Episode 42: Dare to Lead Book Club [Part Eight]: Learning to Rise
Your Story is Your Choice
Choose to own your story and you will rise to creating it intentionally.
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This is episode seven where we dive into the book: “Dare to Lead” by Brené Brown. I am sharing the things that stick out most to me and add my thoughts about those things. It is a one sided conversation - but I would love to hear from you! I would welcome your thoughts on comments about your experience with this great book!
This episode covers Part Four (Learning to Rise)
Let’s start with a wonderful quote from Brené Brown:
“When we have the courage to walk into our story and own it, we get to write the ending. And when we don’t own our stories of failure, setbacks, and hurt – they own us.”
She also says: “We have to teach people how to land before they jump.” In skydiving – you spend time jumping off a ladder so you learn how to land on the ground without injuring yourself. “The same is true in leadership – we can’t expect people to be brave and risk failure if they’re not prepped for hard landings.”
Brené says that her research shows that leaders who are trained in rising skills as part of a courage-building program are more likely to engage in courageous behaviors because they know how to get back up. I see the same with digging into self-awareness work as a pre-cursor (and actually – always running parallel to) other leadership skill training. Teaching the fundamentals of understanding who you are, what makes you you and how to manage the mind is like teaching how to land on the ground without injuring yourself.
Also a part of self-awareness work is understanding feelings. Much of this section of the book has to do with feelings. Some might think that feelings don’t belong in leadership or in the workplace. That is likely from old conditioning (for more on my thoughts on this - check out Episode 26 (Leaders Have Feelings Too). If that is how you think - I challenge you to suspend that thought, open your mind, and see if you can tap into your courage and gain a new perspective.
In her research, Brené found that those participants who had the highest levels of resilience are able to get back up after a disappointment – and they are more courageous as a result. She says they do that with a process that she calls Learning to Rise.
Learning to Rise
The process has three parts: the Reckoning, the Rumble and the Revolution.
In this part of the book, Brené gives us the language, tools and skills that make up the essentials of this process so you can put it into practice. She says: “Learning to Rise is about getting up from our falls, overcoming our mistakes and facing hurt in a way that brings more wisdom and wholeheartedness into our lives.”
This doesn’t sound easy – but it is through this work that we will truly be free to create the results, life and leadership we most want.
The payoff having the courage of owning our story is that we get to write the ending. When we don’t own our story – we stay stuck, swirl in the hurt, live in the past and buffer…. and as she says – the story then owns us.
Step One: The Reckoning.
This is when we notice that our monkey brain is taking over. When something happens – our emotions naturally take charge. The first step is to notice when that happens, and then get curious. So much is subconscious – or we just kind of lose ourselves. But when we get good at just noticing – we allow space for curiosity.
Brené says this: “The reckoning is as simple at knowing that we’re emotionally hooked and then getting curious about it.”
Were you raised to really take notice of your feelings? Especially the ones that are uncomfortable? My guess is no – most of us were not. So when your boss says something that frustrates you, when your project doesn’t land as expected and you’re disappointed, when you feel uncertain because it doesn’t like people are engaged in your presentation – what do we normally do is bust out the armor. That armor typically means we do one of three things – we avoid, we react or we resist.
The skill for high resilience is this: slow down, take a deep breath and get curious about what is happening. You dig in – figure out what you are feeling and why. It’s really about awareness and recognizing what you are feeling. Feelings are simply a vibration in our body.
You will likely become aware of your own signs that a feeling is coming on that makes you want to armor up. For example – I’ve become astutely aware when I start to get anxious. It starts with a numbing sensation in my feet and travels up to my hands. Because I know the signs, I am able to get curious before my monkey brain takes over.
Very few people actually make it through The Reckoning part of the process. Instead of feeling our emotions and getting curious – we offload them onto others - - or engage in some type of buffering behavior.
Brené share the six most common offloading strategies from her other book, Rising Strong. As you read these – ask yourself two questions:
Do I do this?
How does it feel to be on the receiving end of this?
Offloading Strategy #1: Chandeliering. “A medical term to describe a patient’s pain that is so severe that if you touch that tender place, their response is involuntary. No matter how hard they try to hide the hurt or how distracted they are by other things, they jump to the ceiling, or chandelier.” There is an emotional equivalent to this concept when it comes to avoiding feelings.
Offloading Strategy #2: Bouncing Hurt. This is where the ego comes in. We all have ego, but in reference to offloading emotions - I say it is the ‘dark side of ego’ that comes into play. This is when we decide it’s easier to be angry than to acknowledge hurt – so we let that ‘dark ego’ take over. It’s when we hear the ego say: “feelings are for losers and weaklings”.
