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

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.

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]

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]

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

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.