How This Podcast Could Fail

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant Episode: How This Podcast Could Fail
Date: March 26, 2026
Network: Vox Media Podcast Network

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Episode Overview

In this candid and insightful episode, Brené Brown and Adam Grant open the doors into their collaboration, exploring how their podcast, The Curiosity Shop, could go wrong. Using personal anecdotes and workplace psychology—centered around the concept of a “pre-mortem”—they dissect potential pitfalls in their working relationship and the podcast itself. Honest, often vulnerable, and peppered with humor, the conversation serves both as a masterclass on collaborative risk assessment and a meta-reflection on the art of productive conflict.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Origin Story & Evolution of Their Relationship (01:34–08:45)

• Their very public academic "dust up" (2016): Adam reveals that their initial conflict inspired him to start podcasting (03:14). The two revisit how that disagreement turned into multiple collaborations, culminating in this joint venture.
  • Quote: Adam Grant (03:15): "That was my first conversation ever about podcasting. ... I was so upset. ... That morphed into, I'm going to create a podcast with Ted."
• From tension to productive partnership: Brené details their slow transition from adversaries to co-creators, emphasizing the bumps along the way, including early awkwardness in live debates and misunderstandings around sarcasm and communication styles.

2. Sarcasm, Communication, and Personality Clashes (08:45–16:55)

• Sarcasm as a sticking point: The two discuss deeply how sarcasm can be difficult for Brené to interpret from Adam—someone she experiences as very earnest—and how their personal histories shape their reactions.
  • Quote: Brené Brown (09:05): "You know the Greek origin of the word sarcasm? To tear flesh."
• Trash talk vs. sarcasm: Both love sports trash talk, but recognize sarcasm lands differently based on delivery and context.
  • Quote: Brené Brown (10:57): "It is definitely a first cousin [of] trash talk."
• Synesthesia and shapes: Brené describes seeing “round” and “pointy” personalities and how sarcasm from a “round” (earnest) person like Adam feels incongruent.

3. The Value of Pre-Mortems: Theory and Practice (19:02–31:42)

• Introduction to “pre-mortem” (20:02): The core of the episode centers around Gary Klein’s concept—imagining a future where the project has failed, then reverse engineering what went wrong.
  • Quote: Brené Brown (21:22): "The question I use for a pre-mortem ... is, it’s six months from now, and [the project] has absolutely failed. What will we be talking about around the failure?"
• Benefits in diverse settings: Adam emphasizes its value outside business—suggesting pre-mortems for friendships, marriages, parenting, and classrooms.
  • Quote: Adam Grant (24:48): "When friends become roommates ... when you have a child ... if we were to mess up parenting, what are the biggest mistakes we might make and how do we avoid this?"
• Giving voice to all kinds of thinkers: Both reflect on how pre-mortems empower quieter or more pessimistic team members to voice concerns (23:31–24:32).

4. Live Pre-Mortem on the Podcast and Their Collaboration (33:51–41:20)

• Potential failure points brainstormed (34:05–39:17):
  • Sarcastic attacks leading to defensiveness.
  • Disagreements not coming from a place of care and respect.
  • Poor alignment on goals and systems.
  • Getting “too wonky/academic” and losing non-academic listeners.
  • Balancing timeliness vs. timelessness.
  • Ineffective communication habits—emails vs. deep discussion.
  • Not investing enough energy, leading to the podcast being energy-draining.
  • Not maintaining feedback/repair: Brené credits Adam’s skill at apology and repair; Adam praises Brené’s skill at tough conversations.
  • Quote: Brené Brown (40:09): "I have a much faster confidence in our ability to become stronger because of our disagreements and our rumbles."
• Pre-mortem alignment: Both agree on the need for “feedback and repair” as a key protective factor.

5. Real-Life Example: Creative Collaboration on Logo/Branding (43:15–57:06)

• The logo design debacle:
  • Differing working styles and assumptions: Adam expected rough drafts; Brené’s team had invested significant time. Adam’s direct critique stung due to missing context.
  • Stealth expectations: The idea that unspoken assumptions poison collaboration.
    • Quote: Brené Brown (49:29): "Stealth expectations. We put things on the table. We talk about the why behind them."
• Systems theory & mental models: Intro to how diverging “mental models” underlie surface-level conflicts—Brené brings up systems thinking from social work.
  • Quote: Brené Brown (56:24): "That graphic design was an iceberg issue, but underneath it were mental models."
  • Adam introduces “equifinality”: multiple valid paths to the same outcome (57:45).

6. Strengths Overused, Decisiveness, and Anxiety (59:53–61:47)

• **Adam challenges Brené’s decisiveness as sometimes an over-compensated response to anxiety and time scarcity.
  • Quote: Brené Brown (60:49): "Can I invite you to think about how your decisiveness may be over decisiveness to deal with anxiety."
• Both reflect on the need to acknowledge their triggers and patterns to avoid repeating old cycles (61:32).

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Brené Brown (04:01): "If you watched his great podcast, you’re welcome."
• Adam Grant (09:04): "I thought I was [a word person] until I met you."
• Adam Grant (23:05): "Why would you wait till you’ve already failed? ... Why not have that conversation up front?"
• Brené Brown (49:29): "Stealth expectations. We put things on the table. We talk about the why behind them."
• Adam Grant (57:45): "My favorite concept from systems theory is equifinality ... there are multiple paths to the same end."
• Brené Brown (60:49): "[My coach asked,] 'Can I invite you to think about how your decisiveness may be over decisiveness to deal with anxiety?'"
• On collaboration’s challenge:
  • Adam Grant (48:05): "I want to try to have maximum impact with minimum interdependence ... And that doesn’t work when you’re trying to build something collaborative."
  • Brené Brown (58:33): "I do mean it that way ... If I’m not doing it the way that’s a lot of caregiving and time for me, I’m not being the leader that I want to be."

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:34 – Welcome, origin story, their “fight”
• 03:14 – How the fight led Adam to podcasting
• 08:45 – Deep dive: sarcasm, personality, communication differences
• 19:02 – Pre-mortem introduction and theory
• 21:22 – Pre-mortem question explained
• 24:48 – Pre-mortems outside the workplace
• 33:51 – “How could this go wrong?”: Applying the pre-mortem to the podcast
• 34:05–39:17 – Failure modes brainstorm
• 43:15–57:06 – Logo/branding disagreement: a live example
• 59:53 – Decisiveness vs. anxiety; strengths overused
• 67:16 – Quick-fire: what are you listening to, reading, watching?

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Final Rapid-Fire: Recommendations and Personal Shares (67:16–71:32)

• Adam listening/watching/reading:
  • Science Vs. on narcissism (67:29).
  • Survivor Season 50 (67:53): "[It’s] a giant psychology experiment in trust and collaboration."
  • Reading: Dana Susskind’s Human Raised and (68:41).
• Brené listening/watching/reading:
  • British mysteries (Shetland series) (69:06).
  • Heated Rivalry and Bridgerton (69:40–69:48).
  • Listening: The Rest Is Politics (UK), Rosalia, Townes Van Zandt (70:43).

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Tone and Takeaways

Warm, honest, sometimes raw, and always intellectually generous, this episode doubles as a case study in “slow thinking,” informed complexity, and the value of examining—in real time—how even the most experienced collaborators can fall into common traps. The real-time application of theory, the willingness to expose their own missteps, and the exchange of feedback deliver lessons in leadership and partnership relevant for teams, educators, and anyone navigating creative work with others.

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Suggested Follow-ups

• Episodes to come: They tease future episodes on comment moderation, remote work, and the concept of "above and under the line" in leadership.
• Listener engagement: Adam wonders aloud (16:13) whether most people interpret sarcasm as personality-consistent and invites listener feedback.

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This episode is essential listening—or reading—for anyone seeking to understand not just how partnerships fail, but also how they can succeed by embracing vulnerability, clarity of process, and a commitment to repair.

Transcript

[Brené Brown]

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[Adam Grant]

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[Brené Brown]

Welcome to the Curiosity Shop, a show

[Adam Grant]

from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

[Brené Brown]

Hi everybody, this is the Curiosity Shop. I'm Vernee Brown. Welcome.

[Adam Grant]

I'm Adam Grant. I'm excited that we're here again. That was the first episode was much more fun than I expected.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, me too. I was kind of nervous. Were you nervous at all?

[Adam Grant]

I wasn't nervous going in, but I started getting nervous when we started talking about our fight argument. What do you call it? A dust up?

