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Can Kara be Vulnerable?
Can Kara be Vulnerable?

Can Kara be Vulnerable?

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Brené Brown, Kara Swisher
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27 Clips
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Dec 17, 2020
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0:00
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0:44
I am good. I am smart. I am worthy of love. I love myself.
0:52
Some people wake up in the morning and say these things themselves as daily affirmations. But me these are just things. I think about myself all the time. So when I hear words like shame and vulnerability, my first reaction is please. Keep that codswallop away from me in essence. I'm the polar opposite of Brené Brown who has made it her life's work to embrace these Concepts to study them, she's conducted thousands of interviews and her TED talks on the subject.
1:22
Have been viewed millions of times, she's a regular guest speaker at Silicon Valley and Fortune 500 companies, Oprah Winfrey loves her, her books are bestsellers. Her quotes are all over Instagram. Her ideas are everywhere the before this interview. I still didn't get it. Why would I want to explore
1:41
vulnerability for shame?
1:48
I grew up Catholic and there's a lot of guilty and shaming. I haven't been in a church. Since I had my confirmation, did it for my grandmother, but I think of Shame and reminds me when I was young, when I went for the first time to First, Holy confession. I don't know if you grew up Catholic. Yeah. And the priest was like, say your confession. And I said, I have not and I am nine. I do I haven't done anything wrong and he said everybody has a sin. And I said not me, I don't. And I remember thinking, wow, this is like a monopoly on shame, even at the time I was like, why are they
2:18
Sing me into a shameful period. I'm not I'm just not going to do it and it I got in trouble and and I declined to express any shame and myself. So when you're thinking about the idea of Shame, are you trying to seize it back or redefine it?
2:34
I'm just trying to Define it in a way.
2:38
That's accessible that people understand? I mean the thing about shame is we all have it no one wants to talk about it and the less you talk about it, the more you have it and it's not sin. The best way to describe shame is the feeling that we experience, when we don't feel good enough, when we feel not blank enough, smart enough, pretty enough strong enough, powerful enough, influential enough, relevant enough,
3:07
And that kind of warm wash comes over us and we feel alone but we all have experiences of shame in our lives.
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The shameful word, but
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God oh no! It is it we have a we have a visceral response to it. Yeah, it's like, I'll give you an example, from the political climate today, like if I read another tweet, that says, man, what a Shameless Administration, right? Wrong
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Wrong. Shame is much more likely to be driving these behaviors than the cure for it and I'll tell you why. What we have is an empathy crisis. And here's what's really complicated about these emotions.
3:50
Shame and empathy really have a hard time coexisting in people. For this reason. Shame is completely self focused. In fact of all the kind of personality disorders, shame drives narcissism more than anything else. I define narcissism as the shame-based fear of being ordinary
4:12
so they're not Shameless. They're full of Shame, is what you're saying polishing full of Shame and but without empathy
4:17
to that kills empathy, right? The reason why these
4:20
Two things have a hard time coexisting. Is that shame is self-focused. Empathy is other focused, but shame, it forces us to believe we're alone. Are we say if you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow into every corner of our Lives. Secrecy silence and judgment. But if you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish, and you douse it with empathy, you've created a hostile environment, the minute, you know, you're not alone
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and that your experience is human and you're met with empathy, shame just doesn't survive, and that's why I think vulnerability is a requirement for building, shame resilience, but the actual antidote to shame is empathy.
5:05
I just did a show with Esther perel. Also, we talked about. She goes, what is your vulnerability? I said I don't have any like, and what I meant to say, was, I don't mind being scared. I don't care. If I'm good with scared, I'm good with fear. I'm good with
5:20
Hang up. I feel fine. If people don't like what I say and I was trying to think why that would be. And I my dad died when I was five. And so I have a feeling a lot of people whose parents died at a young age are highly functional so that they have the worst thing happen to them. They know it. They know that the worst thing can happen and you survive and so, being vulnerable doesn't bother you in any way.
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I think when you talk about losing your dad at 5, which is such a like a very tender age.
