“The courage to be vulnerable is not about winning or losing, it’s about the courage to show up when you can’t predict or control the outcome” (pg xviii).
“Studying leadership is way easier than leading” (pg 4).
“Choosing our own comfort over hard conversations is the epitome of privilege, and it corrodes trust and moves us away from meaningful and lasting change” (pg 9).
“A rumble is a discussion, conversation, or meeting defined by a commitment to lean into vulnerability, to stay curious and generous, to stick with the messy middle of problem identification and solving, to take a break and circle back when necessary, to be fearless in owning our parts, and, as psychologist Harriet Lerner teaches, to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard” (pg 10).
“Daring leaders must care for and be connected to the people they lead” (pg 12).
Have the courage to “show up when you can’t control the outcome” (pg 20).
“If you’re not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I’m not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their lives but who will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgement at those who dare greatly” (pg 20).
“Setting boundaries is making clear what’s okay and what’s not okay, and why. Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability. It’s confusion, manipulation, desperation, or shock and awe, but it’s not vulnerability” (pg 39).
“Clear is kind” (pg 49).
“They were actually exhausted because people were lonely” (pg 60).
“Other people’s emotions are not our jobs. We can’t both serve people and try to control their feelings” (pg 69).
“In the past, jobs were about muscles, now they’re about brains, but in the future they’ll be about the heart” (pg 71).
“We’ve got to stop and celebrate one another and our victories, no matter how small. Yes, there’s more work to be done, and things could go sideways in an hour, but that will never take away from the fact that we need to celebrate an accomplishment right now” (pg 84).
“The word sarcasm is from the Greek work sarkazein, meaning “to tear flesh.” Tear. Flesh. . . .” and “we use cynicism and sarcasm as a get-out-of-contributing-free card” (pg 93).
“Catch people that are doing things right. It’s much more powerful than collecting behaviors that are wrong” (pg 98).
“If you can keep people afraid, and give them an enemy who is responsible for their fear, you can get people to do just about anything” (pg 104).
“The opposite of play is not work - the opposite of play is depression” (pg 107).
“Where shame exists, empathy is almost always absent” (pg 129).
“Empathy is at the heart of connection” (pg 163).
“If you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities” (pg 187).
“Don’t choose silence over what is right” (pg 191).
“Choose courage over comfort” (pg 193).
“I believe strengths-based feedback style is the best approach, in which you explain some of the strengths or things that they do really well that have not been applied to the current situation. ‘One of the greatest strengths is attention to detail. You do sweat the small stuff and it makes a big difference in our team. As I look at this, I don’t see you applying that skill here, and we need it.’ If you are in such a state of anger that you cannot come up with a single positive quality that this person possesses, then you are not in the right head space to give good feedback until you can be less emotionally reactive” (pg 200)
“If you come in defensive, guarded, and ready to kick some ass with hard feedback, that feedback will bounce right off someone hitting across from you who is also defensive, guarded, and ready to kick some ass” (pg 201).
“allow people to have feelings without taking responsibility for those feelings'“ (pg 202).
“Mastery requires feedback” (pg 202).
“I am brave enough to listen” (pg 203).
“‘I stayed connected, I stayed courageous, I stayed authentic, I stayed curious,’ then that itself is daring, and that in itself is a win” (pg 205).
“We don’t fully see people until we know their values” (pg 209).
“an assumption of positive intent relies on the core belief that people are doing the best they can with what they’ve got, versus that people are lazy, disengaged, and maybe even trying to piss us off on purpose” (pg 214).
“Knowledge is only rumor until it lives in the bones” (pg 224).
Practice your values, don’t merely profess them (pg 227).
“When we refuse to ask for help, we will find that we keep getting the same projects that leaders know we can do. We will not be given anything that might stretch our capacity or skill set because they don’t believe we will ask for help if we find ourselves in over our heads” (pg 228).
“Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt” (pg 238).
“We expect you to be brave. That means that you should expect to fall. We’ve got a plan” (pg 242).
“To confabulate is to replace missing information with something false that we believe to be true . . . the stories were confabulations - lies, honestly told” (pg 261).
Grade: A+
One of my favorites. Packed full of great life and leading advice, but also jammed with little stick-it-in-your-pocket truths - the kind that can be cut and pasted and printed on scraps of paper for early morning staff meetings. Like this morning.
A must read.
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