Leadership is often associated with strength.
Confidence. Decisiveness. Authority. Experience. Control. Certainty.
Brené Brown challenges that conventional picture.
In DARE TO LEAD: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts., she argues that some of the behaviours leaders traditionally use to appear strong—avoiding vulnerability, pretending to know, refusing to acknowledge mistakes, suppressing difficult conversations and protecting themselves behind authority—can actually make leadership weaker.
Her proposition is confronting:
Courage and vulnerability are not opposites. Vulnerability is an essential component of courage.
You cannot have a genuinely difficult conversation without vulnerability.
You cannot admit that you were wrong without vulnerability.
You cannot give meaningful feedback without risking discomfort.
You cannot innovate without risking failure.
You cannot delegate important responsibility without surrendering some control.
You cannot build trust without exposing yourself to the possibility that trust may be disappointed.
And you cannot lead through genuine uncertainty while pretending you possess answers that simply do not exist.
For small-to-medium business owners and leaders, this matters enormously.
SMEs often operate with fewer organisational layers, closer relationships and greater dependence upon individual leaders than large corporations. The behaviour of the owner, CEO or senior leader can therefore have a disproportionately large effect on organisational culture.
If the leader avoids difficult conversations, the organisation learns avoidance.
If the leader punishes bad news, people stop delivering bad news.
If the leader cannot admit mistakes, others learn to conceal theirs.
If the leader reacts defensively to challenge, people eventually stop challenging.
Conversely, when leaders combine courage with accountability, candour with respect and vulnerability with clear standards, they can create organisations in which people are far more willing to speak, learn, innovate and take responsibility.
That is why DARE TO LEAD deserves serious consideration by SME owners.
It is not about becoming softer.
At its best, it is about becoming braver, clearer and more human while simultaneously increasing accountability.
Table of Contents (Leadership Development Perth)
- Who Is Brené Brown?
- What Is DARE TO LEAD Really About?
- Courage Is a Skill, Not a Personality Trait
- Vulnerability Is Not Weakness
- The Four Skill Sets of Courage
- Rumbling with Vulnerability
- Living Into Our Values
- BRAVING Trust
- Learning to Rise
- The Armour Leaders Wear
- Perfectionism Is Not the Same as Excellence
- Clear Is Kind, Unclear Is Unkind
- Tough Conversations Are a Leadership Responsibility
- The Stories We Tell Ourselves
- Shame, Blame and Organisational Culture
- Psychological Safety Without Lowering Standards
- Trust Is Built in Small Moments
- Values Must Become Behaviours
- Vulnerability and Innovation
- What DARE TO LEAD Teaches SME Owners
- Family Businesses and Difficult Conversations
- Where DARE TO LEAD Deserves Criticism
- A Practical DARE Leadership Framework for SMEs
- Practical Recommendations
- Key Takeaways
- FAQs
- Conclusion
Who Is Brené Brown? (Leadership Development Perth)
Brené Brown is a researcher, author and speaker whose work has concentrated on courage, vulnerability, shame, empathy and human connection.
Her broader body of work includes Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, The Gifts of Imperfection and Atlas of the Heart.
DARE TO LEAD applies many of the themes developed throughout that work directly to leadership and organisations.
Brown’s central argument is that courageous leadership is not some mysterious quality possessed by charismatic individuals.
It consists of behaviours that can be learned and practised.
This is an important proposition for leadership development.
If courage is simply personality, leadership development has obvious limitations.
But if courageous leadership consists of identifiable behaviours—having difficult conversations, acknowledging uncertainty, giving feedback, establishing values, building trust and recovering intelligently from failure—then leaders can deliberately improve.
That moves leadership away from personality and towards practice.
What Is DARE TO LEAD Really About? (Personal Leadership Perth)
It would be easy to describe DARE TO LEAD as a book about vulnerability.
That is only part of it.
The deeper subject is courageous organisational behaviour.
Brown asks what happens when leaders stop protecting themselves from discomfort and start engaging honestly with the realities of leadership.
Those realities include:
uncertainty,
risk,
conflict,
failure,
feedback,
trust,
disappointment,
accountability,
difficult decisions,
human emotion.
Traditional management thinking sometimes attempts to sterilise these issues.
Develop the strategy.
Define the KPI.
Create the organisational structure.
Implement the process.
Measure the result.
All of that matters.
But businesses are not operated by spreadsheets.
They are operated by people.