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Age, you know, old enough to understand old enough to grieve old enough to really kind of understand the permanence of it. I think two things can happen. You can, depending on your personality and how you think about things in your environment, you can say I have survived the worst or you can say I'm going to live always afraid of loving something or someone because it can be taken away. So I think there's not one monolithic response to that but I do
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you think fear and vulnerability are different things and
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it's a very hard line I think to draw between fear and vulnerability. And so let me give you some examples from the data just some qualitative. We ask people to give us examples of vulnerability and they ranged from vulnerability, is the first date after my divorce. Vulnerability is
6:49
Having to fire, someone vulnerability is trying to get pregnant after my second miscarriage. Vulnerability is saying I love you first. So I would say the difference between vulnerability and fear is vulnerability is about showing up when you can't control the outcome. And I don't know that that always that does not always make me feel afraid, but it can make me feel vulnerable and if
7:18
You carry walk through the world in a way that you expect him to guity. You expect uncertainty, you're comfortable with discomfort that might minimize your feelings of vulnerability and that will make you a huge
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outlier outlier in what way
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99% of the people I've ever interviewed or worked with have ways of self-protecting, invulnerability,
7:45
That move them away from who they want to be, move them away from a sense of meaning and purpose and love in their lives. So I think I'm better at vulnerability. Almost I've been practicing for so long. I know when I'm in it and I know what to watch out for in terms of my behaviors, but I do think normalizing discomforts hard.
8:08
Okay? So you can say, I'm a bit of a vulnerability. Skeptic, let me tell you what's in my wallet right now to sayings, which is
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If you can't feel the pain, you're aren't going to feel anything else and the world is full of suffering and death. Those that know this are at peace though in a world of pain.
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Well those are the two most vulnerable close of probably I've ever heard. And you know, ever okay, I've got a lot of them. So your it's interesting because you describe yourself as not a vulnerable person. I would describe you in full Embrace of vulnerability.
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Yeah I suppose. Okay. Alright nice nicely done but how come
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one more time? Let's take the first one.
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Sure. Here we go. If you can't feel the pain you aren't going to feel
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Feel anything else, meaning feel the pain,
8:46
right? Okay. So if you interviewed a hundred therapist and started with Esther perel and said, how would you summarize? What you see in people?
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They would probably say to you the majority of my work is helping people turn and face the pain and stop running from it. But that vulnerability, that it requires to face pain. The uncertainty there risk of facing pain is not something people do comfortably, so that is a master class in pain and to say, you know, it's like I think about one of my favorite quotes is from Pema chodron, the American Buddhist nun and she talks about
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Shane that compassion is not a relationship between the wounded in the healed. It's a relationship between equals, it's knowing your Darkness. Well, enough that you can sit in the dark with
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others. It's interesting. You talked about knowing your Darkness. I actually have a t-shirt that says the dark is afraid of me that I got notion City. That's where I get my wisdom. Not
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flat, who this not?
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It's a good t-shirt. I love it. It always works for me. All right. So what's the difference between not feeling that You're vulnerable, which I
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I often do feel and not caring what people think of you.
10:00
If you take in all the data about what people think you will lose the ability to be brave with your life, I believe that, but if you don't care what anyone thinks you lose your capacity for connection, so you risk losing your capacity for vulnerability. If you take it all in, if you don't take any of it in, which is kind of been teaching Masters and PhD level students for 20 years and the increase in. I don't
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Shit. What anyone thinks is so alarming because it's like, when I see people say that I literally, it's like that movie. I see dead people. I literally see their 12 year old self standing in front of me, like an after-school special saying, I don't care what anyone thinks, we all care. It's what it comes down to and what we try to help people understand is make a list of people whose opinions matter, and these people should be people who love you not despite your imperfection and vulnerability. But
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Because of
10:57
it. But most of them don't listen, when I visit Silicon Valley people, and sometimes I look at the, I think that's terrible and they're like, what? And I was like, oh I'm sorry, people like you up and down all day. So I'm you're not used to someone disagreeing with
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you. It's a weird place,
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right? It is indeed. So let's talk a little bit about that. So you know your work is grab the years of celebrities like Oprah leaders at Nasa. Executives at Fortune. 500 companies tech companies is taught to Business Leaders at places like Stanford. These are very fancy people. You're talking to is vulnerability of privilege for the 1% because they,
11:27
They get all soft and Squishy when they talk about you but they don't live it in their lives. They don't actually it's something they like to talk about just like they like to you know fast or drink fresh kombucha, shakes or something like that. When you think about that, is it a privilege for people? I
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think it's yes. And I think that
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For some people, I am the kombucha Shake of the month, and we get this a lot. And I will tell you, this disproportionately from Silicon Valley, you're a CEO and you want me on your speed dial. And, you know, because some leaders are not just in Silicon Valley, but some leaders can collect thought leader people like they collect, you know, all kinds of shit, but I've never done that. I've never that no one's ever had me on speed dial before. And if they say, come talk to my company and I ask who's going to be in the audience and they say, my people but not me or my leadership.
