Brené and Adam Grant on the Paradox Tug of War and Leadership Theater

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Dare to Lead with Brené Brown

Episode: Brené and Adam Grant on the Paradox Tug of War and Leadership Theater
Date: September 24, 2025
Host: Brené Brown
Guest: Adam Grant
Series: Special Strong Ground Book Series

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Brené Brown and Adam Grant dive deep into major themes from Brené's new book, "Strong Ground," focusing on navigating paradoxes in leadership and the pitfalls of "leadership theater." The conversation explores new research and real-life tensions faced by individuals and organizations striving to be bold amidst complexity and instability. Brené and Adam wrestle with constructs like values and their "enemies," paradoxes that challenge us, and practical frameworks to handle competing demands. The episode is rich with personal stories, memorable quotes, and actionable insights.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Values and the “Near Enemy” Concept

• Summary:
  The episode opens with Brené and Adam revisiting Buddhist concepts of "far enemy" and "near enemy" regarding values. They use generosity as an example.
• Details & Quotes:
  • The far enemy of a value is its obvious opposite (e.g., generosity vs. selfishness).
  • The near enemy superficially resembles the value but undermines it (e.g., generosity vs. self-sacrificing martyrdom).
    • “The ones that dress up and masquerade as the value—but also at the same time protect our ego and our kind of armor—those are the ones I think to really watch.” — Brené [01:22]
  • Control often hides beneath the guise of helping:
    • "Help is the sunny side of control.” — Brené citing Anne Lamott [04:20]
    • "Let me volunteer to help with the family dinner, not because I want to help you, but because I want to control how it goes." — Brené [05:18]
• Insight:
  Near enemies, like martyrdom or controlling “help,” subvert true values by making them about the self.

2. Paradox in Leadership and Growth

• Summary:
  The discussion shifts to paradoxes—the necessity of embracing contradictory truths for sustainable growth and leadership.
• Details & Quotes:
  • Growth often demands stepping backward to build strength, a paradox that can feel counterproductive.
    • "Accepting that paradox is not easy. That I have to feel weaker in order to get stronger." — Adam [08:12]
  • Jim Collins’s “Genius of the And”:
    • Successful leaders reject “the tyranny of the or” (e.g., choosing between purpose or profit), and instead embrace both (“purpose and profit”).
    • "Our cognitive wiring for certainty and clarity overrides our ability to hold the tension." — Brené [09:41]
  • Naming a paradox makes it manageable:
    • “Sometimes naming it is the best way to tame it.” — Adam [11:04]

3. Personal Struggles with Paradox: Freedom vs. Discipline

• Summary:
  Brené recounts her own battle juggling the need for both freedom and discipline, using humor and vulnerability.
• Details & Quotes:
  • Scheduling as an act of discipline that creates freedom.
    • "I want the freedom to enjoy the last 20 or 30 years of my life... So I'm disciplined, I'm at the gym, I'm lifting weights, I'm working out, but I'm paying for my freedom with discipline." — Brené [15:08]
  • The impulse to rebel against necessary discipline—even when it’s self-defeating.
    • “How many of us do things to be rebellious and we’re the only one hurt by them?” — Brené [16:24]
    • "Resentment is drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." — Brené [16:47]
• Insight:
  Even as experts, holding paradoxes like freedom and discipline remains a work-in-progress, requiring ongoing self-reflection.

4. Frameworks for Managing Competing Demands

• Summary:
  Adam introduces the “maker vs. manager days” framework as a way to navigate paradox—for instance, by allocating blocks for deep work and others for meetings.
• Details & Quotes:
  • Brené sees this as a version of balancing discipline and freedom, not eliminating the paradox but making it tolerable.
  • "It's a practice. And I guess what it does is it makes the paradox more tolerable, but it doesn't make it go away." — Adam [19:22]
  • Accepting paradox is an ongoing process.

