jeff Bezos), [12:36]

• On Emotional Leadership Cues:

  “People are spending wild amount of time on something that I had an emotional reaction to ... it’s about my emotional responsiveness and ... my response is perceived as, oh, shit, this is life or death for Brené.”
  — Brené Brown, [18:29]

• On Investing in Coaching:

  “Do you want to invest a little time now to save a lot of time later? Your choice.”
  — Adam Grant, [29:54]

• On Leadership Growth:

  “If I could suck back all the coffees of Strong Ground, I’d like to add like four paragraphs ... there’s a lot of nuance under some of these things that we got underneath in these conversations that I think will make me a better leader and a better person.”
  — Brené Brown, [33:14]

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Important Segments with Timestamps

| Segment Topic | Timestamps | Highlights | |-----------------------------|-------------|----------------------------------------------------------| | Origins of Rewarding Effort | 02:31-05:24 | Adam’s NYT op-ed, misapplied growth mindset | | Coaching vs Judging | 08:04-08:46 | Importance of feedback and coaching over pure judging | | Prioritization Crisis | 10:16-15:14 | Leadership challenges with prioritization amidst chaos | | Bezos’ 2x2 on Decisions | 12:07-14:50 | Framework for what is worth leaders’ deep focus | | Leadership Misalignment | 15:14-18:29 | Communication gaps and emotional signals in organizations | | Emotional Impact on Teams | 18:29-20:18 | How strong reactions inadvertently shape priorities | | Above vs Below the Line | 28:00-29:46 | Coaching mindset; repairing errors and leader humility | | Time Investment in Coaching | 29:46-29:59 | The payoff of deliberate coaching and feedback | | Personal Leadership Growth | 33:14-34:02 | Brené’s real-time reflections and learning |

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Tone and Closing Thoughts

This episode is marked by humility, candor, and mutual respect. Both Brené and Adam openly reflect on their own missteps and evolving perspectives, reinforcing the book's emphasis on learning, unlearning, and embracing nuance.

“I’m already thinking, like, if I could suck back all the coffees of Strong Ground, I’d like to add like four paragraphs ... there's a lot of nuance under some of these things that we got underneath in these conversations that I think will make me a better leader and a better person.”
— Brené Brown, [33:14]

The session closes with warmth and gratitude, as both express hope that Strong Ground — and these conversations — will serve as living, re-readable resources for leaders striving for impact and integrity, even in unstable times.

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For More:
This was the sixth and final episode in the series. Brené announces two upcoming “Ask Me Anything” episodes for continued engagement on Strong Ground’s topics.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hi everyone, I'm Brene Brown and this is Dare to Lead. And I am back for episode six of this special series with my friend Adam. Hi Adam.

[C]

Hey Brene.

[B]

How's it going?

[C]

So far so good. But we'll see where this goes, won't we?

[B]

Yeah. You know, you're one of so there. There are several. There are teachers in the book and the teachers in the book includes you are folks who I thought their work was. Their, their impact on the book. And my research and my thinking was so big. It was more than just kind of a paragraph. It was. I wanted to share a lesson directly from you. So Think Again is one of my all time favorite books. And so I share an excerpt from Think Again in the book. Were you surprised to see yourself come up in yet another chapter?

[C]

I was. It's such an honor to be featured at all. And I, you know, I of course skipped through the part that I wrote, not wanting to reread my own writing.

[B]

Oh yeah, that's horrible. I don't do that either.

[C]

The worst, I had so many edits. When I got into the first paragraph alone, I was like, ah, I can't do this. That's enough rethinking for now. And then. And then I thought I was home free and I'm just, you know, sailing along a couple hundred pages and all of a sudden I came across my name.

[B]

You're in. Yep, you're in the chapter called the Big Reward. And so I talk about your OP ed. Let's get everyone caught up. So you wrote an op ed for the New York Times titled no, you don't get an A for effort. Tell me about the origin of this op ed. Tell me the premise.