[Brené Brown]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Adam Grant]

Because I was. I wasn't sure how that was going

[Brené Brown]

to go and we had never. It's weird that we just did it on a podcast as opposed to doing it like in person.

[Adam Grant]

But it felt like we had to talk about it because it's the origin story.

[Brené Brown]

It is the origin story.

[Adam Grant]

I actually do. You know, I started podcasting because of that fight.

[Brené Brown]

What?

[Adam Grant]

I've never told you this. Okay, so 2016, I write that New York Times piece. I quote you, you write your Strongly worded smackdown. I respond. You respond. I didn't know what to do at that point because I felt like it was unresolved. I was really upset that you clearly thought I was not a respectful person, not a careful scholar. And I also. I felt like there was a lot more to explore in the differences between our views that we hadn't gotten to. And I reached out to Ted and I said, hey, two of your speakers are having this very public debate. Have you ever thought about doing, instead of just people doing monologues like a debate at ted? And they said, no, but this would make for a really interesting podcast.

[Brené Brown]

You're kidding.

[Adam Grant]

No. And so that. That. That was my first conversation ever about podcasting. And the thought was that Ted was going to host it, and you and I, somebody was going to moderate that we were gonna have a conflict mediator, try to reconcile our differences, because I was so. I was so upset.

[Brené Brown]

I mean, I had no idea of any of this.

[Adam Grant]

I was. I was so distraught at the thought that it would just be left hanging and that we wouldn't. We wouldn't work it out. And then it was very clear that you did not want. Did not want to engage from the signals you had said. And I also. I think it stung enough that I was like, you know what? I don't want to. I don't want to have a relationship with her. And that morphed into, I'm going to create a podcast with Ted.

[Brené Brown]

If you watched his great podcast, you're welcome.

[Adam Grant]

That was all you, Renee, for the way for you, but here we are.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. Is that wild?

[Adam Grant]

Literally, 10 years later, doing a podcast

[Brené Brown]

together, and it's been bumpy, Very bumpy.

[Adam Grant]

Building sometimes, literally.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because we didn't tell this. We didn't get into this part. So we. You know, this is kind of like the part two where you invite me to do the work with you, we do the work together with the women's sports team. What happens from there? I invite you on the podcast. Oh, I loved our conversation on the podcast, and it became one of my most downloaded podcasts of my whole series.

[Adam Grant]

And then you were the first episode of the new podcast I launched. So we did one where I got to interview you, and then we started doing the rotating conversations with Simon, you,

[Brené Brown]

me, and Simon Sinek. Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

And we did a bunch of those, and it was fun. And I think we also started then overlapping more at events as opposed to, oh, you were there two days ago and then I showed up. Or you were there last year and Then I did this year.

[Brené Brown]

We started seeing each other more.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

And then we ended up on a flight together then.

[Brené Brown]

Oh, but before we got on the fight, the night before, we were on stage together for the first time.

[Adam Grant]

Oh. And that did not go well.

[Brené Brown]

That did not go well.

[Adam Grant]

Well, I think it. I think it went well for the audience.

[Brené Brown]

It went well. I know that.

[Adam Grant]

It went great for us.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, it went well for the audience. I think we got into a conflict that I think was supposed to be fun, but it didn't feel fun for me.

[Adam Grant]

And I was completely oblivious to that.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

I thought. I thought we were just having a fun debate.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. And then I was like, God dang it, here we go again. And the next morning, we had to get on a flight and I was frustrated and we had a really. We were having kind of a tension filled conversation about it. This is my memory of it. And then we hit turbulence. And then I looked at you and you said, are you okay? Like, very tersely almost. Are you all right? And I said, no, I'm scared. And you said. And you weren't. You were so kind. You weren't judgy at all. You said something like, oh, are you. Are you afraid of flying? And I said, no, I'm afraid of dying. Which it feels like I think we're going to do right now because this is engineering, and from an engineering perspective, this should not be happening. And then you were just kind of like, no, from an engineering perspective, this makes total sense. And then you kind of talked me through it, and then I was like, okay. And then we had a good conversation about what about that stage dynamic worked and what didn't work. And I think it's because we're different enough that I see you in a way where you're one of the most earnest people. But no, no. That I've ever met. So I can find myself being less armored with you very quickly because. So when you say something that's funny and like, sarcastic or zingy, which is like how I grew up and what. I am very good at it. I'm actually really good at sarcasm and do it with a couple of my friends nonstop. But when you do it, I don't know, because you're so earnest, I think you're saying something really like, oh, shit, he's mad, or, oh, man, he thinks I'm. He's. He doesn't think I'm smart or something like that. And you're being sarcastic just to. For levity.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, exactly. To not be overly earnest.

[Brené Brown]

To not be. Because you don't. You don't want to be overly earnest.

[Adam Grant]

No, no, I don't. I want to. I. I hope it comes across that I care about people and honesty and integrity are important to me, but I also have a little edge. I don't want to sound like a Pollyanna.

[Brené Brown]

Right. No. Right. And so. Yeah. So it's just like getting to know people today especially. I would not consider myself an easy person. I'm a pretty complex person.

[Adam Grant]

Pretty complex. Almost as understatement.

[Brené Brown]

Almost as complex as you. And you're gonna.

[Adam Grant]

Much more.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, I knew you were gonna say that. Because you see yourself as simplicity. What you see is what you get. You're like the WYSIWYG guy. You're not.

[Adam Grant]

I don't know what that means, but.

[Brené Brown]

God, you know, like, what you see is what you get. Like, you're just. You're not complex.

[Adam Grant]

I think I'm straightforward. Am I not straightforward?

[Brené Brown]

No.

[Adam Grant]

Why not?

[Brené Brown]

Because there's a distance between some things about you that I think are genuine and some ways that you are always self improving. And like, I don't think overly earnest is Pollyanna. But that's your read on it. I think it's unusual and awesome. Yeah. And so. But, you know, like, the sarcasm thing, I'm really careful about. You know, the other thing is I'm a word person. Like, words. Like, you notice this?

[Adam Grant]

Oh, yes.

[Brené Brown]

Like, words.

[Adam Grant]

I thought I was one until I met you.

[Brené Brown]

I don't know what that means, but it doesn't sound good. I'm like a word person, but like, you know the Greek origin of the word sarcasm. To tear flesh.

[Adam Grant]

Ooh, that's biting.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. And I also think it's like last episode we talked about how you're. How I really complimented you on your ability to repair and apologize. And you talked about coming from a divorced family. I also come from that. And so. But I also come from one that was very. As the old. Yeah. The oldest daughter thing, which you probably should stay aware of because you've got an oldest daughter and I've got an oldest daughter. Right. But like that. When teasing broke out in my family, our sarcasm broke out. I was immediate. Like, oh, God, like, there's a scene from Mary Poppins when, like, the admiral's getting ready to blow the cannon and the housekeepers run around and make sure everything. Nothing falls off shelves. So as soon as sarcasm and teasing started in my family, I got hyper vigilant because this is gonna end in

[Adam Grant]

tears for somebody that makes so much Sense. And I come at it from a completely different place, which is, I think about. There's a whole body of research on pro social teasing.

[Brené Brown]

Yes.

[Adam Grant]

And I would never tease you if it weren't a sign of affection.

[Brené Brown]

So how do we reconcile this too? Because sports shit talk is my love language.

[Adam Grant]

I love trash talk.

[Brené Brown]

I love trash talk.

[Adam Grant]

And this is in the same category as that for me.

[Brené Brown]

I love trash talk. Okay. Next time you say something that I'm like, whoa. I'm like, are you shit talking me? And you'll be like, yeah. And I'll be like, okay, I see you.

[Adam Grant]

Maybe. Or I could just do it less.

[Brené Brown]

No, no, let's try it. We'll just try it. Okay. Because I do love. I am such a trash talker.

[Adam Grant]

You are. Yeah, you are. And that makes it seem like. I mean, I think this kind of sarcasm is at least a near cousin.

[Brené Brown]

It is definitely a first cousin trash talk.

[Adam Grant]

And so it seems like it would elicit the same reaction, but it doesn't, so.

[Brené Brown]

Because I'm telling you, there's a.

[Adam Grant]

There's a trigger there.

[Brené Brown]

No, there's a. We'll see if we leave this in the podcast or not. Because I think Adam's been diagnosing me over the last month.

[Adam Grant]

I don't diagnose anyone ever.

[Brené Brown]

I'm just saying that you have round edges and sarcasm has sharp points. And so there's a discontent. Like there's a disconnect for me. Because you're not a pointy person. He's convinced that I have shape synesthesia.