5. “Strong Ground” As a Paradox

• Summary:
  Brené reflects on how the very title and metaphor of her book is a paradox: stability as a platform for explosive movement and risk-taking.
• Details & Quotes:
  • “Strong ground offers tethering connection and stability, but it’s also the platform for explosive movement and change.” — Brené [20:30]
  • Sports metaphors (e.g., Simone Biles, springboard diving, "tush push" in football) illustrate how foundational stability enables peak performance.

6. Leadership Theater & Sports Metaphors

• Summary:
  Both hosts defend the use of sports metaphors, arguing that sports provide visible, condensed examples of teamwork, leadership, and adaptability.
• Details & Quotes:
  • "Sports is leadership theater." — Brené [26:26]
  • The importance of explaining metaphors so all audiences can connect, not just assuming shared context.
    • "It’s not just using them that’s problematic... it’s how they use them. And what can feel, I think, not great for people... is making an assumption as a speaker that people know what you’re talking about." — Brené [27:53]
  • The parallel between elite athletes’ training (mostly practice, little performance) and the need for leaders to simulate and role-play prior to critical decisions.
    • “Talk about paradox… elite athletes spend 95% of their time practicing for performance that’s a tiny fraction of their career. Which is the exact opposite of what most leaders and team members do.” — Adam [29:14]

7. Practice, Pre-mortems, and Time Investment

• Summary:
  The hosts call out the scarcity of preparation (like pre-mortems/simulations) in organizations and why leaders need to “invest” time upfront.
• Details & Quotes:
  • Pre-mortem: Imagine a failure has occurred; ask what led to it.
    • "We do them all the time. It’s six months from now, this has gone to total shit. Why did it go to shit? What did we miss? And it has drastically changed how we think." — Brené [30:53]
    • "Why did you expect to be good at this the first time you had to make a big choice together as a group?" — Adam [31:47]
• Insight:
  The resistance to taking time for intentional practices is framed as time scarcity, but time invested now saves vastly more later.
  • "Instead of fighting against time, I want to reframe time invested now as time savings later." — Adam [33:43]
  • "That's actually possibly an investment in your own freedom, which I can get behind." — Brené [34:34]

8. Hyperbolic Discounting: Devaluing the Future

• Summary:
  Adam names the phenomenon where people grossly undervalue future time (“hyperbolic discounting”) and the stress-urgency trap that perpetuates this.
• Quote:
  • “There’s an economist... David Labson... He calls it hyperbolic discounting. And it's just the dramatic decrease in the amount of weight people put on time they have, even a week from now, as opposed to now.” — Adam [33:19]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On values and their near enemies:
  “Help is the sunny side of control.” — Brené [04:20] “The minute any player becomes detached from the ground, they're no longer contributing... they've lost their ground force.” — Brené [22:11]

• On paradox in leadership:
  “My job is to hold the tension of both until something better than either emerges.” — Brené [10:12] “Sometimes naming it is the best way to tame it.” — Adam [11:04]

• On preparation:
  "You think a 20 minute pre-mortem is going to cost you a lot? Wait until you see what it costs you a year from now." — Brené [32:10] "People spend easily 95% of their time as elite athletes practicing... That's the exact opposite of what most leaders and team members do at work." — Adam [29:14]

• On the devaluation of future time:
  “I do not think about future time because in future I'm even in better shape than I am now and I don't need as much time and my house is already clean. I’ve got some serious ass magical thinking on future time confession.” — Brené [34:34]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:22] — Introduction and near enemies of values
• [04:20] — Anne Lamott’s quote, "help is the sunny side of control"
• [08:12] — Paradox of growing stronger by first feeling weaker
• [10:12] — Jim Collins’ “tyranny of the or” vs. “genius of the and”
• [11:04] — The power of naming paradoxes
• [16:47] — “Resentment is drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die”
• [20:30] — The paradox of “strong ground” as stability and launchpad
• [26:26] — "Sports is leadership theater"
• [29:14] — Athletes’ practice vs. leaders’ practice
• [30:53] — Pre-mortems and learning from failure
• [32:10] — Time invested in prevention vs. cleaning up messes
• [33:19] — Hyperbolic discounting: why we devalue future time
• [33:43] — Key takeaways from this conversation