[C]

Okay. This started when I was teaching a week long course for brand new MBA students. And at the end of the class a couple years ago, I got several grade complaints that were worded completely differently from any prior grade grubbing I'd come across. And different students wrote different versions of I'm not happy with my grade because it doesn't reflect the effort that I put into this course. And I was so surprised to read that because we don't grade effort, we grade excellence. Leaving aside the fact that in a week long course there wasn't a lot of room for Herculean amounts of effort. And I was really curious about why they expected to be rewarded for hard work alone as opposed to mastery. And what finally crystallized for me was that some of these students had been, they had taken the wrong lesson from Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset.

[B]

Say more. This is really, this is so interesting to me.

[C]

Well, there's a whole generation of, you know this well, of parents and teachers who were told, don't praise ability, praise effort. Because if you tell a kid you're really smart when they fail, they're going to think, well, I didn't have the cognitive horsepower, I don't have the talent to succeed at that. Whereas when you praise kids for effort, when they fall short of a goal, they learn, oh, I need to try harder. And that's much better for their resilience, it's better for their persistence, ultimately serves their growth. But if you take that too far and you only praise effort, what you're essentially doing is you're rewarding students for only their inputs and ignoring their outputs. You're telling them you should keep beating your head against a brick wall as opposed to saying, huh, that strategy is not effective for me. Let me find a different one. And I guess where I landed as, as I was working through this, this puzzle was I think we should be praising effort that leads to progress. So we don't just want to look at how you know how much energy you expend or how long you persist. We want to ask, did that move you forward? Is your effort, is it fueling your growth? And if not, it might not be the right effort.

[B]

It's so powerful to me. And so there's 10 directions we could take this conversation. And I'm going to write one of them down because if we have time, I want to circle back to it. So I read that op ed when it first came out. I agreed with it wholeheartedly. But no, and oh, you know, my commitment to the paradox, not, you know, Jim Collins would say the tyranny of the. OR or the genius of the. And I'm gonna go with and. And what I have found working inside of organizations is kind of dualistic thinking that either says I am going to praise and reward effort even when the outcome is bad, or on the other side, this is a perversion of the original growth mindset thinking. And if I see you putting a ton of effort into something but the deliverable or the outcome is subpar, then you get nothing from me. And so my thinking is that we should be rewarding effort with time, with our time. And so if I see you, we'll take the student example. If I see you really busting your ass, you're in class, you're taking notes, you're present, you're asking compelling questions, you have an active role. Cause you know, both teaching and MBA programs, you have an active role in your group. You are all in and you're spending a lot of time and energy trying to move the ball down the field. And the ball's not leaving the 50 yard line. You know, it's just, I'm not going to call that a touchdown. I'm not going to reward that with seven points because the ball's still on the 50 yard line. I'm also not going to dismiss you for how hard you're working because I see you working. What I am going to reward you with is my time in trying to sit down with you and say, I see your effort. Let's talk about why the ball's not moving. And this is really hard because I think in the dualistic situation, in the dualistic solution situation where you can just give them nothing or you can give them seven points, both of those answers are easy for you as the scoregiver because you don't. It takes no investment from you.

[D]

Right?

[C]

You're just, you're just a judge. You're not a coach.

[B]

You're just a judge, not a coach. That's exactly right. You're a scoreboard, not a coach. Right. That's it. So to me, when I work with leaders, I always say, if you see effort, don't reward it and call it excellence or success because that's a lie. And that's usually about your own comfort. And also don't ignore it because man one Day, you're gonna wish you had someone that put that much effort into something. Reward it with your time. So I'm curious about your take on that.

[C]

Oh, I find that very compelling. I think that's what's needed because if somebody, if somebody's putting in the energy and they're not getting the result, then that's the ideal moment for coaching.

[B]

Yes, that's coaching.

[C]

That, that's when they need somebody to say, okay, you're working really hard. Let's talk about what it would look like to work really smart or it seems like, you know, we, we actually haven't given you the training that would allow you to master this area of expertise. So we want to invest in that and invest in you.

