Need PD as a Manager? Brené Brown is your girl.
I am a long-time Brené Brown advocate and supporter. As a female manager, I have given her books as gifts more times than I can count. I have given this Daring Greatly to stone-cold, seemingly emotionless folks and I have given The Gifts of Imperfection to folks who love to read self-help and are inundated with messages of development.
Any time a new Brené Brown article, book, Netflix show or podcast come out, I am tagged relentlessly by friends and family. It leads to the question: Why do I support and believe in Brené Brown so much?
It is simple, really. Her messaging is entirely about human experience and not just dedicated to one particular type of person. I resonate with many of her messages and use them as not only coaching opportunities but leadership techniques.
Being a female manager in any industry is tough. We are consistently fighting the stigma of what a woman in leadership should look like. Some things that come to mind are tough but not bitchy, kind but not soft or chipper but not annoying. It feels like exploring who you are as a female manager is so heavily informed by what we are told by folks who are trying to keep us down or in our place, folks who want us to play small.
Brené Brown often references the Theodore Roosevelt quote,
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming…”
When we are trying to figure out our leadership style, who we want to be or how we want to show up as women in management, it important to look to the folks ‘in the arena’ with us. Women who have come before us, who have paved the path for us or are currently walking with us on this journey.
Brené Brown is one of these women. Her research on shame and vulnerability work to cultivate spaces for all folks to be heard and seen, but especially for women to lean into who they are and better their organization. We may feel imposter syndrome, shame, nerves or fear while on the journey of leadership development, but Brené Brown captures these experiences in neat packages for us to digest and lean into as managers.
Need more convincing? Below are some more reasons why Brené Brown is a management staple for me.
“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true self be seen.”
As a people supporter/manager, I try my best to flex my authenticity muscle every chance I get. I try to bring my own spin to things, be myself, talk about my life (good, bad and ugly) and try to encourage the same from the folks I work with. Brené Brown shares that there are no inauthentic people, just folks who have not had practice using this skill. I cultivate authenticity with those around me by:
Knowing passion areas and hobbies in life outside of work and try to keep up to date on them.
Asking about what kind of work makes them feel most ‘full’ and working towards connecting them with those types of projects.
I am relational, so creating opportunities for relational check-ins, common sharing, and connection. This builds team trust, which goes a long way for the tough stuff later.
“Talk about your failures without apologizing.”
This is something I have been trying to cultivate since my first year working and have not seen full amounts of success. As women, in particular, we are societally hard-wired to be apologetic and to play small.
I am a recovering catastrophizer and am working to role model healthier coping when I make a mistake. I am quick to jump to worst-case scenario (hello, inferior function!), but what I need to be doing is taking a moment to reflect and exercising self-compassion. We feel so much shame when screwing up, but we hardly ever respond to anyone the way we expect people to respond to us when we make a mistake.
As a manager, I am working towards modelling self-compassion when I make mistakes but talk about them in ways that feel healthy and forgiving. This, in turn, will help my colleagues recognize that they can fail without shame.
“You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviours.”
This one is huge. We do this when we are at a loss on what to do, we feel shame or we have learned that it is OK to treat people in this way. Think of the feedback you’ve received in a way that made you cringe, there was likely an element of shaming or belittling that was going on.
Now, think of hard feedback you’ve heard from someone you trust. What a difference! This is why the relational aspects of management are crucial to the long-term success of your organization. Trust and buy-in can only be cultivated by building trust.
“Don’t try to win over the haters; you are not a jackass whisperer.”
This one just for fun. In case you aren’t convinced that I am on to something here.
Check out Brené Brown through a number of mediums: Books, Podcast or Netflix show.
This post was edited using my favourite resource Grammarly!
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