And people bring fear, pride, insecurity, ambition, loyalty, disappointment, ego, values and emotion into the workplace.
Good business strategy therefore depends partly upon leaders being capable of navigating the human conversations required to execute it.
A brilliant strategy cannot compensate indefinitely for leadership behaviour that prevents people from speaking honestly.
Courage Is a Skill, Not a Personality Trait (Leadership Development Perth)
One of Brown’s most useful propositions is that courage can be taught.
We often describe somebody as:
“A courageous leader.”
As though courage were fixed.
Brown encourages us to examine the behaviours underneath it.
Courage might mean telling a valued employee that their performance is no longer acceptable.
It might mean telling the founder that their behaviour is damaging the company.
It might mean admitting to the board:
“I got this wrong.”
It could mean challenging a long-established family-business practice.
Closing an unsuccessful division.
Asking for help.
Acknowledging that the strategy is failing.
Listening seriously to criticism.
Promoting somebody more capable than yourself.
Or initiating succession before circumstances force it upon you.
Courage therefore appears less as fearlessness and more as action despite discomfort and uncertainty.
That is a far more practical concept.
Vulnerability Is Not Weakness (Leadership Development Perth)
This is probably Brown’s most famous argument and also one of the easiest to misunderstand.
Vulnerability does not mean disclosing every emotion to employees.
It does not mean indecision.
It does not mean removing professional boundaries.
It does not mean tolerating poor performance.
It does not mean leaders should turn every management meeting into therapy.
Brown’s concept is closer to exposure to uncertainty, risk and emotional discomfort.
Consider leadership activities that require vulnerability:
Giving honest feedback.
Receiving honest feedback.
Admitting ignorance.
Trying something innovative.
Making a decision without complete information.
Delegating authority.
Apologising.
Negotiating.
Managing conflict.
Recruiting someone.
Terminating someone.
Presenting an unconventional idea.
Asking a difficult question.
Saying:
“I need help.”
None is weakness.
They require courage precisely because the outcome cannot be completely controlled.
For SME leaders accustomed to being the person everyone turns to for answers, admitting uncertainty can feel particularly uncomfortable.
But pretending certainty can be considerably more dangerous.
The Four Skill Sets of Courage (Leadership Development Perth)
Brown structures courageous leadership around four broad skill sets:
Rumbling with vulnerability.
Living into our values.
Braving trust.
Learning to rise.
Together they provide the architecture of the book.
They can also provide SME leaders with a practical diagnostic.
Ask:
Can our leadership team discuss difficult issues honestly?
Do our stated values genuinely influence behaviour?
Do people trust one another?
When things go wrong, do we learn—or blame?
Those four questions alone can reveal a surprising amount about organisational health.
Rumbling with Vulnerability (Leadership Development Perth)
Brown uses the language of a rumble to describe honest engagement with difficult issues.
A rumble is not an argument for the sake of conflict.
Nor is it superficial harmony.
It is the willingness to enter a conversation knowing that it may be uncomfortable.
This is particularly important in leadership teams.
Consider a board meeting where everybody knows the Sales Director is failing.
Nobody says it.
A family business where everyone knows succession is becoming urgent.
Nobody raises it.
A management team where the CEO dominates every discussion.
Nobody challenges it.
A company where margins have been deteriorating for eighteen months.
Everyone discusses revenue instead.
These are not communication problems alone.
They are courage problems.
The issue exists.
The organisation simply lacks the willingness to confront it.
Living Into Our Values (Business Governance Perth)
Many organisations have values.
Fewer have values that materially influence decisions.
Integrity.
Respect.
Excellence.
Customer First.
Teamwork.
Innovation.
These words can appear on walls, websites and induction documents while having almost no influence on everyday behaviour.
Brown argues that values need to become operational.
That means leaders must define:
What does this value look like when somebody actually demonstrates it?
And equally:
What behaviour violates it?
Suppose a company claims respect as a value.
Does respect mean:
not interrupting?
providing feedback privately?
keeping commitments?
responding to colleagues?
challenging ideas rather than attacking people?
paying suppliers when promised?
How is it measured?
What happens when a high-performing executive repeatedly violates it?
This is where values intersect directly with business governance.
Values without accountability become decoration.
BRAVING Trust (Leadership Development Perth)
Brown provides a memorable framework for understanding trust using the acronym BRAVING:
Boundaries
Reliability
Accountability
Vault
Integrity
Non-judgement
Generosity
The value of the framework is that it makes trust less abstract.