[Adam Grant]

I think you might.

[Brené Brown]

Because I see everything in shapes. And so, like, so for. For pointy shape. For pointy people, I'm expecting it. But from round people I'm not.

[Adam Grant]

Okay. And so let me. Let me see if I can translate that into psychology language. I hear that. What I hear is I'm. I'm a Personality wise. I'm a highly agreeable person. And that is hail. No, interpersonally, not intellectually. I care about social harmony.

[Brené Brown]

Yes.

[Adam Grant]

And people getting along.

[Brené Brown]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Adam Grant]

But I will debate ideas.

[Brené Brown]

Right.

[Adam Grant]

Endlessly.

[Brené Brown]

Okay, so say it again, but caveat the agreeability.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah. Maybe I'll try to be more specific on this. So I think within agreeableness, I probably lead with a fair amount of warmth and trust.

[Brené Brown]

Yes.

[Adam Grant]

And then there's this sort of harder. The sarcasm is more disagreeable. It's more adversarial. And so it doesn't fit.

[Brené Brown]

No, no, I don't think.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, play it back a different way. What does round Pointy.

[Brené Brown]

Then I think you mean what you say and you say what you mean. Oh, you do not mince words. So if you look at me and go, nice cowboy shirt, Dolly Parton, then I'm like, you know, because, like, so I. It's not. I can't match you in the word agreeability in any context.

[Adam Grant]

I score off the charts on agreeableness.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. No, I can't. I think you are. Is it sincere or straightforward?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, yeah. That's in the honesty, humility axis, interestingly.

[Brené Brown]

Is it. Tell more people what that means.

[Adam Grant]

One of the models of personality that has kind of big five right along with the big five is hexaco, which reinterprets some of the standard extroversion, emotional stability, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and then adds this honesty, humility trait, which is about being straightforward and sincere and having integrity. And I aspire to be all of those things. And so you're saying the sarcasm does not fit in with those things and it feels like a conflict for you.

[Brené Brown]

Yes.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, so that's so interesting, because the way that I look at that is different, which is I'm all those things, and therefore everyone will know not to take my sarcasm at face value.

[Brené Brown]

Oh, I think that's a wily assumption, Adam Grant.

[Adam Grant]

I've been making it as long as I can remember without realizing it until now. So that's a wy.

[Brené Brown]

That's a wily assumption. So I think there's a new Texas measurement tool called the Bullshitter analysis. This is not true. There's not, but there should be, which I would score off the chart. So I am like a. I'm like a storyteller, kind of like that kind of gab. Gift of. Yeah, I'm trying to see if gift of gab works for me. Yeah, I mean, maybe, but I would just say more storyteller. Bullshitter. How are ya? Like, my dad would be like, how you doing, old son? And, you know, you'd say something like, well, I'm doing okay. I got a. Broke my arm. Damn. I had breaks bigger than that on my eyeball, you know, like, that's how my dad. That's what I come from. And so when I'm. When I'm. So My dangerous area around sarcasm is not when I'm in a bullshit sports talk thing, like, on the court. I'm very like, if there's a celly, I do it. It's obnoxious as hell.

[Adam Grant]

That's why we can't ever get on a court.

[Brené Brown]

We probably can't play tennis or pickleball.

[Adam Grant]

It might be the end of our friendship.

[Brené Brown]

It could be the end. Especially if we ever played as devil's partners. Because if you're gonna come over on my side and take a ball, you damn well better end that point.

[Adam Grant]

I would, obviously.

[Brené Brown]

Okay. All right. So the thing with sarcasm that's hard for me, for people, I think, is not when I'm in my banter mode, but I can be. I know this. You'll find this surprising. A very intense person. What I know. Never shocking.

[Adam Grant]

I never had a clue.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. So when I'm intense, I cannot use

[Adam Grant]

sarcasm with people because it comes on too strong.

[Brené Brown]

It comes on as passive aggressive meanness.

[Adam Grant]

Oh, okay. Yep. I can. I can imagine that. So, okay, so I'm curious for our listeners. We have new listeners, right?

[Brené Brown]

I hope so.

[Adam Grant]

How many people? Because we process this differently. I'm curious about how many people look at these things like you do and say, wait a minute, you're a straightforward kind of clear, sincere communicator, and therefore you shouldn't be sarcastic because that's not who you are. And how many people look at it like I do and say, I interpret that behavior through the lens of what I know about your personality. I wonder which is more common. And I obviously think mine is more common and you're the outlier. And I'm excited to find out if I'm wrong.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. I don't know. Well, let's pose it on LinkedIn and have people weigh in.

[Adam Grant]

Oh, we can just have people comment on YouTube now.

[Brené Brown]

Oh, that's right.

[Adam Grant]

And on Spotify.

[Brené Brown]

Wait, do we have comments open on YouTube? We do not have comments open on YouTube. All right, we can talk about that later. We should have a podcast on that.

[Adam Grant]

We should.

[Brené Brown]

We should have a podcast on comments. I got a lot of thoughts.

[Adam Grant]

Let's do that.

[Brené Brown]

Because I've got them closed everywhere and

[Adam Grant]

I have them open, so we'll.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, okay.

[Adam Grant]

Let's add that to our list.

[Brené Brown]

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[Adam Grant]

Learn [e-mail] Support for this show comes from SAS. SAS has been in data and AI for 50 years, and they believe in a pretty simple idea. AI should be explainable, transparent, and well governed because that's the only way it can earn your trust. From banks and boardrooms to hospitals in the halls of government, AI systems now inform decisions that affect millions of people every day. That's why SAS's core commitment to responsible innovation is more important than ever. So that every could we Is followed by a should we? And leads to a here's how it works. If that kind of clarity appeals to you, visit sas.com to see how SAS applies their simple guiding principles to to a complex AI landscape where hard questions require reliable answers. Learn [e-mail] that's sas.com so good, so good, so good.

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[Adam Grant]

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[Adam Grant]

I think this is a great segue to the topic of today's podcast, which is we've already started talking through the thing we didn't get to last episode, which is how could this go wrong? And one way I think this partnership could go wrong is if I am sarcastic in ways that lead you to feel attacked and then you either get defensive or attack in reverse, and then we end up in the kind of, I think like prosecutor spiral that we got into 10 years ago.

[Brené Brown]

Okay, so what do you think? I think that's absolutely true. I want to break it down for everyone listening because my hope is that we can do this honestly together. And I'm sure it'll have some strange and weird entertainment value for folks listening to us figure out where we could fail. But I also want to share this as a tool that we both believe in. So let's walk them back a little bit and let's talk about this is a pre mortem and this is Gary Klein's book. It came out in hbr. I wrote down the date. Do you know how old this is?

[Adam Grant]

I mean, the research on it even dates back a couple decades now.

[Brené Brown]

Does it? Yeah. So 2007 was the big famous HBR article. Harvard Business Review where he introduced this idea of a pre mortem and the pre mortem the way. And we both use it and we both teach it, and you and I are inside working with senior leader teams all the time. And when I teach them this, it goes to shit in 15 minutes when they try it fast.

[Adam Grant]

But it's so important for them to try it.

[Brené Brown]

It's so important for them to try it. And we'll talk about why it doesn't work as we do it. So this is a pre mortem, the idea. It's two things, I think, together. It's a risk assessment. So Adam and I are going to do a pre mortem on the Curiosity Shop. So we're going to. It's a form of doing a risk assessment and it's also. And this is a researchy word. So we'll talk about it. Prospective hindsight.

[Adam Grant]

Prospective hindsight. Nailed it. It's another paradox.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. Which I love. You know, I love a paradox. I know I never met a paradox I didn't love.

[Adam Grant]

It's true. I've come around on those too.

[Brené Brown]

Thank you.

[Adam Grant]

I think they're really useful. It's being able to see the future in the present, basically.

[Brené Brown]

So prospective looking forward, hindsight, looking back. So the question that I use for pre mor. Go ahead.

[Adam Grant]

No, no, go ahead.

[Brené Brown]

The question I use for a pre mortem and how I teach teams to use it is we're sitting at this table and we have this new project. It's six months from now and it's gone to shit. We have absolutely. This project has absolutely failed. What will we be talking about around the failure of this? What are the topics that we'd be talking about then that we should be addressing now?

[Adam Grant]

We do this very similarly.

[Brené Brown]

Okay, tell me.

[Adam Grant]

So I do a little bit of a little setup around it.

[Brené Brown]

Okay, great.