[E]

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[D]

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[B]

Okay. God, I need your help with something. Oh, this is so exciting. I didn't think we were going to come here so, but I'm so excited about it. One of the questions I get a lot from leaders, especially not actually all the way from kind of first line managers all the way up to C suite leaders is I'm working so hard, I'm busting my ass, I'm working 60 hours a week and I'm not moving the ball. And when we get underneath, why there's no effort. There's so much effort and no result. I'm not exaggerating right now at all. In this context of geopolitical crisis, tariff issues, volatile markets, changing strategies, horrific supply chain issues, the problem identification always lands on prioritization. The lack of prioritization skills, no one's teaching it, no one's talking about it, the communication around it is terrible. What can you tell me or teach me about prioritization?

[C]

Ooh, that's such an interesting question.

[B]

It's such a crisis right now everywhere I go, it doesn't matter what industry I'm working in, even with sports teams I'm working with right now. Should we be prioritizing toughness or discipline? Should we be prioritizing accountability? And I think there's probably a swirl of those things that all are related to each other. But what do you, what would you tell a leader that said, I'm working so hard, I'm not seeing the results because the priorities from on high are shifting daily?

[C]

Huh. I think I'm thinking out loud here.

[B]

But I love it.

[C]

I think the, maybe the best lesson I've gotten on prioritization came from a conversation I had a few years ago with Jeff Bezos, who, you know, whether, whether you love or hate him and whether you're an Amazon fan or detractor, I think Jeff has been remarkably effective at being clear on his priorities.

[B]

I don't think you can argue that no matter how you feel. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[C]

You might not agree with what the priorities are, but he's clear on them.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And I was asking him how he decides what to prioritize. And I came away from that conversation with a two by two that I think about maybe once a week. And I don't even have a real job. So this has to be much more relevant for leaders than it is for me. But the Jeff said the two questions he asked himself when he's making a decision are one, how consequential is it? How high are the stakes? And then two, how reversible is it? Is he walking through a door that's gonna lock behind him or is it a revolving door? And he said, there's only one quadrant there that I spend real time and energy on. It's the highly consequential, irreversible decisions because they really matter and you can't easily undo them next year. So imagine Amazon made a huge investment in the cloud. He's not going to wake up one morning and say, you know all those billions we poured into cloud computing? Just kidding. I want them back. It's not an option. He said with those decisions, he does not want a first mover advantage. He considers that a disadvantage. He will procrastinate as long as possible because he wants to see other people make commitments and make mistakes and learn from those. And also he wants to gather enough information, you know, qualitative and quantitative data to try to figure out what the right important semi permanent commitment is. And he said, I don't waste a lot of energy on the other three quadrants. If a decision is less consequential or more reversible. I will act quickly on the best information I have and just stay open to doubting what I know. I will delegate it to other people. And I think that for me, this framework has, I guess it has two applications. One is in our own lives to ask, what are the consequential, irreversible decisions? Let's prioritize those. The other stuff probably doesn't matter that much. And two, this is a question to ask up the hierarchy, right? If you feel like you're putting in a ton of work and the leaders above you are not delivering on, giving you clarity, right. Asking them, hey, we've got a lot of things we're being asked to do here which are most consequential for you, which are most irreversible for you. Do you agree that those are our top priorities? What do you make of all that?

[B]

God, I could talk to you for 12 hours about this. It's what I talk about every day with folks. And so it's really interesting to me. I think that. Okay, I have, like, a lot of questions. So we're talking about rewarding effort with our time and our thought partnership. And I brought up the example of prioritization. I wonder if, depending on where you are in an organization, if part of rewarding effort with time is leaders helping coach leaders on how to make decisions and appraisals of what's consequential and what's not, what's reversible and what's not. Because I would imagine if I'm in the C suite, I have a different understanding of what's reversible and what's not reversible. I have a different understanding of what's consequential or not than if I report up to someone who reports up to someone who reports up to someone who reports up to the C suite. Does that make sense?