Instead of saying:
“I don’t trust him.”
a leader can ask:
Is the problem reliability?
Does he repeatedly fail to do what he promised?
Is it accountability?
Does she refuse to acknowledge mistakes?
Is it boundaries?
Does someone repeatedly overstep agreed limits?
Is confidentiality the problem?
That specificity makes trust problems easier to discuss.
For SME leadership teams, this can be extremely useful because close working relationships sometimes allow unresolved trust issues to become personal.
Turning:
“You’re untrustworthy.”
into:
“We agreed this would be completed by Friday on three occasions and it wasn’t”
creates an entirely different conversation.
Learning to Rise (Business Improvement Perth)
Failure is inevitable in business.
Not every hire works.
Not every acquisition succeeds.
Not every strategy delivers.
Not every product finds a market.
Not every customer relationship survives.
The question is not whether mistakes occur.
It is what happens next.
Some organisational cultures respond to failure with blame.
Who did this?
Whose fault was it?
How do we protect ourselves?
Others ask:
What happened?
What assumptions were wrong?
What did we miss?
What have we learned?
What should change?
This distinction is fundamental to business performance improvement.
A business cannot improve if employees are incentivised to hide the information needed for improvement.
Learning requires sufficient psychological safety for the truth to emerge.
The Armour Leaders Wear (Personal Leadership Perth)
One of Brown’s strongest metaphors concerns armoured leadership.
Leaders develop psychological armour to protect themselves.
Perfectionism.
Cynicism.
Control.
Knowing everything.
Using criticism before someone can criticise them.
Avoiding emotional exposure.
Blaming.
Power over rather than power with.
These behaviours may protect the leader temporarily.
But they impose organisational costs.
A leader who needs to know everything eventually surrounds themselves with people who stop offering alternative views.
A leader obsessed with control creates dependency.
A leader who uses cynicism to avoid disappointment discourages experimentation.
A leader who cannot admit error makes honesty dangerous.
This connects closely with emotional intelligence and self-awareness in leadership.
The question is not merely:
“What leadership style do I use?”
It is:
“What do I do when I feel threatened, uncertain, criticised or exposed?”
That is often where the real leadership style appears.
Perfectionism Is Not the Same as Excellence (Leadership Development Perth)
Brown draws an important distinction between healthy striving and perfectionism.
High standards are valuable.
Perfectionism can be destructive.
The perfectionist may believe:
If I don’t make mistakes, I cannot be criticised.
If everything is perfect, nobody can question me.
If I control everything, nothing can go wrong.
In SMEs, founder perfectionism can become a significant barrier to scale.
The owner reviews everything.
Approves everything.
Corrects everything.
Intervenes everywhere.
Nobody else’s work is quite good enough.
Eventually, the organisation reaches the capacity of the founder.
This is one reason delegation and systems are essential to sustainable business growth.
Excellence says:
“Let’s do this extremely well.”
Perfectionism says:
“Nothing less than flawless is safe.”
Those are very different mindsets.
Clear Is Kind, Unclear Is Unkind (Leadership Development Perth)
One of Brown’s most useful leadership principles can be summarised in four words:
Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.
Managers sometimes avoid direct feedback because they believe they are being considerate.
They say:
“You might want to think about improving this.”
When they actually mean:
“Your performance is below the standard required.”
The employee leaves the conversation believing everything is broadly fine.
Three months later, they are dismissed.
That is not kindness.
It is avoidance.
Clear leadership means explaining:
what is expected,
what is happening,
where the gap exists,
what needs to change,
when it needs to change,
what support is available,
what happens if improvement does not occur.
Clarity and compassion are not opposites.
Sometimes clarity is compassion.
Tough Conversations Are a Leadership Responsibility (Conflict Resolution Perth)
Every SME eventually faces difficult conversations.
Poor performance.
Behavioural problems.
Remuneration.
Promotion.
Redundancy.
Conflict.
Succession.
Ownership disputes.
Customer complaints.
Underperforming family members.
Partner disagreements.
Leaders frequently postpone these conversations hoping the problem will somehow resolve itself.
Usually it doesn’t.
Instead:
resentment grows,
performance declines,
other employees notice,
standards deteriorate,
trust erodes.
Effective conflict resolution does not mean eliminating disagreement.
It means developing the capability to deal with disagreement constructively.
A difficult conversation postponed rarely becomes easier.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves (Personal Leadership Perth)
Brown explores the narratives people create when information is incomplete.