[Adam Grant]

Where I like to ask, how many of you do post mortems after you fail and everybody goes up. Yeah. We know the importance of after action reviews and debriefing. And my reaction to that is that's a great process, but it is the dumbest time to do it. Why would you wait till you've already failed? You'd love to have a time machine at that point. Why not have that conversation up front and try to anticipate and prevent some of those mistakes?

[Brené Brown]

Oh, I love that setup. I'll be borrowing that.

[Adam Grant]

It's all yours. What I find really powerful about pre mortems, and I think this is one of the lessons of Gary's research, is they make people better at seeing around corners. But they also give people the permission to talk about the things that could go wrong that they're afraid to admit.

[Brené Brown]

Amen. So say those two things again. I call them the turkey peak, because in the military, when you look around a corner, because we both work with the military a lot, you're doing the around the corner. So say the two things. Why? You think they're great?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah. So I think the first thing is I go farther out. I usually ask three to five years if the decision you're making right now or the project you're launching is just an unmitigated disaster, what are the most likely causes? And so then you have to start looking in places you haven't looked before. It widens your. It takes you out of tunnel vision. It gives you better peripheral vision. I think that's the first thing. And then the second thing is it's a conversation where you're supposed to talk about the risks, the invitation. Exactly. And the way you said risk assessment, I never crystallized it, but that's exactly what you're doing. You're inviting people to say, here's what I'm concerned about. Here are some issues that we haven't talked about that really could be a problem.

[Brené Brown]

I gotta tell you that my favorite thing about being in the room with teams I'm working with when they run a pre mortem is the quiet, more introverted, usually highly analytic people who are often told that they are constantly raining on people's parades around enthusiasm and group projects will be the first to raise their hand and say, I think we'll be examining the assumptions around these data.

[Adam Grant]

Yes. And I see also people who tend to be more defensive pessimists than strategic optimists who have learned to self censor because they're dragging people around with their worrying. All of a sudden they have a voice. Same for people who tend to be highly disagreeable, who have been taught to sand down that edge, can say, oh, well, this is a point where people are actually willing to hear my critique because we can still do something about it.

[Brené Brown]

The thing. Go ahead.

[Adam Grant]

No, no, go ahead.

[Brené Brown]

No, go ahead.

[Adam Grant]

Okay. Just before we dive into the specifics, I never thought about this before, but this has so many applications outside the workplace. I think that when friends become roommates for the first time.

[Brené Brown]

Oh, God, yes.

[Adam Grant]

They should do a pre mortem. I think that marriages. The pre mortem conversation, that's more important than the prenup conversation.

[Brené Brown]

It is 100%.

[Adam Grant]

How could this relationship go wrong? I think when you have A child. I think it would have been so valuable for Allison and I to sit down and say, if we were to mess up parenting, what are the biggest mistakes we think we might make and how do we avoid this?

[Brené Brown]

It's interesting because Steve and I have had. We didn't call them premortems, but when I was pregnant with Ellen, our oldest, we basically spent. It was so powerful. I can remember where I was sitting and what I was wearing when we basically went through what now I know is a pre mortem about when. Yeah. Because I was about. It was a wild day, actually. I was probably eight or nine months pregnant. I was very pregnant. And he asked me a question on a walk about. I was so scared because I was in my PhD program. And when I told the then head of the doctoral program that I was pregnant, his response was, we thought you were going to be someone. Yeah. And so it got very tricky because I got really smartassy and very much like, hey, it's a baby, not a lobotomy. And I was very defensive, obviously.

[Adam Grant]

As you should have been.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

Because that's such an inappropriate comment to me.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

And, you know, as if you can't have a career and a child.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. Although the research at the time, which he pointed out was like parenthood and getting married were really good for male untenured professors and very bad for female untenured professors, you know, so that was true. Everybody needed a wife, you know. And so I was really scared and defensive. And what ended up happening was I got hyperemesis. So I got that thing where my progesterone levels were very high. And so I threw up every day. I had to take a leave of absence from. From the PhD program. And it was interesting because it was a female tenured professor who said, you have sat in my class and thrown up in the trash can for the last time. She said, I have had several miscarriages that I attribute specifically to the stress of academia. We will be here when you are better. And I was sick for the first trimester and then I came back. But it was this layers of stuff. But that prompted this hard conversation where Steve said, what do you want from your career? And that's when I said, I want to start a global conversation about shame and vulnerability. Wow. So that was 27 years ago. And then I. And he said, who do you think we want to be? And where do you think? Who do we not want to be as parents? Because we had no models of what marriage looked like. There were great things our parents did And a lot of things we wanted to do differently because we just have more information. So we had a long conversation and wrote it down, actually. Like where. Where we would look back and think, this is not what we want to do or who we want to be.

[Adam Grant]

Wow.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. So we actually. I. So you did the pre mortem? We kind of did the pre mortem, yeah. It was because we said things that we. Things that we heard growing up that we don't ever want to say. Because I said, so this is my house.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah.

[Brené Brown]

You know, we wanted to say yes every time we could. You know, just things that we were trying to. We. And the biggest thing that Steve said in that moment, who's a pediatrician, said there was a difference between trauma and adversity. We had a lot of trauma growing up, both of us. We didn't want that for our kids, but we didn't want to overcorrect and protect them from adversity.

[Adam Grant]

Can you just flesh out what the difference is and how you've done that?

[Brené Brown]

I think trauma sets us back and adversity makes us stronger. And so I think they were about real assessments of is this uncomfortable or is this actually unsafe? You know, is this something where you can learn and feel protected or is this something where you will feel unsafe? You know, and I think trauma is about unsafety.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, that's a really helpful distinction.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. I go back to Shelley Uram from Harvard. I saw her one of those things where you go to a hotel lobby and someone gives a presentation all day, like a seminar. And she did this thing about what is trauma and what isn't that we use to inform our parenting a lot. She had someone sit on a chair and she popped a balloon in front of them and they didn't like it very much. But then she said, I'm going to tie your hands and legs to this chair and do the same thing. And that person said, absolutely, I can't do that. And she said, that's the difference. I don't have any control over my own well being. And so I thought, I don't know if that's official. Just for all the therapists out there and all the trauma experts. I am not one. We are not, you know, social worker psychologists went to the research side, not the clinical side. But I thought the loss of control and safety were interesting. So we did pre mormort.

[Adam Grant]

Extremely powerful.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, we did pre mortem. One of the things I've also done, which I'll be interested in your take on this, I do them with my class. So if this class ends up in your mind being a failure when it's over, even though we only have 15 weeks together a semester, what will we be saying from your perspective in mine,

[Adam Grant]

what do your students say most often on that?

[Brené Brown]

The learning that comes out of a qualitative analysis of what mine are and theirs are is if they don't take equal responsible responsibility for their learning, that they are passive in the. That my job is to teach. Their job isn't to learn. It will also be a failure if my job is to come in from a consumer perspective to make them happy.

[Adam Grant]

Right.

[Brené Brown]

And. And not challenge them into discomfort.

[Adam Grant]

That's so interesting.

[Brené Brown]

So we do a pre mortem even when we teach.

[Adam Grant]

I didn't realize I've been. I've been doing the results of it without. Without having the premortem conversation. I take the postmortem from the mid course and end of semester evaluations that I get every year. And then I open the next year's class by saying one of the common ones is there are always complaints that we don't have enough debate in class because people are afraid of challenging me. And they're also afraid of damaging their relationships with their new classmates. Especially with MBA students.

[Brené Brown]

Oh yeah.

[Adam Grant]

Undergrads worry about it too though. And so I say, look, I don't think we have enough debate in the classroom. And then I give them a mechanism which is they can hold up a pen if they disagree. And that way I will jump the line and call on the people with the pen up so that they get to bring in some of that productive dissent.

[Brené Brown]

But that's pre mortem informed pedagogy, right?

[Adam Grant]

It is teaching. I never thought to do the actual pre mortem.

[Brené Brown]

I like anything that's a parallel process that we're doing it, but we're also kind of learning it.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, so let's switch them in. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney Plus.

[Brené Brown]

Let's go get ready for a new case. We're the greatest partners of all time.

[Adam Grant]

New friends.

[Brené Brown]

Gary the Snake.

[Adam Grant]

And your last name, the snake Dream team.

[Brené Brown]

Pick new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home.

[Adam Grant]

Zootopia 2.

[Brené Brown]

Now available on Disney. Rated PG.

[Adam Grant]

And right now you can get Disney plus and Hulu for just $4.99 a month for three months with a special limited time offer. Ends March 24th.