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Team then I'm like, I'm not your person like I don't have to get any jobs anymore that I don't want to take. So if you're serious about culture change and you want to bring me in and you don't mind being called out in front of your people, then I'm your person and you'll need to pay me up front and you can't tell me what to say and you can't record me and you can't publicly talked about me working with you or your
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people. Ah, wow. Yeah, okay. And
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and so we try to vet for
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that. And what do they say to that?
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Because they want to put you on like a badge, like brene brown and myself here or
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something. I mean, I can also be the rehabilitation speaker, you know, I'm like I'm not your girl if you're in trouble around something like go somewhere else, fifty percent of them, say yes to the terms and then fifty percent of them say no. And we ask a lot of questions, like, how does me coming in talking for an hour fit into a larger strategic plan to change the culture and am I allowed
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Talk to people that have the least amount of power and influence in the company before I
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come.
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Right? So you so a lot of it could be just giving speeches. And I got to tell you, I'm not sure they're actually practicing. Vulnerability, some are some art, will you go into a company when you're trying to change leaders? What do you see? That's the most difficult,
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a leader who has no self awareness at all.
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. Hard
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stop which manifests itself,
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how no, self-reflection, no rigorous inventory of their own limitations. They're working their shit out on other people. Just a lack of self-awareness, right? Right. Well, that which is common. This is
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about leadership and not old leadership. Vulnerability, for example, Donald Trump. Let's go to that. Let's go right to the top people celebrate, you know what he's doing and it's interesting. You said shamelessness is actually a lot of Shame combined with
14:11
Lack of empathy but it gets telegraphed as tell it like it is and he is authentic. He has a lot of the elements that you talk about. Authentic, no, not scared. Okay. Alright, not a thing. I think so thetic to him, whether no self. Okay.
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All right, all right, I don't know who it was. I don't know him, so I won't call marry him as a
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person. Okay. Not as a person, but you look at his leadership. You can see his leadership, he famously thinks he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose votes. Then how do you explain his rise to power, what he represents because these ideas of tell it like it is.
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I'm great, I believe in myself with proof overwhelming. That maybe you shouldn't believe in yourself.
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So if we look at Power what we see is there are different types of power. There is power over on one end of the Continuum and on the other end of the Continuum, there's a collection of different types of power power with power to and power within. So if you are going to use power over as a leader, whether you're leading the United States or you're leading, you know, family-run business. It's going to require a
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Regular number of flexes of your power that instill fear in some group of people, that's how you maintain it. Like you ever watched a movie and you've got the bad guy and then the bad guy just keeps doing increasingly horrific things and you want to just scream at the writer director. Okay, we get it. He's bad. We don't have to have him like taking someone's eyeballs out with a spoon like we get it.
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But there's a reason because to maintain power over, you have to do these cruelty flexes. I mean and this is, this is history, this is the history of power over. The Trump Administration has led a perfect power over game.
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And they've used fear and here's the bottom line. Power, over liters have a very simple belief. It is power is finite. It's like a pizza if there are eight pieces and I give Cara one, I have seven. This is a zero-sum game. Power is finite on the other side. We have leaders that say power is infinite and grows when
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shared. So that's power
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with that's power with that's power to that's creating Power Within
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So this is the saddest answer that I'll ever give around any question, probably of my career. So, you ask, why does 70 million people vote for power over? Here's the biggest mistake we make here at never assume that people want courageous leadership.
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That is not a safe assumption. It is not a safe assumption that people want to have some power and be held accountable for
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it. So you're not surprised by this at all in any way, that's
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what no, no no no no. And so when he was attacking political correctness, he spoke to people who felt
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Ashamed, not smart enough, they felt like, you know my kids say god dad, you can't say that or you know, now I want to give you some hard feedback about, you know, your work. Lydia you need to watch the way your stereotype, you know, and then that shame and no place to put it. And it's so funny because there's that great image of the T-shirt or the flags during the boat parade that say, fuck your feelings, you know that big flag.