Offloading Strategy #3: Numbing Hurt. I call this ‘buffering’. It’s when we do things just so we can avoid the emotion. Examples are overeating, overdrinking, overworking, scrolling social media, etc.
Offloading Strategy #4: Stockpiling Hurt. The difference here is we aren’t erupting or using blame to deflect – but we are packing down the pain and just continue to accrue it until our bodies decide that enough is enough. Have you gotten a message from your body before? My guess is yes!
Offloading Strategy #5: The Umbridge. Brené named this strategy after J.K. Rowling’s character Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. She said she finds it to be one of the most difficult offloading strategies to experience. It’s when ‘everything is awesome’ or ‘if you’re just positive, you can turn that frown upside down’ – to mask the real pain and hurt. This isn’t actually relatable – therefore you can’t build connection or trust.
Offloading Strategy #6: Hurt and Fear of High-Centering. Brené says: “one reason we deny our feelings is the fear of getting emotionally high-centered – that is, getting stuck in a way that makes it difficult to go forward or backward.
Just as anxiety is contagious – calm is contagious. When we can breathe before reacting or responding – it allows time for curiosity. Here are two questions you could ask yourself in that moment:
Do I have enough information to freak out about this situation?
If I do have enough data, will freaking out help?
Step Two: The Rumble.
“If the reckoning is how we walk into a tough story, the rumble is where we go to the mat with it and own it.”
This is key:
“The rumble starts with this universal truth: In the absence of data, we will always make up stories.”
It’s how the brain works. Filling in the gaps and making up stories is how we make sense of the world. It’s the brains way of protection and it happens all day, all the time.
Brené says that the first story we make up is what she calls the “shitty first draft” or the SFD. It’s the dump of what we are thinking – and the SFD are the fears and insecurities (the worst-case scenario). In courage cultures – you tell people what you can and acknowledge when you can’t tell them everything – and ensure them you will continue to share as you can.
Daring leaders ask for the SFDs. They create the time, space and safety for people to reality-check their stories.
You can do this too! This is basically an expansion of what I teach with The Model (refer to Episode 9 and Episode 10). You want to capture your SFD before acting on it. You can actually write it down – capturing information like:
The story I’m making up is:
My emotions are:
My body is:
My thinking is:
My beliefs are:
My actions are:
I call this doing a thought download and a model. Writing it out allows you to look at your thoughts from a higher view. You can then ask more questions, like:
What might be missing?
What other information might I need?
What if I’m wrong / what is the opposite?
What do I need to learn and understand about myself?
The Story Rumble
Brené says that one of the most useful applications of the Learning to Rise process is how it can be used when a group or organization experiences a fall or conflict of failure – she calls it the Story Rumble. I really like this – as it a way to really get down to the root of frustration and resentment within teams in a ‘healthy’ way. You need to bring in the tools, skills and practices discussed in the book, such as: shared language, curiosity, grounded confidence, your integrity, your values and the trust you’re building.
You can find more on the Story Rumble process on page 269 of Dare to Lead.
Step Three: The Revolution.
The Revolution is this: taking off the armor and rumbling with vulnerability, living into our values, braving trust with open hearts, and learning to rise so we can reclaim authorship of our own stories and lives. And doing that regardless of the critics, cynics and fearmongers.
I’ll end this series with a passage from the book. Brené writes:
“As you think about your own path to daring leadership, remember Joseph Campbell’s wisdom: “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” Own the fear, find the cave, and write a new ending for yourself, for the people you’re meant to serve and support, and for your culture. Choose courage over comfort. Choose whole hearts over armor. And choose the great adventure of being brave and afraid. At the exact same time.”
From the Read-Along Workbook
One of the exercises in the Read Along Workbook is around awareness of when you get hooked by emotion and what your SFD looks like.
Learning to rise requires recognizing when we’re hooked by emotion. How do you know when emotion grabs you? Examples include playing a conversation or event on a loop, stomach in knots, coming out of your skin, etc. Check in with yourself (or do as a group) by finishing these statements:
Body: When emotion grabs me, I physically feel:
Mind: When emotion grabs me, I often start thinking:
Behavior: The first thing I want to do when I get hooked by emotions is:
Story: the stories I most often make up are about:
What do you think?
Do you notice and process your emotions - or do you offload them?
What is your go-to story when you don’t have all of the information?
Links / References
2010 TED Talk: Brene Brown - The Power of Vulnerability
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