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Takeaways & Next Steps

• Recognize and confront the near enemies of your values—those disguised as virtue but rooted in ego or control.
• Embrace paradox as an unavoidable aspect of leadership and personal growth; learning to hold tension between opposites is a sign of maturity.
• Invest time upfront in preparation, roleplay, and learning practices (like pre-mortems) even under pressure—your future self and team will thank you.
• Don’t assume your metaphors or frameworks are universal; always set context for clarity.
• Reframe time management: What feels like a time “cost” now is often a critical investment in future freedom and resilience.

Adam and Brené close by inviting listeners to reflect on their own paradoxes—and promise more practical, thought-provoking discussion in coming episodes.

Transcript

[A]

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Apply for Apple Card on your iPhone in minutes, subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and [e-mail]. hi, everyone. I'm Brene Brown and this is Dare to Lead. I am back for my second episode with the one and only Adam Grant. And we are digging into Strong Ground, my new book on leadership. And I'm excited to be here. And I'm always nervous to see what Adam's gonna ask me today. How are you, Adam?

[B]

Nervous?

[A]

Yeah, I get kind of nervous.

[B]

Nervous. Well, I dared to read, so I have so many new questions for you.

[A]

I loved our conversation about values. I had no idea we were gonna go there. I've been thinking about it and. And I don't think we should underestimate the helpfulness of the near enemy, far enemy Buddhist concept when we think about our values. So, like, what are the values that we really hold the most dearest? We're always clear on the opposite of those. The far enemy of those values that we hold most dear. But the one, those near enemies, the ones that dress up and masquerade as the value, but also at the same time protect our ego and our kind of armor, those are the ones I think, to really watch.

[B]

I was just thinking about this. So if we take the value of generosity, is it fair to say that the far enemy is selfishness or greed, but the near enemy is actually self sacrifice?

[A]

Oh, my God. I'm disoriented. It's so weird that you said that because I had a word that came up when you were saying it, but I was like, I could never say that. But the word that came up for me was martyrdom.

[B]

Same thing. Same thing, except yours adds the martyrdom, adds an element of needing the recognition for having suffered for someone else's benefit, which is. Is maybe even worse.

[A]

I mean, I'm like, I'm in a swirl of words, which is where you and I always end up. We always end up in this, like, a weird swirl of, like, what do things, you know, what are Constructs really mean. So the value or the virtue would be generosity. The far enemy would be selfishness, and the near enemy would be kind of a self sacrificing martyrdom. What I would be looking for in this equation, see if this checks out for you, is generosity. Just kind of like pulling way back to basic research. A capacity for generosity, I think, would be measured by someone's ability to be other focused. Selfishness is self. Completely self focused. So using the words other focused and self focused, what would the near enemy be? To me, it's some kind of, like, it's some kind of fake other focus. That's really like, I could even see control going there.

[B]

Is. Is it Anne Lamott who says that help is the sunny side of control?

[A]

Yes. One of my favorite quotes of all time, help is the sunny side of control. Yeah, that's what I think. That's. I mean, I, like, I literally have that on a post it note in my study at home because I can find myself doing that under the guise of generosity. And it's really. Let me help you with this. Let me help you with this because I want to control the outcome because it'll be better for me if the outcome is this. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, for me, sure. I. For sure I can do that.

[B]

Oh, that's a different framing than the one I was imagining. Yeah, no, like, which is.

[A]

Go ahead, go ahead.

[B]

No, I want to hear yours.

[A]

No, I can just say I'll be glad to, you know, I'll be glad to hit some serves with you, but I need you to get your. I need you to speed up your serve. Dude, we're not winning in this mixed doubles, you know, like, you know.

[B]

Note to self, don't play doubles with Brene.