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Yes, yes, that's her. Favorite
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saying that is as someone who spent
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Many years, studying a fact, and emotion, that is the biggest display of emotion. You've ever seen the irony in that flag
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That is a feeling flag. It's like the t-shirt that says death to extremists,
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like got about that one you ever that Tiara? Yes. Yes.
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It was really popular.
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Yeah, yeah, it was. And they aren't getting the irony, right? So, let's your social worker, let's pretend. You're assigned to the case of Donald Trump. How would you help him acknowledge his loss? Because he's on a cliff right now?
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Well, first of all, I'm not taking that case with him or any other politician, probably, as a social worker, and I'm a researcher, not a practitioner. So I have
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Easy off. Ramp there a Tapout
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so you wouldn't take it wouldn't take the job. No, you know it's interesting. Jane Goodall s several and you will not take the case of Donald Trump. I've asked all of you, would you talk to him Jangles nicest person on Earth? No! No. And if we're going to talk to him
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in such great company because I just Revere both of those women. I respect them
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as stairs. Like you can't therapize The Narcissist, but, but you, if you had to hear you, are you have to help him to deal with loss? What would you do?
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This is a great part of this care. I don't have to
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Get them, but I'm making you. I'm not saying it can't. Come on. What? What? What? Okay, if I'm gonna do it, what can I help him? Acknowledge his loss? I'm in a room with Donald Trump, and I've got to help him acknowledge his loss. Is
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it awesome? We totally serious here. I can evaluate his leadership as a citizen of the country and as someone who's in the tenth year of a leadership study, I don't know him diagnostically clinically or personally, I couldn't tell you what to do. If you called me and told me you were going to do that. I guarantee you our whole conversation
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Relation would be about why you're making that choice. Oh, about me
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about try to do the impossible. All right. So, what advice would you have to his followers? People are unhappy with the election result. How do you get them to understand? Fuck your feelings means. They're in pain.
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Well, I don't know about their, well, you know, maybe I guess they're in pain, but I would say they're in a lot of feeling whatever it is. Maybe it's rage, maybe it's pain, maybe it's a disappointment. Maybe it's I don't know if Yuri, I don't know what it is. They're not a monolith. So I don't know how you would talk to them, but I think, you know, I got to say that like, you know, I family members and me too. Yeah. And to them, I say,
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To be honest, I wish I could say something really poetic and profound and enlightened here and to them. I just don't talk about it. The rule in our family is I have a line and the line for me is dehumanization. So if people in my life who have supported Trump agree with me about dehumanization and don't believe he does that, I try to find a place if they hair it the dehumanization. Then I have actually unfortunately in with great grief and I
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Diminish. The pain of it have, severed, those relationships. I just can't be in
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them. So that's your, that's your spot my line. That's your line are their leaders out there who show leadership through vulnerability because vulnerability would be the solution to this, correct understanding our shame and
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vulnerability. Yeah, it's funny because my hypothesis Was Fear was the greatest barrier to daring leadership. It turns out? It's not. So I was like, well, if fear is not the greatest barrier to daring leadership,
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what is it? And it turned out that the answer is armor. It's not that were afraid. It's how we self-protect when we're afraid that gets in the way of being courageous, you know, and those forms of armor range from perfectionism cynicism having to be the knower and be right versus being the learner and getting it, right? And so I would say in many ways.
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Biden has shown some daring leadership, his honesty about the grief. He experience with Bo the fact that I thought Kamala Harris gave him a harder time and was rougher on him than any other person during the primaries, and he picked her.
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As a running mate, which is not unlike him. If you look historically, like, he likes to surround himself with people who disagree.
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He also likes to surround yourself by people who he's comfortable. With to, though. He does see. Yeah. He does see for that he does, doesn't he? Yeah he does. He like to comfy pillow. So put it like this pillow. I like I justhello. I like but but, but
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so he wouldn't operationalize a comfy pillow as someone afraid to give him a hard time or question, I
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suppose. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because you think about Trump,
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All the yes, people around him and but everyone has their version of yes, people around them in some fashion. They always manage to be there. Even if they seem difficult, you can be difficult. Not really difficult,
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right? I don't know, I would disagree with that. I think I would say that I have seen leaders who really invite hard things by surround themselves with people who really genuinely disagree with them and push them.