An employee doesn’t respond to an email.
We think:
“He’s ignoring me.”
A colleague challenges our proposal.
We think:
“She doesn’t respect me.”
The board asks detailed questions.
We think:
“They’ve lost confidence in me.”
A customer delays payment.
We think:
“They’re going broke.”
Humans fill informational gaps with stories.
The problem is that we often treat those stories as facts.
For leaders, a useful discipline is to separate:
What I know
from
What I am assuming.
Before reacting, ask:
What evidence do I actually have?
What alternative explanation exists?
Have I spoken to the person?
This simple discipline can prevent enormous amounts of unnecessary workplace conflict.
Shame, Blame and Organisational Culture (Leadership Development Perth)
When something goes wrong, leaders reveal culture very quickly.
If the first response is humiliation or blame, employees learn:
Protect yourself.
That creates defensive behaviour.
Information is withheld.
Problems are minimised.
Responsibility is shifted.
Innovation declines.
Accountability does not require humiliation.
In fact, excessive blame can reduce genuine accountability because people become more interested in avoiding punishment than understanding what happened.
A better sequence is:
Facts → Responsibility → Learning → Correction → Accountability
rather than:
Failure → Blame → Fear → Concealment
This does not mean nobody is ever held responsible.
Accountability remains essential.
But accountability should improve performance rather than merely satisfy anger.
Psychological Safety Without Lowering Standards (Leadership Development Perth)
One potential misreading of Brown’s philosophy is that emotionally safe workplaces should become comfortable workplaces.
They should not.
Psychological safety does not mean:
Nobody gets criticised.
Nobody gets challenged.
Everyone agrees.
Poor performance is tolerated.
Conflict disappears.
It means people can raise problems, ask questions, admit mistakes and challenge assumptions without inappropriate interpersonal punishment.
High-performing cultures can combine:
High psychological safety + High accountability
That combination is powerful.
Safety without accountability creates complacency.
Accountability without safety creates fear.
Strong leadership requires both.
Trust Is Built in Small Moments (Leadership Development Perth)
Trust rarely appears through one dramatic leadership gesture.
It accumulates.
Do you do what you promised?
Do you arrive prepared?
Do you keep confidences?
Do you admit mistakes?
Do you give credit?
Do you support people when circumstances become difficult?
Do you behave consistently when senior leadership is absent?
Do you speak about colleagues behind their backs in ways you would not say to them directly?
These small moments become organisational memory.
This is particularly important in SMEs because relationships are often close and reputations travel quickly.
Trust can take years to build and minutes to damage.
Values Must Become Behaviours (Business Governance Perth)
Brown’s emphasis on values has another important implication.
Businesses sometimes attempt to manage culture through slogans.
Culture is actually reinforced through decisions.
If you say:
“People are our greatest asset”
but tolerate a high-performing manager who humiliates employees, the real value is performance at any cost.
If you say:
“Integrity matters”
but manipulate figures to achieve a bonus, the real value is hitting targets.
If you say:
“Family comes first”
but penalise employees for attending important family events, the real value is availability.
Employees believe behaviour.
Not posters.
Vulnerability and Innovation (Business Growth Perth)
Innovation necessarily contains vulnerability because innovation requires uncertainty.
You do not know whether the idea will work.
You do not know whether customers will buy.
You do not know whether the investment will produce returns.
If leaders punish every failed experiment, people quickly stop experimenting.
That does not mean businesses should celebrate reckless failure.
There is an enormous difference between:
intelligent experimentation
and
careless execution.
The leadership objective is to create conditions in which people can test thoughtful ideas, learn quickly and stop unsuccessful experiments before they become expensive.
That is disciplined vulnerability.
What DARE TO LEAD Teaches SME Owners (Business Advisor Perth)
Brown’s ideas may be particularly powerful in founder-led SMEs because the founder’s personality can become embedded in the company.
If you are the owner, ask yourself:
Can employees tell me I’m wrong?
Do I genuinely listen?
What happens when somebody brings bad news?
Do I admit mistakes publicly?
Do I delegate authority or merely tasks?
Do employees know exactly what I expect?
Do I address poor performance quickly?
Do I confuse loyalty with agreement?
Do people have permission to challenge historical practices?
Do my stated values match my behaviour?
Would my leadership team describe me the same way I describe myself?
An experienced independent Business Advisor Perth or Non-Executive Chairman can be particularly valuable because founders rarely receive completely candid feedback from people who depend upon them for employment.