[Brené Brown]

After three months, Plan Auto renews at $12.99 a month. Terms apply.

[Adam Grant]

There's basically been one guy in Republican politics, who's argued for regime change in Iran for years and for America to take a proactive military role in making it happen. Ambassador John Bolton, President Trump's former national security adviser. But now even Bolton says Donald Trump is messing it up.

[Brené Brown]

As far as we can tell, he did no preparation of the opposition actually inside Iran. No coordination, no effort to see what they would do, no effort to support them, to provide resources, money, arms, if that's what they wanted.

[Adam Grant]

Telecommunications.

[Brené Brown]

Just no coordination at all. And they don't seem prepared for it.

[Adam Grant]

How Trump lost the Republican Party's biggest Iran war. Hawk today, explain every weekday and on Saturdays, too. In 1984, Apple launched maybe the most consequential computer ever. It was not a good computer, particularly. There was actually a lot wrong with it. But the Macintosh had all of the right ideas about what computers would become, and it kind of changed everything. This week on Version History, our chat show about the best and worst and most interesting products in tech history, were telling the story of the Macintosh and why, again, despite not being very good, it managed to change everything Anyway, that's version history on YouTube and wherever you get podcasts.

[Brené Brown]

So if this fails, we'll take. I mean, because unfortunately, the time for these failing is pretty quick. So let's say it's a year from now, 12 months from now, and this has not worked out. What are. What we were like.

[Adam Grant]

We should brainwrite this before we brainwrite one of the most likely causes.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, yeah, y' all can watch us.

[Adam Grant]

So we already covered the kind of the sarcasm attack spiral.

[Brené Brown]

What's the broader category for that?

[Adam Grant]

I think the broader category is, I mean, from my perspective. Tell me if this is right, is the disagreement doesn't come from a place of care.

[Brené Brown]

Yes.

[Adam Grant]

And respect.

[Brené Brown]

So we will fail if disagreement doesn't come from care. Yes. Can I add one?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, please. Okay, wait, wait. I went a little more time to capture other ways we can fail.

[Brené Brown]

Do, do, do.

[Adam Grant]

I've got three more.

[Brené Brown]

While we're writing these down, I want to say one of the reasons why it's important for us to do this is because when you start a podcast, we're building a business that is a podcast. We're not just talent that's been hired to do something that somewhat. We're building actually the business of the podcast together. So all of a sudden we have found ourselves being co founders, you know, so we're navigating the founder hard bullshit and a co founder thing. So that's why this matters. It's not like we can Be. It's not like we can show up and anchor the news and be like, anne today. And then. Thank you. And then, like, walk out there and be like, I hate you. And then we just come back and the next day we're behind the scenes building a sustainable business, which we didn't

[Adam Grant]

agree on when we started.

[Brené Brown]

No.

[Adam Grant]

And there might still be a little bit of tension around that.

[Brené Brown]

There's been hard because I've been like, we need to invest more time in this. And he's like, maybe, you know, I'm like, God dang it.

[Adam Grant]

That's on my list. No surprise.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, me too.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, hold on. I got one more that I think I want to capture here, which is.

[Brené Brown]

Okay.

[Adam Grant]

Okay.

[Brené Brown]

I've got four.

[Adam Grant]

I've got also four.

[Brené Brown]

Okay, go ahead.

[Adam Grant]

Do you want to just compare lists and not explain yet?

[Brené Brown]

No.

[Adam Grant]

What do you want to do? What do you want to do? You just wanted to say no. No, no, no. You just like the reaction do you get?

[Brené Brown]

No, I don't want to do that.

[Adam Grant]

What do you want to do?

[Brené Brown]

Because I don't want to. Like, I'm going to add why I said no to my goddamn list.

[Adam Grant]

Please do. I just wanted to hear everything on yours and then have the full picture of which ones should we spend more and less time on. No.

[Brené Brown]

And I don't want to leave what you write open to my interpretation. So I want you to go through them, and I want to be clear with a playback.

[Adam Grant]

Can we do it succinctly, though, before we dive into it?

[Brené Brown]

Yes.

[Adam Grant]

Okay. All right. So the first one is if we're not aligned on what our team is trying to accomplish.

[Brené Brown]

I have something similar. Go ahead.

[Adam Grant]

Okay. That needs no explanation.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. No.

[Adam Grant]

Okay. Second one is if we end up nerding out and getting too wonky and we lose all the non academics.

[Brené Brown]

Okay, true. I didn't have it, but it's true.

[Adam Grant]

A third is if we end up being either too timely or too timeless.

[Brené Brown]

Agree.

[Adam Grant]

Look, no explanation needed.

[Brené Brown]

No. And let me just explain what that means, because this is like, a little bit inside baseball. We've had a conversation where we want this to. We want to be with y' all in a way where what we say is timely and feels relevant for your lives, but also isn't like, do, do, do, do, do, breaking news. What are you thinking about the news yesterday? We want it to be timeless, and we want it to be relevant and meeting the moment at the same time. So that's what that meant, Right?

[Adam Grant]

Well articulated. Yes. And then the last One is just not coming up with. I think this is the most minor of the four. But not coming up with a communication process that keeps us aligned.

[Brené Brown]

Okay, that's very true.

[Adam Grant]

I'm firing off quick emails and you have spent five days writing the perfect text.

[Brené Brown]

Yes. Okay. Yeah. So that's actually already happened in case you want to know. All right, so I loved the disagree from Not a place of Care. That's true. We have not built systems that support the organizational goals.

[Adam Grant]

That's a broader version of my last point. I like yours better.

[Brené Brown]

But we just don't build the system. So I'm thinking of James Clears. We do not rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. So. So this is also. Yeah, we'll just do that. Okay.

[Adam Grant]

I disagree with James on that, by the way. I think we do both, interestingly.

[Brené Brown]

I agree wholeheartedly. And I've got a three by three sign in our office in Houston that is like spotlighted with plants around it just to drive home the point. We don't agree on how businesses should be run. I don't know what this says. We didn't give. Oh, easy.

[Adam Grant]

Oh.

[Brené Brown]

I think because of the. I think of. Because of the season we are in our lives and especially me. I've got a time on you age wise because of the busyness, the busyness of both of our lives and the season of my life that I'm particularly in right now. If this is not energy giving, if this is just becomes energy taking, I don't. I think we will call it quits. It will not fail. But we'll say it's failed.

[Adam Grant]

Yep. Yeah, I think that's right. I have maybe one more to add which is I think if we don't get good at. If we don't continue to practice the feedback and repair regularly.

[Brené Brown]

Absolutely.

[Adam Grant]

Because I have built in the past year that we've been talking about doing this. I have built so much confidence that we can disagree about anything and work it out because we're both committed to fixing whatever mistakes we make. And I think that to me is sort of vital to whatever might go wrong in the other categories.

[Brené Brown]

Okay. I'm having a meta moment. So I will say that I am shocked that when there's a conflict between us and there have been several. Even if I'm frustrated, which I can get frustrated. I think I typed you the word frustrated one time. Yes, Frustrated.

[Adam Grant]

Which I failed to anticipate

[Brené Brown]

via email.

[Adam Grant]

You did?

[Brené Brown]

I did. I have a very much faster confidence in our Ability to become stronger because of our disagreements and our rumbles.

[Adam Grant]

Same.

[Brené Brown]

Then what would be predictable in two people coming together to build a business? Like, it's unusual, but I'm going to tell you that I think we have complimentary skills here. I think you are much better at apology and repair than I am. And I think I'm pretty good at hard conversations.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah. And both of those things need to.

[Brené Brown]

They both have to happen. Yeah. I mean, like, if you are really good at difficult rumbles and difficult conversations, but you withhold repair or you don't know how to do it or apology, it doesn't work. And if you're really skilled at apology and repair but can't stay in the messiness of a hard conversation, it never.

[Adam Grant]

It gets fully resolved.

[Brené Brown]

It doesn't get.

[Adam Grant]

You learn nothing from the conflict is going to get repeated.

[Brené Brown]

So I think, I think we're good. I think we're really good at those things. So I think I liked the fact that you said if we continue to do them. Is there one thing that we've talked about that you're the most worried about?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, I think. Well, I think it's. I think it's the combined category of what it looks like to be a successful team together. You know, co found something together. I don't even like calling it a business. I don't. I don't want to build businesses. Like, I think of myself as an intellectual entrepreneur. I want to build ideas and share them.

[Brené Brown]

Right.

[Adam Grant]

And I can respond to that or just sit there.