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But can it really push them and change them versus just push
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them? Yes, I think it. I think it
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can. Okay. Alright I have seen a lot of people.
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That get pushed back and then it just doesn't
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change. I have seen that more often but yeah, I've seen the
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other. Is there a double standard for women? Leaders are either too emotional, too, weak. You're not vulnerable enough, not emotional enough. You're going to tact, you know, like I'm often described as tough, and I'm like, I'm actually pretty Pleasant to work with, like it's, but I don't mind it being there. Like, I also like good, you think I'm tough? Excellent. So talk about that concept because, you know, saying I'm vulnerable is not something I would say as a leader, I wouldn't it's a mistake as a woman to do that more. I say.
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You cross me, I'll break your arm kind of thing. I'd rather project that interesting I won't actually break your arm. You
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know. Interesting. I use a lot of that too. But I've been attributed to might exynos like, I'm always like I'd like to punch you in the face. But I'm I'm not going to really but I really would like to. Yeah, well it's interesting if you want to get binary and look at women and men and although there's a fluid Continuum there, but in terms of masculine norms and feminine norms,
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One of the greatest shame drivers triggers for women is perfection. Do it all, do it perfectly look like you're expending no effort doing it. And so, to be vulnerable, you have to be really shame resilient to be vulnerable because you can't be super susceptible to the shame of imperfection. If you're going to be vulnerable for men, the greatest shame trigger is do not be perceived as weak for masculine norms. And so to be vulnerable, you have to risk that
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You have to risk. Oh my God. People are going to see me as weak in terms of women in leadership. I
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I don't have any problem saying that, I am a vulnerable leader because I'm clear that there is no courage without vulnerability and I'm vulnerable and brave. I am really good at building
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trust in. Oh come on women to can't say it. I mean it's just the minute they show that like Elizabeth Warren in front of a lot of powerful men once and they just it looked like they just there. I just don't have to explain it. You could see them crossing their legs. I know that look kicked you know that look, I think yeah. Sort of Rises up the balls. Go up the kind of
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So how do you how do you battle that? Because and I was like, you know, I was trying to trying to figure out why she bothers men and it's interesting. She does happen to bother Tech meant a lot, but everyone was like, she's like the schoolmarm and I was always saying huh, you know, you've never met a schoolmarm and why are schoolmarm so badly represented? Because have you ever had a bad experience with a schoolmarm? Because I don't think you've met one because you don't live on the Prairie back in 1830, but, but there's no. Why do we use that word around women? Because no one has met a schoolmarm years and years. But
25:10
I finally decided she's the professor in college that gave you the muchly deserve D and you knew it and you hated her even though she gave you, what you deserved. That's what I decided, that's who she is. She's someone who told you, you sucked and you did suck. And that's the only explanation have. But she couldn't win because of that the you know what I mean. There was the same thing with Hillary Clinton likeable enough, these kind of things, so showing vulnerability, seemed fake when they do it and Hillary Clinton certainly did several times and it doesn't work for her.
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But then, when Joe Biden does it? We're all weepy. Oh, we love this
25:43
song. Oh yeah, that is misogyny 101. That's just gender stuff like that. I run into that with my career all the time just because I study vulnerability. So, you know, I write a leadership book and it's for women and a guy rides, the leadership book and it's for everybody, you know, I'm a social scientist with a ton of data and influential work and I'm the queen of self-help. In the headline, when you call me Miz and you call the person next to me doctor and you talk about the guy as a social scientist in the
26:10
The researcher and me as the feel-good Poncho, wearing self-help person it pisses me off because it's just so gendered. And I think with Elizabeth Warren, I think it's interesting because I think it's a lack of unearned difference that really can scare some men.
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Like, you don't start with a appropriate level of deference toward me and that's such bullshit. But here's the thing, if we look at some of the studies that are coming out right now around the pandemic and women leaders in countries where they had women leaders right, you
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serious data. Yeah, it's clear.
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It's clear but we would be less
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Dead with more women leave.
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We be less Dead with more women leaders but what was the number one driver, why? I don't know. You tell me.