[A]

Note to self. If you do work on serve. But I do think there is, like, let me volunteer to help with the family dinner. Not because I want to help you, but because I want to control how it goes.

[B]

You might be. You might be a little uncharitable to yourself there. Why do you want to control how it goes? You want everyone to have a good dinner experience, right?

[A]

Mm, probably. I mean, no, I want to. I want to control who sits where so I don't have to talk to certain people. So. No, that's nice. You might be being overly nice to me, but. No, I think Anne Lamott. I mean, just. I think. Because a lot of what informs Anne's thinking is her recovery. And so I think a lot of. For me, a lot of what I have to watch out about offering to help is really wanting to control. I mean, so I think that's where I go. But I do think this near enemy concept is super helpful when we're talking about values. Right.

[B]

Yeah, I do too. And I think before we leave the generosity part of it behind, my, my framing of the, the near enemy of generosity being self sacrificing martyrdom was a little different, which is here I'm going to go above and beyond to do this thing for you so that I can feel like a good person, so I can feel like I'm not falling short of my values as opposed to thinking about what's actually best for you.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Okay. I got it. Oh, shit. Yeah, I can do that. I can do that too.

[B]

It's identity validating. Yeah, it's affirming as opposed to figuring out what's actually helpful here and sustainable for me to give.

[A]

And it's actually not other focused.

[B]

No, no, it's not. Okay. So let's talk about this idea of paradox because, you know, as, as I think about the, the relationship between a value and its near enemy, those are, all of those pairings are paradoxical.

[A]

Yes. For sure.

[B]

We think of generosity and self sacrifice as, you know, as being cousins. Right. They're, they're, they're connected by a concern for others. And maybe one is, is a healthy expression of that and one is an unhealthy, a version that becomes self focused, but they're related. And I think that I, I have a bunch of questions for you about paradox, but I guess the, the first one is. So I'm reading Strong Ground and I'm realizing there's a, there's a physical paradox in the book that you unpack so nicely, which is you have to do a bunch of work that's going to take you a step backward to strengthen your core.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

In order to, to then accomplish the goals that you want. And accepting that paradox is not easy. That I have to feel weaker in order to get stronger.

[A]

No, it's terrible.

[B]

So talk to me about how you become okay with that. As somebody who's always wanting to be moving forward.

[A]

I, I'm not trying to like, avoid the answer. I don't think I want your opinion on this. So I'm going to, I'm going to answer your question with a question. I'm like looking in here like one of my favorite. I share four of my favorite writers on paradox. Two of them kind of more spiritual, and then two of them very business. Jim Collins and James March. Let's just look at Some of Jim Collins's paradoxes, which I think are great. So he talks. Jim talks a lot about the tyranny of the Oregon and the genius of the and so in Jim's work, he talks about purpose and profit, freedom and responsibility, discipline and creativity, empirical analysis and decisive action, philosophical, visionary, futuristic thinking and superb daily execution. So he talks about what leaders and teams risk if they don't get comfortable with the and. And the paradox and they fall to the tyranny of the or. Which reading the same things I just read to you would be purpose or profit, freedom or responsibility, discipline or creativity. One of the things I'm very curious about and I think I maybe unknowingly wrote from this belief. I don't think it's easy to resolve paradox if you don't understand the concept of paradox. I think if you're just faced with seemingly opposing ideas and you can't recognize the schematic of, oh, this is a paradox. And my job is to hold the tension of both until something better than either emerges. That our cognitive wiring for certainty and clarity overrides our ability to hold the tension. What do you think?

[B]

Yes. Yeah. I have no further thoughts, your honor.

[A]

No, but I really, I really.

[B]

No, I think that. I think that's exactly right. I think that it's a little bit like, it's like one of the core findings from emotion research that you write about, which is sometimes naming it is the best way to tame it.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You have to be able to recognize and articulate that you're in the middle of one of these tensions in order to handle it effectively. And so often it's like you're playing a good. It's like you're in the middle of a tug of war and you don't realize. You don't realize that you're pulling against yourself.