[C]

It does. So how do you think about doing that?

[B]

Well, I'm thinking right now about 4634 misses in my own organization, based on what you just said, that have happened over the last two weeks. Because what I'm thinking right now, in real time, I'm almost like, I'm almost breaking into a sweat, is I have not talked to my teams about what feels consequential and reversible and irreversible and not consequential. I have not done mission critical communications, which is a part of the book. I have not shared with them what I believe is consequential and inconsequential and what's reversible and not reversible. I do not think my team is aligned.

[C]

Sounds like a conversation worth having.

[B]

Yes. Because I. Because what I do see is. And what I hear leaders talk about all the time is action over impact, which can feel really shitty. That's really shitty feedback to give someone. Like, hey, listen, I see a lot of your work, but I feel like you're engaging a lot of action over impact. And I wonder if that diagnosis is wrong, because my mindset is different about what's consequential and reversible.

[C]

Yeah. If they have a different idea about what's important and what can be undone, then they're gonna. They're gonna invest their action in other things.

[B]

Yeah. Cause I'm getting stuff that is coming up to me that feels inconsequential and totally reversible.

[C]

Wow. And. Okay, so I'm curious about why that is. I know there's the. What's the famous parable about when Bob Rubin was the treasury secretary and he made an offhand comment in a hallway about gold? And then this rumor starts spreading like wildfire. Ruben loves gold. And all of a sudden, people are spending all this time analyzing, like, gold markets and pricing, and people overweigh the offhand comments that leaders make. They're constantly trying to infer what's important by observing your behavior and observing your attention. Is there a signal you sent that said this thing that's inconsequential and reversible is actually really important to me?

[B]

Yeah. I'm having an IRL meltdown. Real time, folks. This is what it looks like. Yes. Because I'm. I can be. I can be undisciplined in my emotional reactions to anything that doesn't meet our value of beauty and excellence and that can be perceived as life or death consequential. And therefore, people are spending wild amount of time on something that I had an emotional reaction to because there was a dangling modifier. And I'm making that up because I'm never really sure what that means. But, like, I. Yes, it's about my emotional responsiveness and going under the line and being undisciplined in my responses. And then my response is perceived as, oh, shit, this is life or death for Brene.

[C]

So coming back then to where we started the conversation through having an emotional reaction, you signaled that a different kind of effort would have been rewarded.

[B]

Yes. Yes.

[C]

But it's not actually the effort you wanted.

[B]

No, it's not. And in a more disciplined response, I would have been more focused on systems than people, and we would have corrected systems. Not having, you know, and not making people feel like stuff is more consequential and irreversible than it actually is. Does that make sense to you?

[C]

Yeah. Yeah, it does. So how do you think about course correcting on that? Because it's. What's interesting is it's reasonable to assume that if you have a strong emotional reaction to something that's highly consequential for you, and separating those two things is not always easy for people. Like, why, why. Why would you emote about something that doesn't really matter?

[B]

Oh, because I think that's probably a huge difference between you and me. Like, I. I am an emotional being.

[C]

Are you a highly sensitive person in the Elena Aaron sense?

[B]

No. No. But I am. I do want. If we send something to someone I'm working with and misspell that person's name, that can feel irreversible and consequential to me. But normally, I think the response to that is, should be above the line, where I'm a good coach, I'm a good challenger, I'm a good creative. What systems do we have in place to make sure things have a second set of eyes? What's the proofing channels that we're using? You know, that's the answer to that question. Not, I need six people spending 60 hours for three weeks on the mailing list. Yes. Does that make sense?

[C]

Yeah, it does. So this is an interesting example of. Of something that it reflects. It reflects on your values, and therefore it's worth spending some time on. But it's not consequential in the capital C sense.