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Empathy Humanity, real connection to people looking at people and saying this is scary. This is hard but we can do this surrounding themselves by experts, yielding to experts scientists, you know, the people who f&o. And so I don't know that I would say it was because of vulnerable leadership because that's too confusing to people, but I would definitely say it was daring leadership, it was a commitment to getting
27:32
It right over being right. It was a commitment to empathy. It was a commitment to Shared Humanity.
27:44
We'll be back in a minute if you liked this interview and want to hear others hit subscribe. You'll be able to catch up on sway episodes. You may have missed like, my conversation with couples therapist Esther perel and you'll get new ones, delivered directly to you more with brene brown after the break.
28:16
What is living through the pandemic? Revealing about our vulnerabilities or really our lack of ability to be vulnerable.
28:24
The unquestionable need.
28:29
For courageous leadership during vulnerable times, we had the wrong leader at the wrong time.
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So were you surprised by this? Where you surprised that this is the way it went.
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I was. What does that saying? That people always say, is it? I was shocked, but not surprised. I was surprised, but not shocked, but I don't ever want it was I was not meaningfully surprised. But continuously shocked, you know, this country this country is literally built.
28:59
On science and scientific Endeavor. And
29:04
Science
29:05
organizations. Although it's also built on the back of conspiracy and hate and
29:09
subjugation. Yeah. For as long as there's been one, there's been the other, right? I just thought we, you know what? This is just naivete on my part, maybe. I don't know, I thought our belief in science was unmovable.
29:23
See I believe the opposite. I think I'm like Whiskey Rebellion Salem, Witch, Trials, McCarthyism. That seems to be our nature.
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I mean, it does, it was like, I was watching Jon Meacham. I was watching his soul of America.
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Mary and I was, you know, I just couldn't believe with every step forward there was like a maniacal conspiratorial backlash every time. Every time, every
29:45
time it's just been the internet's made it, Amplified and weaponized is what's happened to us. So you say connection is the goal and without connection or fear of disconnection breed shame, right? That's part of Shame. Yeah. So is it impossible in this interconnected World? Never been more in connected to be connected in.
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In ways that will allow us to have that empathy, that vulnerability to accept our shame and stuff like that because it seems like, without physical connection. We cannot do
30:14
that. No, as a social species were wired to be together. I don't know what's going to happen and I would call bullshit on anyone who says that they've got a clear read on the blueprint, coming out of this, but my hope is and I know what I'll be doing, and I'm not extraordinarily different than anybody else.
30:35
I will not be taking Gathering and being with people for granite. Moving forward, my dad and I have very different political beliefs.
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And weirdly we have the same picture of the world as we'd like to live in it but we have very different ideas about how we get there.
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I haven't seen him since the pandemic started, I would crawl on my hands and knees down. I tend to San Antonio if I could see him and I will do what it takes to be in connection with him for the rest of his life or mine. And I will figure out how to navigate the political social differences. And I think there are a lot of people that I've talked to you, that feel the same way. So I think we will cluster up across beliefs and I think
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The internet social media will continue to be communication tools, but they will never be tools of
31:28
connection. Do you think it's worse than that? Their tools of anti connection as connected as they are? And we should be honest with you,
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the Facebook stuff like I'm out of my depth here and you know you know that I know how you feel about
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it. You've used it.
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Yeah, I'm scared.
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If they're not some regulations, put on these monster tech companies. I don't understand how we protect democracy. I don't understand how we protect Humanity. I mean I have seen between the news outlets and social
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media, right? Which amplify each
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other. I feel like we're one step away from needing the van that kidnaps people and D programs them,
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but yeah, that's me just so you know, it's just me doing it.
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The FTC
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just acted. Finally, I was like,
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thank you. You are the van, you are the van but I think maybe you should brand yourself as the that's who's I Dreaming
32:25
or a ball in case you're interested. It requires invulnerability,
32:28
but now he doesn't Captain
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Marvel like skills to get the FTC to
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act, okay? Don't even start with me and the superheroes in vulnerability because our favorite part of the superheroes are their
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vulnerabilities. Oh you're right.
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We love the back story. We love the sad - true. Yeah, and you are super vulnerable by taking on these
32:45
Folks
32:47
I guess
32:47
I need you to make friends with the would rather have
32:49
like eyes that could burn them. I'd like you know that kind of thing or go like this like Captain Marvel which but let me ask you speaking of vulnerable in vulnerable people, which of the superheroes. Would you be? Which one do you find most compelling?