[A]

Yes. Oh my God, that's such a good visual. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes. So you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Go all in on fall with Abercrombie kids. Their newest drop of on trend outfits are ready for everything from the bus stop to family bonfires. And it wouldn't be fall without football. Gear up the kids with officially licensed NFL tees and sweatshirts shop Abercrombie Kids this season in the app, online and in store. I share in the chapter, my own real experience of this. And I'm still, I. I'm still struggling, struggling with it. I told my coach the other day that I wanted to change my value, that I wanted to change one of my values. And she said, you know, courage or faith. And I said, oh, maybe I'll just add a third. And she's like, I'd be very curious to hear what it's going to be before we go down that path. And I said, I want value as highly as I value like faith, which is very high, and courage, unfindability. And she's like, what does that mean? I said, I do not want to be findable. I don't know. I don't want anyone to know where I am. I don't want anyone to be able to reach me, you know. And we immediately dropped back into this work that I've been doing over the past five years, which is discipline and freedom. I want freedom. I do not want my life to be defined in 30 minute scheduling blocks. Therefore I schedule shit. I don't schedule anything. And so my calendar looks amazing, but actually I have obligations. I just refuse to put them on the calendar. So I schedule over them, I double schedule. It's chaos, I cry. And so until just this last year, I've started to really understand the paradox that I'm in of. I need more freedom. And that's not going to be solved by unfindability, it's going to be solved by discipline. And I resent the out of that.

[B]

Why?

[A]

I, I'm not sure. I just. So I started scheduling like my hair appointments four, six weeks out, I started scheduling all of my games, you know, my pickleball games. I started scheduling my downtime. And what it's meant is I play six days a week, I don't have to call my hair salon crying like, oh my God, please get me in, I've got to do something. And you know, and it's been good, but I'm still wrestling with, there's gotta be an easier way.

[B]

Oh, okay. So the paradox in here that's jumping out for me is in order to gain freedom, you have to give up some control.

[A]

In order to gain freedom? Yes. I'm not built that way. I want freedom and control and no discipline. I think. You know what I think we're pushing up against too. I think I've spent my whole life subscribing to the belief that the definition of freedom is no discipline, you know, and so now I want the freedom to Enjoy the last 20 or 30 years of my life in a very different way than what happened to my mom and my grandmother with dementia and frailty. And so I'm disciplined, I'm at the gym, I'm lifting weights, I'm working out, but I'm paying for my freedom with discipline. And I think there's a part of me that just.

[B]

Rebels against that.

[A]

Yes, that's the right word.

[B]

It feels like an act of rebellion.

[A]

Yes. But it's like, how many of us do things to be rebellious and we're the only one hurt by them? Do you know what I mean? It reminds me of that definition of resentment. That resentment is drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

[B]

Oh, wow. Oh, I haven't heard that before. That's good.

[A]

Yeah. So I do think the power of paradox is just like our conversation about rigidity and discipline. I think the power of paradox is it introduces a relationship between two concepts that we didn't understand existed. Does that make sense to you?

[B]

It does. I think the part that I struggle with, and this is. This is one of the ways that Strong Ground really pushed me is I just don't want to believe that the trade offs are inherent. Like, okay, what's. Like, what's the integrative solution? How do we get the best of both worlds? So let's take a practical version of this in your life. So my solution to the paradox of, you know, I want, basically, I want to. I want to control my time, but I also want to have flexibility. And freedom is Paul Graham's idea of maker days versus manager days. So two days a week, I basically fail my calendar with all the things that need to be done, and then the other three days are pretty empty, is the goal. It doesn't always work out that way, but that's the template that I try to work from. And so what I feel like I'm doing is I'm trading two days of freedom for the rest of the week of freedom.

[A]

But that seems to me to be discipline and freedom. Because Paul Graham's idea is a discipline practice.