[B]

It's not consequential, nor is it, like, reversible in the capital R. Like. And it's interesting because I'm working with a company right now, and the CEO is really talking about experimentation and reversibility, and leaders are having a hard time seeing the same things as reversible as what he thinks are reversible, like pricing or, you know, we can try something. But I think if you're heading that market, it feels very different, you know, and so it does go back to. I never thought. When we reward effort with time and thought partnership, I think we have to start by when we see effort as a leader and maybe even as a college professor. When we see effort that is not leading to success or mastery, maybe one of the first things we need to do is reflect on our own part in that.

[C]

Yeah. Did I send you a message explicitly or implicitly that this was the this was the effort I wanted and.

[B]

This is how we measure success. This is the effort we're looking for in service of this mission completion.

[E]

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[D]

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[C]

You know, it's so funny. My first organizational psychology class when I was a junior in college, I remember just falling in love with the material and thinking, I want this to be my future career. Not knowing what that would look like and studying really hard for the midterm and getting a B plus. And I was crushed. Crushed. Like, this is my thing and I didn't ace it. And I remember sitting down with the head TA and asking her, why did all the preparation that I did not result in an A or at least an A minus? And she said to me, look, our expectations are really high in this course, and you regurgitated a bunch of material. We wanted you to think about novel ways of applying the material. So this was, this was not a test of whether you know the course concepts. It's whether you can use and extend the course concepts. And I studied very differently for the next test and did much better on it because she had taught me how to redirect my effort. And I'm realizing now I failed to pay that lesson forward to the students who told me that their grade did not reflect their effort.

[B]

God, that's such, that's such a great example. I mean, it's such a great example of rewarding effort with a conversation with you about, yeah, you're smart, I get it, you understand the material. Interesting to see the transferability of your knowledge to different contexts and how can you apply it and get creative with it. Like, this is what I'm talking about. So I do think, well, I think we reward effort with our time and we start. I think I'm going to start. I don't know what anyone else is going to do. I'm going to start when I see effort, but I see the ball not moving down the field. I want to start with myself and say, did I set this person up for success? With a clear understanding of what are the priorities, what's consequential, what's. What's reversible and what's not, and what is success going to look like? I think that's. That's really. And then work with them because they may have a full understanding of that and still not be moving the ball downfield. And I think that's. That happens a lot, especially with young leaders and new people and students.

[C]

I really want to hear the postmortem on how this conversation goes. It's making me think, just thinking about your example of if we misspell someone's name. I'm realizing now, as you've talked about, that there's nuance in the reversibility concept that I hadn't seen before, which is, in technical terms, that is not a reversible mistake. You cannot unsend the email. You can't take back the letter. Right. The error was made, but the impact is reversible. You know, you could show remorse to the recipient. You can let them know what a priority is for you to get it right. And then, as the saying often goes, the best apology is changed behavior. You can demonstrate to them moving forward you're not going to make the same mistake. And that, I think, can reverse the impact, even though the event itself is not reversible.

[B]

I think that's true. I think that's absolutely true. And I'll just do a full confession here since we. Since like the Adam Brene confessional. This should be the new podcast, you know, with. We each have the little collars on. Take a picture of ourselves in a confession booth, which will take me back to Catholic primary school. The confession for me is if I can be above the line. You know, below the line is kind of hero, victim, villain. Oh, my God, you screwed this up. You have no idea how hard this is on me. I'll do it myself. Above the line is coach Challenger and creative. So my job as a leader and I can be not good at this. That's my way of saying I can be really shitty here is I can clean it up with a note to the person and say, you know, so sorry we did this, I apologize. Or if I can stay above the line, I can say we misspelled them. I'd love for you to reach out and make it right. Which is so much more rewarding for that team member who did it, because then they get to clean it up and they get to not be the person who made the mistake and didn't show up again to clean it up. And so, but let me tell you what we're talking about here. If I pulled back from this conversation and asked myself, wow, a group of leaders had lunch on Thursday and listened to this conversation, what's going to be their first comment? Their first comment to each other when the podcast is over is they're going to say, well, that shit takes a lot of time. Getting that right takes a lot of time.