[Brené Brown]

Shit works, dude. I like. Okay, sorry. Oh, an intellectual entrepreneur. Okay. Now. Okay. So this also reflects how we intervene with the companies we work in.

[Adam Grant]

And you have more impact because you are willing to roll your sleeves up more than I do.

[Brené Brown]

I don't know about impact. I mean, I do. Okay, well, I am deeply embedded and I am like brought into conversations and sit in strategy meetings where I'm not only observing the behavior of the leaders, but I'm weighing in on how they're thinking about relocating supply chain.

[Adam Grant]

And you cannot give me a parachute faster to get out of those conversations. I only want to be in that deep if I'm running an experiment or doing a longitudinal survey and then we're going to publish research out of it.

[Brené Brown]

Got it. And I'm doing that too. I'm doing that different. I do that. We do dare to lead intervention. So dare to lead is the work. And we go in and work with companies and sometimes these interventions will include 30,000 people. And I'll be working at the kind of the C suite level and the direct reports at the C suite. But they are very tactical, very messy and very detailed. Like, I'm in the detail. I'm in the weeds. I'm embedded.

[Adam Grant]

Yeah. I mean, I think I would fall asleep in the first minute.

[Brené Brown]

Okay. Yeah. I mean, so is that the one

[Adam Grant]

you were most concerned about? For sure, yeah. Okay. Maybe we should talk a little bit about the logo design as a microcosm of this. Or maybe we shouldn't.

[Brené Brown]

No, I'm thinking, yes, I think we can because we learn so much. I learned so much from you. I want to. There are parts of the way you move through the world with the same organizations. We work with a lot of the same organizations, which is weird. That I really admire and am moving toward. And so I've learned a lot from you. I mean, I've really learned a lot from you.

[Adam Grant]

Same.

[Brené Brown]

I think the logo design is an interesting. Yeah, it's interesting. What would you say about it? I'm nervous. I'm anxious about the conversation a little bit, but let's go.

[Adam Grant]

I don't know if it's helpful or not. I'm sure it will be a concrete example, I think. So you volunteered to have your team take the lead on designing the logo. And I thought, okay, we work really differently. You have an in tech team that you collaborate with on almost everything, right? Yeah, I'm much more autonomous and I have kind of project specific teams that do certain things, but they're not with me all the time. I just have a book team and I have a podcast team and they're all kind of separate. Right. And so the fact that you have this syntact team, I thought, wow, it's really generous of you to volunteer to do this. And also you have much more aesthetic sensibility and care about design details. And I don't know the first thing about any of it, so it makes sense on all levels. And then you sent me a draft, which I superimposed my mental model of how design works, which is most of my design is book covers. And we just come up with 20 or 30 ideas. And it's very little thought initially put in because we want to look at a whole bunch of ideas and then align on which directions we like before we do any refining or improving. And so I thought that's what I was getting. And I was hypercritical, I think, and that was not what I got, right.

[Brené Brown]

No, you got the best iteration of probably 50 hours of work.

[Adam Grant]

And I felt so terrible, so terrible because I thought it was maybe an hour or two of work that had gone into it.

[Brené Brown]

But let's get underneath what was really happening there, because this is where shit goes bad in real life, in our partnerships with our kids and on our teams. What was really going on there is I do have an intact team, but I have a very new team, some new people. I mean, I've been the CEO of a company for a long time. I knew how you felt about business building, so I tried to protect you from it, which is my therapy and business coaching work for fricking decades, by just giving you something final and then being. And what you sent to me was not shareable with a creative team that had been working hours and hours for that. Yeah. Because, like, if you lead a creative team, you're, you know, it's just different. And so I think what came out of that was me saying to you, you said something like, how are you in an email? Or what are you feeling?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah. And I tried to guess a few of your emotions and missed the mark.

[Brené Brown]

And I just said, I'm really frustrated. And then we had a conversation which was, I am trying to find more space and time and flow and freedom in my life. I am, like, I've won the parenting lottery that I have adult kids who want to hang out with me and Steve. I am going to play pickleball, tennis, whatever, six days a week. Not tennis. I'm playing pickleball six days a week. I'm going to have a different life right now. I want to write and do deep thinking. And I said, I don't want to lead this business by myself, and I don't want to protect you from the sausage making, because if we're going to be in this together. But I teed up an idea to you which was, why don't we not build a business and let's just be like, the talent and let somebody else own the podcast and own the business.

[Adam Grant]

And neither of us wanted to do that.

[Brené Brown]

And you were like, I don't want that. Then I said, well, then we're signing up to build a business, and how are we going to do that? And then you said, I'm going to take equal responsibility for the sausage making. And that was one of the best things that's ever happened for me.

[Adam Grant]

I mean, I'm committed.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

And you talked about, well, one of the things I've learned from you is you not only have really great collaborative relationships, there's a lot of joy in those relationships. And I think your life is more full because you Work with people that you really like and care about. And I do that, but I do it in pieces. And I thought, oh, it would actually be fun to have a team that's more complete and be part of that team. And I need to learn how to do more of that. Because my mantra for a long time has been, I want to try to have maximum impact with minimum interdependence. I want to be as autonomous and free as possible. And that doesn't work when you're trying to build something collaborative that really makes a difference. So I think I'm on board for that. I think we still have different ideas about how a team can work most effectively and efficiently together, and that's what we're going to have to work through.

[Brené Brown]

And we're doing it later today because, you know. And so I think I have a lot to learn from you, and I want to do that. I think. I think as long as we are honest about. I think what will kill us both and kill the business is stealth expectations.

[Adam Grant]

Yes, that's a great phrase. Stealth expectations.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. I write about that in Dare to Lead.

[Adam Grant]

Yes.

[Brené Brown]

Stealth expectations. We put things on the table. We talk about the why behind them. I invest a lot of time up front with teams, or try to or believe I do, and I'm not very good at it because I actually want to be intellectual entrepreneur. And that's why, when we got to the point where I thought you were locked into that and not being a co business owner, this shit's not gonna work. Cause I'm moving out of that into the intellectual entrepreneur part, like. And so I can't take that on well.

[Adam Grant]

So I think one of the lessons from that was I need to bring people to the table, to our team. So it's not just me as an appendage on your team.

[Brené Brown]

Right, right. And I can't be translating things from critical, autonomous, intellectual to how teams can hear things.

[Adam Grant]

And I think that was one of the mistakes that I made, which I knew I was making in the moment, and I still chose to make it, and I'm not proud of that. So you sent this design, which was beautiful. And I failed to say that. Right. I had a question about whether it represented what our show was going to be, and I gathered some feedback, and other people had the same reaction independently. And so I thought, okay, I need to get that efficiently to you. And Allison happened to be looking over my shoulder when I was writing the email, and she said, you can't say that to Brene. You can't. And I said, why not? And she said, you need to really spell out that you appreciate the quality of the work and you just have these questions. And I said, I can't have a real both partnership and friendship where I can't be honest and I have to walk on eggshells and couch things and pull punches. And I've found it really efficient in my collaborations to just be direct and ask other people to be direct too. And she said, you're going to regret this. And she was right, because I could have been. I was trying to be clear, but I didn't do it in a kind way.

[Brené Brown]

So I think what's interesting here is I don't. I would back. So if I were watching this happen with a team that I was working with, what I would say is, you were not. You missed an essential part of scrum or agile process, which is what does done look like.

[Adam Grant]

Yes.

[Brené Brown]

And so if I would have said, okay, my team's happy to handle how involved in iteration do you want to be?

[Adam Grant]

If we'd had that conversation, I would have said, bring me in early so that you don't end up, you know, going spinning in an unproductive direction collectively.

[Brené Brown]

Right.

[Adam Grant]

And also I'm probably less likely to reject it because I feel some ownership over it.

[Brené Brown]

And you are a minimalist.

[Adam Grant]

Big time.

[Brené Brown]

I'm a maximalist. Like, if you like, like there's that great meme on Instagram. Like, I hate minimalism. What is minimalism? Maximalism. Like I want my house to look like a Texas brothel. Like, I have 7,000 products. I mean, not products. Fabrics and textures. I have like a lion couch.

[Adam Grant]

Less is more. I'm looking for elegant simplicity.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, no, And I'm looking for who lives here. And I bet they chain smoke. That's what I'm looking for when people walk in my house. Like, that's what I'm looking for.

[Adam Grant]

So you and my grandma would have gotten along so well.

[Brené Brown]

I wish she was here so I could have a cigarette with her and just talk about.

[Adam Grant]

I mean, you would be like this.