[B]

It is. You're right.

[A]

I mean that. I mean, I'm not sure there's a productivity. And I've looked at all of them because rather than doing, should I actually just watch YouTube videos on productivity schemes? I mean, come on. If you haven't. We can't even be friends if you haven't wasted 30 minutes doing that. Like, come on.

[B]

I've never watched a productivity video in my life.

[A]

Oh, God. And you're so freaking productive. I know. It makes me crazy how productive you are sometimes. But I do think Paul's idea of maker versus manage. Maker versus manage. Right? Yeah.

[B]

Maker versus manager.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is a disciplined, is a discipline.

[B]

You're right, it is.

[A]

It's a practice.

[B]

It is a practice. And I guess what it does is it makes the paradox more tolerable, but it doesn't make it go away.

[A]

No. Because you're trading, when you say you're trading a couple days for more freedom. I still clearly see you in this heart of discipline versus freedom paradox. Discipline and freedom.

[B]

Yeah, that's right. So you're just gonna have to accept it then.

[A]

I cannot. I mean, I am, you know. Yeah. Because it's like I'm gonna have to get underneath. I love. I'm grateful that you use the word rebellion. Cause I'm going to. I'm going to do some investigating in my coaching work to understand what that's about. I think I need to do that and I think that's help that'll be helpful for me. So thank you. I think the thing about strong ground, that the whole concept for me is a paradox in itself that I never thought about till after I finished the book, which is strong ground offers tethering connection and stability, but it's also the platform for explosive movement and change. You know, on the back of the book, I think we wrote something like, when people ask me, how far, fast or high do you think we can go as a team or as an organization? The first question I find myself asking now is, tell me about your relationship with the ground, then we can talk about that. And I mean, I think that's why there's a chapter on the Tush Push. I think that's why I think about Simone Biles and the physics of what she can do is all about her relationship with the ground. I think about, you know, springboard diving. Like, how can. How. How great could a diver be if they had no relationship with a board?

[B]

It's the single hardest part of the sport.

[A]

Oh, my God. Is it really?

[B]

The flipping and twisting and the rip entries, like, all of that is far easier than timing and rhythm and balance on the board.

[A]

So a diver, strong ground is the board.

[B]

Absolutely. Or the platform. Yeah, if you're on tower. But it's.

[A]

It.

[B]

That. That was one of the things that. That jumped out at me when I was reading the book is like, yeah, even. Even These activities where, like, what we think is the defining strength is being up in the air. It's all about ground.

[A]

It's all about ground. And I think that's true in organizations as well. I think I talk a lot about the physics of the tush push and all of Newton's rules and how they applied to the tush push and how if you've got someone that can execute against it. Well, if you've got a team. So for those of y' all listening that don't know what the tush push is, it's in American football, you've got an offensive team and a defensive team. And in a situation where the offensive team is what we'd call a short yardage situation, they only need to move the ball about a yard. One of the ways they can do it, and it's kind of belongs in the tush push, belongs in a family of moves that are like a quarterback sneak collection of moves. But what they'll literally do is pass the ball to a quarterback and then ground down into the turf and literally just use their massive muscles and ground force to push the ball forward a yard. And the physics of it is really about the fact that the offense has a split second advantage. They go first. So you're up against the law of physics. There's and, you know, their body weight. And what's really interesting is the minute any player becomes detached from the ground, they're no longer contributing to the tush push because they've lost their ground force. Right. And so I just thought, what would it mean for an organizational team to all be grounded not only in their values, but a clear understanding of the mission of their team or what they're trying to do and moving quickly. And you know, that's Newtonian teamwork. This episode is brought to you by Swiped a Hulu original from 20th Century Studios. Meet the woman who made the first move. Starring Lily James as Whitney Wolf, the visionary founder of Bumble. Through extraordinary grit and ingenuity, Whitney breaks into the male dominated tech industry and launches an innovative, globally lauded dating app. Forever changing dating culture. A Hulu Original Swiped now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Routine adjective used to describe an individual whose spirit is unyielding, unconstrained. One who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly. They do not always show up on time, but when they arrive, you notice an individual confident in their contradictions. They know the rules, but behave as if they do not exist. New Teen the new fragrance by Miu miu defined by you.