[C]

Thankfully, we recorded a podcast about that very excuse.

[B]

Yeah, we did. We're like, do you want to, do.

[C]

You want to, do you want to invest a little time now to save a lot of time later? Your choice.

[B]

That's it. That's it. I love it. Our podcast is going to become like a self referencing system. We're going to close the whole loop and we're just going to be like, if you disagree with this, see podcast 1A and we'll take you on there. I just want to say, and this will be such a great time for you to practice taking a compliment, how much it has meant to me for you to do this six part series with me on the new book. It really has meant a lot to me and I appreciate you and I appreciate the conversations.

[C]

Well, I appreciate that. And I was, I was so flattered that you were willing to have me do this because I've, I feel like most of the learning that I've done from your work has been outside of interaction with you. It's been reading your books, it's been watching your TED talks, it's been listening to your podcasts. And so to have a chance to talk to you about the book. Right after I finished reading Strong Ground was, It was a treat for me. And I think, I don't know if you remember this, but the first time we met, it must have been 2014. I want to say we were, we were speaking at the same event and you were in a green room. And I walked in, I was like, I don't belong here. I had massive imposter syndrome. Like, I, I should not be talking to Brene Brown. She's too big of a deal.

[B]

What?

[C]

And I remember, I remember being so uncomfortable and then thinking, but she's all about courage, so I need to have this conversation. And if that version of me had known that we were going to have a conversation like the series that we've just done. I think I would have been speechless. But you are. You are amazing at making me feel like I do belong. And I appreciate that. More importantly, I think there is so much insight in this book. I think it's a book that people need to reread because I think on a first reading, there are so many rich ideas in it that prioritization could be a challenge. And I've started, I've already started to use it as a bit of a reference and say, okay, I need to go back to the empathy misses and look at those because I'm really failing on two of these. I need to revisit the, the. The chapter on paradox because I'm fighting against two things that actually have to be handled in tension. And so I think Strong Ground is the book that, that people are going to rely on over and over again.

[B]

I really appreciate it and thank you for being a part of the book. Thank you for being a part of the conversation and thanks for hanging with me as I struggle through real time learnings in our conversations. Like, I. I'm already thinking, like, if I could suck back all the coffees of Strong Ground, I'd like to add like four paragraphs, which is not something the book needs. It's already. It's hefty enough.

[C]

Save it for the next book.

[B]

Save it for the next book. Or we'll save it. Maybe, Maybe we'll. Maybe we'll do some podcasts in the future because this is too fun for me.

[C]

I always look forward to a conversation with you. And I think in the spirit of Paradox, the sequel to Strong Ground should be called Weak Sky. Don't ever write that book by Adam Grant. I hope no one writes that book.

[B]

No, I hope no one. Me too. But I do. I guess one way I didn't think Strong Ground would show up for me is I hope it is foundational for people in terms of changing their minds. Like, I've already changed my mind about some things that I wrote. And not that the conclusion is different, but there's a lot of nuance under some of these things that we got underneath in these conversations that I think will make me a better leader and a better person. So I'm grateful for that.

[C]

Well, I'm always excited to be part of. Part of rethinking as it happens in real time. And I think I'm just excited to see all the impact the book is going to have on people, both in their professional lives and in their personal lives.

[B]

Well, thank you, Adam Grant, folks. Thank you so much. As we come to the end of these six episodes, I just have to say that I'm so grateful for Adam and the conversations that we've had about strangers. I appreciate the learning, the unlearning, the knowing, the unknowing, and the rumbles. Stay tuned for the next two weeks while I answer your questions about strong Ground in a two part Ask Me anything. Looking forward to it. Dare to Lead is produced by Brene Brown Education and Research Group. Music is by the Sufferers. Get new episodes. This is soon as they're published by following Dare to Lead on your favorite podcast app. We are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award winning [e-mail].