[Brené Brown]

I love that. So I think what happens. So I will see a conflict breakout like this on a team and I will see go way back into the process, which I would have said, if you're co building a business, you're not communicating enough. You're not saying, let me bring into and. And I'm going to give you an example of what happened for those of you listening. I thought like, when I think of Curiosity Shop, I think of eel, I think of Dickens, I think Of a curious. You know, you were very clear about no taxidermy. But I really think about a. Which, you know, I grew up in a deer blind, basically, so it's not, you know, I think about like weird shit everywhere. Shelves full of interesting things. Your, your agent Richard wrote about it beautifully when we were conceptualizing the name, like this place where you get lost in the weirdness and the awe and the wonder of a million things. So we sent you a graphic that had, well, that robot to represent, you know, AI, we had viewfinder. On an old 1970s viewfinder. If you're a kid and grew up with one of those, it had all these things on it. And you're like, and what's all. You know, I basically, you know, what's all the pawn store bullshit on here?

[Adam Grant]

Looks like a show about like antiques.

[Brené Brown]

Antiques, right. And maybe we should have this or that. And so for me, I was like, whoa. We pick those things very specifically. The robot represents AI, the viewfinder, perspective taking. And so we had really thought about them. So where we were off and where I think we're in danger is. And I'm gonna introduce a new concept. One of the hardest things about strong ground when I was writing it was this idea of how do we future ready leaders and what is the collection of mindsets and skill sets that we need to be ready? And one of the things that I've seen up close and personal with everybody in senior leader, I mean every single senior leader with the exception of engineers, is a real lack of systems thinking, right? A real lack of systems thinking. And so one of the things that systems theory has taught me the most, and it's a very integral part, weirdly of social work. Social workers, especially msws masters in social, get there and they're like, okay, how do I help people? How do I community organize or become a clinician or whatever they're gonna do on the big scale of what is social work. And their first class is like systems theory. And they're like, what the hell? Because we think of communities as systems. We think of families as systems. In systems theory, there's this especially Dana Meadows work, and I'm a huge fan of her systems work. There's a big triangle at the top is like the iceberg that you see. Underneath the iceberg is a bunch of stuff. If you see a problem and you intervene at the problem, the iceberg level, there's no leverage. You're going to fix a problem, you're going to see it again in two weeks maybe as you go down under the water, you go through what are the systems that are not working, what are the behaviors that are not working. And at the bottom, you have mental models. You and I work off different mental models.

[Adam Grant]

Very different mental models.

[Brené Brown]

Right. So that graphic design was an iceberg issue, but underneath it were mental models.

[Adam Grant]

Stealth expectations.

[Brené Brown]

Stealth expectations. What's your mental model about? What a graphic should do. Yes, that's going to be our logo. That's going to be that. It's ultimately going to be like this with our pictures in it. You taught me about. You look at things like, is it going to explain to what people is going to immediately the meaning?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah.

[Brené Brown]

For me, with like the shop and all that stuff, I was trying to create a place of warmth and belonging and comfort where people could come in from the outside and be like, so much vitriol, so much bullshit. This is a place where we can talk and disagree and this is why

[Adam Grant]

we complement each other well, because we want both meaning and feeling.

[Brené Brown]

But would you agree that mental model discussions are rare?

[Adam Grant]

Rare and vital? Because a light bulb just went off as we were talking about system theory on mental models specifically, which is I think part of the reason that I have this knee jerk reaction when we start talking about collaboration processes and getting on the same pa. I actually have this when we talk about return to office and remote work too, which we should definitely get to in a future podcast. Is my favorite concept from systems theory is the idea of equifinality, which is a mouthful, but you know it.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, go. Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

It's the basic idea that in any complex system there are multiple paths to the same end.

[Brené Brown]

Yes.

[Adam Grant]

And what I often hear from you is some version of, well, in order to build a successful business, you have to. And I just reject the premise of any sentence that starts that way. No. There are many ways to build a successful business. You've got one that works for you. There may be others you haven't tested. I want to A, B, C, D, E test those. I've got a few that have worked for me that I want to have you try out. And I think it's actually not the process. It's me overreacting to what feels like excessive certainty or narrowness around this is

[Brené Brown]

the way which is actually a threat to successful systems.

[Adam Grant]

And I don't think you mean it that way.

[Brené Brown]

No. But I think you're trying to share your experience. I do mean it that way.

[Adam Grant]

Oh, you do?

[Brené Brown]

I do mean it that way. I mean it that way.

[Adam Grant]

Message received. And rejected.

[Brené Brown]

And rejected. Yeah, yeah. No, I Actually think I mean it that way.

[Adam Grant]

That's so interesting.

[Brené Brown]

And I think it's something I need to change. But again, it's deeply personal, which is if I'm not doing it the way that's a lot of caregiving and time for me, I'm not being the leader that I want to be.

[Adam Grant]

And I guess the question I would ask on that is, is this about being the leader you want to be, or is it about being the leader that the show and the team need?

[Brené Brown]

Two different questions. And I need to learn more.

[Adam Grant]

For sure. Same for sure.

[Brené Brown]

But I think the equifinality, I mean, I think that is a big. That is a big part of functioning systems.

[Adam Grant]

And so what we need to. Then I actually think naming that expectation. Right. I will always assume that things are equifinal. And so if you're attached to a process, I'm going to find it more persuasive. If you explain to me, here's what else I tried and didn't work, or here's the logic. I have a really hard time accepting it's the parenting point you made earlier. It almost feels like because I said so.

[Brené Brown]

That's so interesting. And you know where I default to that. We're gonna wrap up in a couple of minutes, but I will just. This is a new thing we should write down as another podcast episode. Idea. I thought I got a lot of mentoring from Bob Iger's work on straddling the line between being thoughtful and decisive. And I've always gotten a lot of praise from being very decisive. Right. My coach recently told me in the last couple months that she, you know, it was that, you know. Can I invite you to think about, you know, fuck. Is my response to the invitations to think about. Can I invite you to think about how your decisiveness may be over decisiveness to deal with anxiety.

[Adam Grant]

Ooh.

[Brené Brown]

So I think when I am in the yes chef mode, which I know is not good leadership unless you're in a kitchen, which I've worked in for a long time, waiting tables, but, like,

[Adam Grant]

there's a time and a place for it.

[Brené Brown]

There's a time and a place for it. Right. I think I can get overly decisive.

[Adam Grant]

Yes.

[Brené Brown]

And when I am anxious or in time, scarcity. And I think we built this.

[Adam Grant]

We scrambled.

[Brené Brown]

We scrambled.

[Adam Grant]

Yep.

[Brené Brown]

And got scrappy.

[Adam Grant]

Yep.

[Brené Brown]

And I can. And I was anxious because I'm also, you know, I got a lot of stuff going on. My. My oldest is getting married, which is so exciting. And so I think I get overly decisive.

[Adam Grant]

So That's a strength overused for you or misused. It's a strength overused, and I didn't see the anxiety part of it, but it makes so much sense. And my mistake was failing to recognize what was causing it and instead just pushing back on the decisiveness.

[Brené Brown]

I don't know that that's your responsibility to understand it, because I actually. I'm trying to figure out how that would play out for the folks listening. In a team, I think I really want to put out an idea that for our next podcast, we talk about the idea of above and under the line.

[Adam Grant]

I think we should. I think that's really helpful. And I think.

[Brené Brown]

Ooh, tell me.

[Adam Grant]

Well, I'm just. I think. Okay, so in a team, ideally, what I would advise someone else to do. And here we're. We're drinking our own champagne, but it feels more like eating our own dog food.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

This is way easier to teach than it is to do.

[Brené Brown]

Oh, my God. Yes, I. Yes.

[Adam Grant]

So what I. What I would advise somebody to do in this situation is like, what I should have done is I should have gone to you and said, hey, Brene, I know you to be extremely thoughtful and nuanced and complex in the way that you think things through, and here you seem really kind of locked into one direction. Help me understand what's behind that.

[Brené Brown]

The lead in got me worried because I was like, but here you're being a complete asshole. So the lead in got me worried.

[Adam Grant]

Okay, so let me try it again. Take two. Take two. Okay. Hey, I'm really surprised to see you locked into one direction. That's not how you normally operate.

[Brené Brown]

Not working.

[Adam Grant]

Nope. No.