[B]

So we have to talk about sports metaphors a little bit more.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Because I think you and I have both gotten a lot out of them, but also gotten pushback for using them. And I know sometimes when I use them, people say, well, wait, you're leaving out half the population. And it's led me to wonder, is it easier for a woman to bring sports metaphors to the table?

[A]

When people say that you are leaving out half the population, are they talking about women?

[B]

They're assuming it's feedback that often comes from women saying, you know, by default, women were less likely to, you know, to grow up playing all the men's sports. They didn't grow up playing American football, for example. They're less likely to be super fans. And so, you know, the, the sport. Like they don't, they're not out golfing all the time, you know, so sometimes the metaphors don't translate for them.

[A]

Yeah, I, yeah, I think, first of all, I think that's definitely becoming a very faulty assumption. Hashtag, everyone watches women's sports. I love that. And I think that if you're going to look, I use sports metaphors for a simple reason. I'm a big sports person and I think that sports is leadership theater. I think in a single play, certainly over the course of a quarter of a game or a half a game or a whole game, you can actually watch. It's like looking under the hood at strategy, discipline, operations. You can look at the whole line from idea to execution, you can watch it play out. It's literally leadership theater. So I think when you use sports metaphors, and not only do I use a lot of them, I have an entire chapter explaining why I use them and why I think they're valuable. I think you just have to pause to explain the sport. And I think, you know, when I use them, I usually will show videos or I'll walk people through and say, there are two opposing teams. This team's trying to move the ball a yard. So they're using the physics of just, you know, five 300 pound guys just to literally push. So I think it's not using, it's not just using them that's problematic or can be problematic, it's how they use them. And what can feel, I think not great for people, myself included, is making an assumption as a speaker that people know what you're talking about. But I don't think it's any different than when I've been in the audience and said, you know, hey, look, we've all read this book. Right. You know, we're all really familiar with Linda Hill's work on digital transformation. Like, excuse me, row four, seat J. No, don't know what you're talking about. That's just sloppy.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

A speaker could just take five seconds and say, listen, let me introduce you to Linda Hill, for those of you not familiar with her work. This is what she studies at Harvard, this is what she's known for, and this is something that she's taught. And then you've done a service. And so I'm going to use sports metaphors. I'm going to try to be more mindful about how I use them. But I think they are super helpful because you'd have to observe a team for a year and put together tiny snippets. You could never do it.

[B]

I love the way that you characterize it. Sports are leadership theater. You're absolutely right. They're teamwork theater. We get more vivid observation and more visible examples than we do in any other world. And I think also we get the discipline of people trying to learn the skills.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And, and, and practice them at an elite level as opposed to, I mean, talk about paradox. Like people spend easily 95% of their time as elite, elite athletes practicing for performance. That's a tiny fraction.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Of their career.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And which is the exact opposite of what most leaders and team members do at work.

[A]

Right. And I would say that they train for those that 5% and include in their training they build in obstacles. Like I remember when I think it was the Colorado's college football team in the U.S. colorado was training to play against Oregon, which has a notoriously loud stadium. So at practice, the coaches were all holding 5 foot high speakers blaring the Oregon, the Oregon State song, you know, just to create leaders should be doing that. We should be training and skilling up and practicing. That might look like role plays, that might look like pre mortems, that might look like red teams, that, you know, we should be creating some, you know, environments to make sure our ideas and our strategies hold in environments and cultures and contexts that we can't control.

[B]

So important and so rarely done.

[A]

So rarely done. I mean, how long does a pre mortem take? I mean, you're the one that introduced me to the idea. And was it, what book was it in?

[B]

Gary Klein is the one who put it on my radar.