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I just interviewed Gabby Rivera who was hired by Marvel to write the first queer Latino superhero. She's a great writer. Yeah, it's a great writer.
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So America Chava's her superhero who is both a badass but talks openly about vulnerability with her superhero Mentor storm. Yeah you did. So yeah I think I would be America because you know it's so funny because in this podcast with her, she said at some point she said well Marvel like finally call me. They're like Gabby she got to fight people. She can't just talk about her feelings. We're here
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to kick ass and then go. I felt bad about.
33:45
That. But I feel, I feel a little shame. I feel. So she talks about it because
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your favorite, I'm so curious.
33:53
Oh, I love Captain Marvel, I love, I like her whole thing. There's so much pain there and also so much Beauty. And I like Wonder Woman a because she's so kind of feckless and like what it's happy like she's in the face of constant pain. She's like yeah. Great. Yeah let's do it. Let's do it. We could talk all day about superheroes so I want to get done. What do you think right now? You're
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Our vulnerability. What do you think? That would be? I
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think my greatest. I mean the thing that still creates a lot of vulnerability and me is probably being a
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parent and why is that?
34:28
Because I think it's one of the most vulnerable to love someone so much and really not be able to keep them physically emotionally safe and to push them out into the world when you just want to lock him in somewhere. And you know, it's just it's a huge.
34:45
Exercise and vulnerability. And so I think parenting is always a vulnerability when my kids hurt I hurt and I know I have to let them you know I want them to have in their wallet, similar things to what you wrote and have in your
34:58
wallet. So one of the things you talked about with the parental vulnerability, I would say that would be my vulnerability. And I recall when I don't know, if you know, this ice about six years ago, I had a stroke which was kind of ironic given, my dad died of a brain aneurysm, very suddenly. And so I just drunk, I was in Hong Kong. And as usual, I was
35:15
Like I can deal with this. Like I had I went through the whole thing. I got to the hospital, I was very collected and cool. I was not scared. I talk to my brother and there was a doctor with a mask in front of me and he, he said, what? I thought was true. He said, oh, you're having a stroke right now and we have to get you in the hospital right now. And instead of worried about myself, the only thing I thought about was me dying and my kids being alone, that was like. And then I, then it was, then I realized it was about me, right? It wasn't about
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It was about them, but it was about me, remembering what? That was like, the loss and the understanding how, well my kid, who at the time was 5, oh God knew me, and how, and it was like. And that's the only time I cried. It was real. It was I can count on my fingers, the times, I've cried my life, a recently, and that was it. And I was, that was the moment. I was like, oh, I'm crying for me, I'm not crying. I'm crying for the idea of loss and it was really, it was an interesting moment and I was okay with it. I was
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hoping you could crying for both of them. Because yes. Yeah. Like who's a big boy
36:15
was
36:15
Honorable moment that was vulnerability to have it.
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We got here
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otherwise I think I'm great. Sorry. Sorry I do I
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do. Stop saying you've got vulnerability. Otherwise, you're like I have never bloody which makes
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great. I'm great.
36:32
You are the most. You are the most like vulnerable easiest of the vulnerable. I know, carry on. No, no, no, no, no, not all the next interviews people are gonna say, can you give me an example of
36:45
Vulnerability. Like, what do ya hear Swisher would be like you may not? And I knew you were very vulnerable. Uh-huh, I just didn't know how we were going to get there. Alright.
36:54
Fine. Anyway, Renee, thank you so much. I hope to meet you in person someday. Thank you, right? Thanks. Bye. Sway is a production of
37:15
New York Times opinion. It's produced by name arase Heba LR Bonnie Matt Kwang and vishakha Darva, edited by polish Schumann with music and sound design by Isaac Jones fact-checking by Kate Sinclair special thanks to run on Borelli larry'll, Higa and Kathy to
37:38
If you're listening on the times website and haven't subscribed yet, I'd say don't be ashamed but really you should be ashamed to get each new episode of sweet liver Q. You can download a podcast app like Stitcher or Google podcast, then search for sway and hit. Subscribe, you'll get episodes every Monday and Thursday. Thanks for listening and be
37:56
vulnerable out there.
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