Family Businesses and Difficult Conversations (Family Business Advisor)
Brown’s work has particular relevance to family-owned businesses.
Family businesses contain conversations that are both commercial and deeply personal.
Who becomes CEO?
Is the founder really ready to leave?
Is the next generation capable?
Should all children own equal shares?
What happens when one sibling works considerably harder than another?
How should family members be remunerated?
What if a family member is underperforming?
Can the company afford the dividends family shareholders expect?
These issues cannot be resolved indefinitely through avoidance.
Good family business succession planning requires precisely the capabilities Brown advocates:
courage,
clarity,
trust,
values,
vulnerability,
tough conversations.
Avoiding the conversation may preserve short-term harmony while creating long-term conflict.
Where DARE TO LEAD Deserves Criticism (Leadership Development Perth)
A useful book review should not simply endorse the author’s thesis.
DARE TO LEAD has limitations.
First, some readers may find Brown’s terminology excessive.
“Rumbling”, “armour”, “wholeheartedness” and other expressions can feel less natural in traditional commercial environments.
Second, some concepts risk becoming vague unless translated into specific managerial behaviours.
A leader cannot simply instruct a management team:
“Be more vulnerable.”
They need clarity about what behaviour should change.
Third, vulnerability needs boundaries.
Not every thought or emotion belongs in the workplace.
Leaders retain responsibilities regarding judgement, confidentiality, professionalism and emotional containment.
Fourth, organisational problems are not always interpersonal.
Sometimes the problem is:
poor strategy,
insufficient capital,
bad economics,
weak systems,
wrong people,
obsolete products,
or inadequate capability.
No amount of vulnerability substitutes for commercial competence.
This is an important qualification.
Courageous leadership complements sound management. It does not replace it.
A Practical DARE Leadership Framework for SMEs (Leadership Development Perth)
Brown’s broader ideas can be translated into a simple SME leadership framework.
D — DEFINE REALITY
What is actually happening?
Remove assumptions, avoidance and organisational storytelling.
A — ADDRESS THE DIFFICULT ISSUE
What conversation are we avoiding?
Have it respectfully and clearly.
R — RESPONSIBILITY AND TRUST
Who owns the outcome?
What commitments have been made?
Can people rely upon one another?
E — EMBED VALUES IN BEHAVIOUR
What do our values actually require us to do?
This produces:
Define → Address → Responsibility → Embed
The framework is intentionally simple.
Because the value of Brown’s philosophy lies not in discussing courageous leadership.
It lies in behaving courageously when the conversation becomes uncomfortable.
Practical Recommendations for SME Owners & Leaders (Leadership Development Perth)
Consider taking your leadership team through these questions:
- What difficult conversation are we currently avoiding?
- What bad news would employees hesitate to tell us?
- Can people challenge the owner or CEO safely?
- Where are we confusing certainty with competence?
- What happens when a senior leader admits a mistake?
- Are our organisational values observable in behaviour?
- Which of our values would we protect even if doing so cost money?
- Where is perfectionism slowing the organisation?
- Do managers give sufficiently clear feedback?
- Are we addressing poor performance early enough?
- What assumptions are we currently treating as facts?
- Where has trust deteriorated?
- Which specific behaviour damaged that trust?
- Do we learn systematically from mistakes?
- Are employees afraid of failure—or appropriately accountable for performance?
- Does our culture encourage intelligent experimentation?
- Are we using authority to encourage contribution or suppress challenge?
- What leadership armour do I personally wear?
- How do I behave when criticised?
- What would my team tell me if they knew there would be absolutely no negative consequences?
Number twenty may be the most valuable question in the entire exercise.
Key Takeaways (Leadership Development Perth)
DARE TO LEAD provides SME owners and leaders with several important lessons.
Courage is behavioural and can be developed.
Vulnerability is not weakness; it accompanies uncertainty, risk and meaningful leadership.
Clarity is often kinder than avoidance.
Difficult conversations are part of leadership, not an unfortunate interruption to it.
Trust becomes easier to repair when we identify the specific behaviour that damaged it.
Values matter only when translated into observable behaviour.
Perfectionism can restrict delegation, innovation and growth.
Leaders need to distinguish facts from the stories they create around incomplete information.
Blame and accountability are not the same thing.
Psychological safety and high performance are compatible—and should coexist.
Failure should generate learning, but intelligent experimentation should never become an excuse for carelessness.