[A]

Okay, Right. So Gary Klein's got it. But where did you write about it first?

[B]

Oh, is it Think Again? I might have written about it and Think Again, I think it was.

[A]

Think again. That's where I got introduced to the idea. Then I went into Gary's research and looked at it, and we do them all the time. It's six months from now. This has gone to total shit. Why did it go to shit? What did we miss? And it has drastically changed how we think.

[B]

It's amazing to me that these kinds of activities aren't more popular because I was with a leadership team recently, and they had made what they all agreed was a disastrous strategic decision. And I was listening to them debrief it, and I said, well, like, how many. How many major decisions did you simulate before you went into the real thing? And they said, none. Why did you expect to be good at this the first time? You had to make a big choice together as a group.

[A]

I mean, it's. Yeah, it's. And you're gonna. You know, I think one of the things you're gonna come to every chapter. You could talk about this in my book and think again. In all your books and all my books. The biggest unspoken resistance to intentionality is time.

[B]

Always. We don't have time.

[A]

We don't have time. You know, you think it's gonna take time now? You think a 20 minute postmortem is gonna be time cost? You know, cost you a lot. Wait. You wait, you know, a year from now when this has costed, you know, $27 million in six months.

[B]

The way that people discount future time is beyond problematic. Yes. Invest. Invest the two hours this week to save yourself 200 hours over the next year. Please.

[A]

That's so.

[B]

Do it.

[A]

That's so interesting, the devaluation of future time. Do you think that's predicated on the overwhelming stress of current time?

[B]

I mean, it's hard to imagine that that's not a major contributing factor. There's an economist you might know, David Labson, who studied this. He calls it hyperbolic discounting. And it's just the dramatic decrease in the amount of weight that people put on the time they have, even a week from now or a month from now, as opposed to now.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

I've got to think that that intensifies under pressure and stress.

[A]

Okay. To be continued. I love this conversation.

[B]

Same.

[A]

We'll be back.

[B]

We have lots more to talk about.

[A]

We have lots more to talk about. All right. Thanks, Adam. I really appreciate it and I'm really. Let's just. Maybe it will be fun to do this. What's something you're taking away from this conversation?

[B]

Oh, I mean, I have. I have Multiple takeaways already. One is, I mean, just. I'll pick one from where we just were, which is instead of fighting against time, I want to reframe time invested now as time savings later. I'm, I'm always kind of. I feel like chipping away and saying, no, no, you can squeeze more. You know, you could, you could add one meeting to the calendar or you could prioritize one hour a week to, you know, to devote to rethinking and unlearning things. And what this conversation is, is leading me to think is, no, let's take people into the future. Like you were saying. Let's. Let's talk to them about how much time they're going to waste cleaning up the giant mess they're going to make if they don't carve out time. Now, that's. That's like. That's an investment, not a cost.

[A]

It is a total investment, and it's actually going back to the top of our conversation. Possibly an investment in your own freedom, which I can get behind. And I am going to think about this hyperbolic devaluation. I do not think about future time because in future, I'm even in better shape than I am now and I don't need as much time and my house is already clean. I've got some serious ass magical thinking on future time confession.

[B]

Stay tuned. We're gonna dive into that in our next episode.

[A]

Thanks, Adam.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Dare to lead is produced by Brene Brown education Research Group. Music is by the sufferers. Get new episodes as 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] dude, did you order the new iPhone 17 Pro? Got it from Verizon. The best 5G network in America. I never looked so good.

[B]

You look the same.

[A]

But with this camera, everything looks better. Especially me. You haven't changed your hair in 15 years.

[B]

Selfies check, please.

[A]

New and existing customers can get the new iPhone 17 Pro. Designed to be the most powerful iPhone ever with eligible phone, trade in and unlimited ultimate any condition guaranteed. Best 5G swears, root metrics data United States 1H 2025 All Rights Reserve, trade in and additional terms apply for all offers. See verizon.com for details.