[Brené Brown]

I think all you would have had to say is if. I would have said what happened on the text was, yes, we need to invest a bunch of time upfront with our teams. And you said, maybe the research is okay. So this. So let me. So if we want to get into it. So I said, I think we need to spend some time up front and really get aligned with our teams. You said, maybe the research is torn on this. Maybe a new podcast episode. Question mark. And I think what would have probably been helpful for me is I have a different experience. Are you open to trying? What, different? Like curiosity? Ironically?

[Adam Grant]

Yes, that would have been helpful.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. Curiosity about. I have a different experience.

[Adam Grant]

Yes.

[Brené Brown]

But would you be open to exploring with me?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, I can do that. That's a much better way to frame it.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, maybe for me, it's an invitation. It's an invitation, and it brings a

[Adam Grant]

little bit of playfulness too. Cause you love learning. It's appealing to another one of your strengths.

[Brené Brown]

I do love learning. And where I can get defensive with you sometimes is because I am so embedded on teams and do this work. When your response is, I'm not sure the data don't say that. I'm like, fuck you, dude. Like, that's exactly. That's like.

[Adam Grant]

That's us replaying our 2016 debate.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah.

[Adam Grant]

You're like, here's what I have seen and lived. I'm like, here's the meta analysis and here's the randomized controlled experiments. And most of the interesting learning happens in the tension between. Now, I think the other thing that I was really struck by here, which we can work through as a specific example of this is I think one of the things I learned from you is you said I need to spend more time with my teams so that they feel valued and don't feel dismissed. I looked at that and I thought, oh, that's one way to do that. But one of the ways I make people feel valued is I respect their time and I don't waste it by dragging them into meetings. And I will instead bend over backward to sing their praises and make it really clear to people why I'm excited to be working with them and the unique value they're bringing to the table. Like, oh, we're actually. There's a. There's a common value here.

[Brené Brown]

There's a common value.

[Adam Grant]

And so we just have really different approaches to that and we need to figure out which ones are relevant when.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, and I think I was really. I was really locked into. This is new. We have six or seven people on it. We don't have any systemic communication tool in place and we do not have alignment across six or seven people about what impact, how we're defining. Done. How we're defining. Excellent. What impact is. And we have no shared goals.

[Adam Grant]

So you're in threat rigidity mode.

[Brené Brown]

Oh, Jesus Christ. I don't know whether it sounds like shit, but what. I don't know what it means.

[Adam Grant]

There's a classic Barry Sta et al paper on threat rigidity, which is under threat. People tend to do the opposite of what a pre mortem does and lock into the familiar and kind of proven way.

[Brené Brown]

Absolutely. I was not there.

[Adam Grant]

Oh, no. I strike that from the record, you, Honor.

[Brené Brown]

Yes, that's good. Struck but not forgotten. No, I was not in threat rigidity mode. I was in. We have on my side, four people excited, running in four different directions. We have really big missed Balls that were upsetting to you. Yes, and upsetting to me.

[Adam Grant]

Yep.

[Brené Brown]

That really almost jacked with our schedule to the point where this was not going to be happening and we need to sit down and invest time up front to getting aligned and putting communication systems. So I was not in threat rigidity.

[Adam Grant]

I was in, can I call it, cattle herding mode?

[Brené Brown]

No, no. It's much more based in, I think, solid leadership principles that we were in the beginning of forming a new team and building alignment and clarity of mission and purpose. That's what I would say. I was in.

[Adam Grant]

That makes sense.

[Brené Brown]

And that that's going to require a time commitment.

[Adam Grant]

Yes, we need to do that.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, that's what I think I was in.

[Adam Grant]

Well, we're about to do that.

[Brené Brown]

We're leaving this podcast and going into that first meeting.

[Adam Grant]

Before we wrap, you have some closing questions.

[Brené Brown]

Oh, yeah. It would be fun if we did this, because I'm curious about you, actually. So what are you listening to right now? I just want to know these basic questions. What are you listening to right now?

[Adam Grant]

Yeah, I listened to a Science Versus episode on narcissism where they got somebody who was diagnosed with the clinical narcissistic personality disorder to talk about his experience of discovering that and then trying to overcome it. It was riveting.

[Brené Brown]

Okay, we'll put in the show notes because I want to listen. What are you watching? Anything you've binged lately or watched?

[Adam Grant]

Family tradition, Survivor currently season 50, rooting for. Oh, how do I do this without spoilers?

[Brené Brown]

Oh, you shouldn't.

[Adam Grant]

At the beginning of the season, I can say this. I started out with high hopes for Camilla and for Genevieve and for Christian.

[Brené Brown]

What do you like about Survivor?

[Adam Grant]

Survivor is. I mean, it's a giant psychology experiment in trust and collaboration and deception and rivalry and competition. And it's just watching people build relationships while also trying to strategize. It's a microcosm of what we do every day.

[Brené Brown]

Okay, any read. I just can't. I can't do Survivor, but my kids are obsessed. Are you reading?

[Adam Grant]

I just finished reading Dana Susskind's book Human Raised and about how to prepare kids and also protect them in the age of AI. Phenomenal.

[Brené Brown]

Really worth reading.

[Adam Grant]

Highly recommend.

[Brené Brown]

Tell me a takeaway.

[Adam Grant]

I think it comes out in July, so I probably need her permission to do this.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah, yeah, got it. Okay. Okay.

[Adam Grant]

Okay. What about you? What are you. Let me go backward. What are you reading right now?

[Brené Brown]

I am reading a new book in the Shetland series.

[Adam Grant]

What's that?

[Brené Brown]

I read a Lot of British mysteries, folks. You get ready. I mean, this is like Shetland. Shetland Islands. Yeah. So I'm reading a Shetland book right now. It's probably one of my favorite TV series on television. I think you have to watch it on like Acorn or Brit Box or something. One of the British import television. I watch a lot of British television. I was. I'm watching. Oh my God. I watched Heated Rivalry. Just finished it for the third time.

[Adam Grant]

Oh, wow, you're all in.

[Brené Brown]

I'm all in.

[Adam Grant]

Haven't seen it.

[Brené Brown]

Oh, God, I love it so much.

[Adam Grant]

Sounds like it's made for Bridgerton fans.

[Brené Brown]

No. Well, I was just gonna say I finished Bridgerton and I finished Heated Rivalry. So my life is open now for watching. Both were great. Season 4 and then heated Rivalry was good. I was talking to Esther Perel last night about her commentary on why the obsession with Heated Rivalry. And I think not only is it a beautiful love story, but she said every stressful conflict point in that show was met with very beautiful reparative and corrective behavior.

[Adam Grant]

There you go.

[Brené Brown]

So like something hard would happen. You have this feeling of foreboding, like, oh shit, this is not gonna go. And then the person shows up and is so wonderful. And it was just. I don't know, it was healing in some way to me. So I love it. And then what was the last one? Listening.

[Adam Grant]

What are you listening to?

[Brené Brown]

I have been.

[Adam Grant]

You're gonna say Rory, aren't you?

[Brené Brown]

Oh, I. I definitely listen to a shit ton of the rest. Is politics UK version with Rory and Alistair. I have so many bones. We should maybe do like a foursome and just like fight it out like some kind of maybe Devil's tennis, take it out on the court. I've been listening to a lot of that. I think it's really helpful to have a non US political opinion that's more centered on the world. So I think that's interesting. And then Rosalia, the just what a. What a what a woman. And then also listening to a lot of Towns. Van Zant, which I always go back to.

[Adam Grant]

We have so little overlap.

[Brené Brown]

We have very little.

[Adam Grant]

It's almost like we're different people.

[Brené Brown]

Yeah. But I'm curious about you.

[Adam Grant]

Same.

[Brené Brown]

Okay, See you next time.

[Adam Grant]

Looking forward to it.

[Brené Brown]

The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brene Brown Education and Research Group and Granted productions. You can subscribe to the Curiosity shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app.

[Adam Grant]

We're part of the Vox Media Podcast network. Discover more award winning [e-mail] thanks to

[Brené Brown]

Canva for their support. With incredible tools to boost your design and productivity, Canva can help turn that idea into an actual thing. From presentations powered by AI to social media posts, from logos to websites, it's time to turn that idea into something real. Canva. It's the thing that makes anything a thing. Learn [e-mail] thanks to SAS for their support.

[Adam Grant]

It's an important question to ask of any corporation. Are the company's values aspirational, or are they actually showing up in what people do? Data and AI leader SaaS lands in the second category. Story SAS has 50 years of experience helping people and organizations make better decisions with data, and they brought that same rigor to AI, building accountability and human oversight into the technology itself. Visit sas.com to learn more about SaaS's commitment to responsible, trustworthy AI. That's sas.com.