The behaviour of an SME owner can disproportionately shape organisational culture.
And perhaps the central lesson is:
Leadership courage becomes visible precisely when doing the right thing is uncomfortable.
Frequently Asked Questions About DARE TO LEAD (Leadership Development Perth)
What is DARE TO LEAD by Brené Brown about?
DARE TO LEAD examines courageous leadership through vulnerability, values, trust, difficult conversations and learning from failure.
What are the four skill sets in DARE TO LEAD?
Brown identifies rumbling with vulnerability, living into our values, braving trust and learning to rise.
What does Brené Brown mean by vulnerability?
In the leadership context, vulnerability involves exposure to uncertainty, risk and emotional discomfort rather than weakness or indiscriminate emotional disclosure.
Does vulnerability make leaders look weak?
Not necessarily. Admitting uncertainty, requesting help, receiving feedback and acknowledging mistakes can strengthen credibility when combined with competence and accountability.
What does “clear is kind” mean?
It means avoiding necessary feedback can ultimately be less compassionate than communicating expectations and concerns honestly and respectfully.
What is the BRAVING framework?
BRAVING represents Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Non-judgement and Generosity—a framework Brown uses to examine trust.
What is armoured leadership?
It refers broadly to protective leadership behaviours such as excessive control, perfectionism, defensiveness, cynicism and needing to appear certain or correct.
How does DARE TO LEAD apply to SMEs?
SMEs often depend heavily on a small number of leaders, meaning trust, communication, conflict and leadership behaviour can have particularly large organisational effects.
Can psychological safety reduce accountability?
It should not. Strong cultures combine psychological safety with clear standards and accountability.
What can family businesses learn from DARE TO LEAD?
Its principles are particularly relevant to succession, ownership, family employment, performance and other emotionally difficult conversations family businesses frequently postpone.
Is perfectionism good for business?
High standards can be valuable, but perfectionism can produce excessive control, poor delegation, fear of mistakes and organisational bottlenecks.
What are the limitations of DARE TO LEAD?
Some terminology may feel overly abstract or emotionally oriented to some business readers, and vulnerability should not be mistaken for a substitute for commercial judgement, strategy, capability or accountability.
Is DARE TO LEAD worth reading for SME owners?
Yes. It is particularly useful for owners and leaders seeking to improve organisational trust, feedback, communication, accountability, culture and their capacity to conduct difficult conversations.
Conclusion: The Conversation You Are Avoiding May Be the Leadership Work You Most Need to Do (Leadership Development Perth)
Many leadership problems do not begin as large problems.
A performance concern is ignored.
A disagreement is left unresolved.
An inappropriate behaviour is tolerated.
A strategic assumption goes unchallenged.
A founder refuses to discuss succession.
A manager avoids giving honest feedback.
A leadership team privately disagrees with the CEO but publicly remains silent.
Nothing dramatic happens immediately.
That is why avoidance is seductive.
But unresolved issues accumulate.
Eventually the price becomes much greater than the discomfort of the conversation that was originally avoided.
This is where DARE TO LEAD makes its strongest contribution.
Brown reminds us that leadership is not simply about making decisions when the answer is obvious.
Leadership becomes meaningful when:
the answer is uncertain,
the conversation is uncomfortable,
the outcome cannot be guaranteed,
your ego is exposed,
you may be wrong,
and something important is nevertheless at stake.
That is when courage matters.
For SME owners, there is an additional challenge.
Your organisation watches you.
People notice what happens when you are challenged.
They notice whether you listen.
They notice whether you blame.
They notice whether you apologise.
They notice whether your values disappear when money is involved.
They notice whether poor behaviour is tolerated from high performers.
They notice whether you genuinely want the truth.
And they adapt accordingly.
Culture therefore does not begin with the words hanging on the wall.
It begins with the behaviour people observe from leadership when circumstances become difficult.
The ultimate lesson from DARE TO LEAD is not that leaders should become more emotional.
It is considerably more demanding:
Be courageous enough to confront reality.
Be vulnerable enough to admit what you don’t know.
Be secure enough to hear disagreement.
Be clear enough to say what needs to be said.
Be accountable enough to admit when you are wrong.
Be disciplined enough to turn values into behaviour.
And be brave enough to have the tough conversation before avoiding it creates an even tougher problem.
Because leadership is not demonstrated by how comfortable you appear when everything is going well.
It is demonstrated by how courageously, honestly and responsibly you behave when it isn’t.
