Monday Motivation: Dare To  Drop Your Armor

Monday Motivation: Dare To Drop Your Armor

STOUT Inspiration + Action To Accelerate Your Week

Get inspired by Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead then use our Stout Action Plan to push past fear and cultivate courageous leadership.

INSPIRATION

Dr. Brené Brown is the author of five #1 New York Times bestsellers, a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Endowed Chair at The Graduate College of Social Work and her TED talk – The Power of Vulnerability – is one of the top five most viewed with over 35 million views.

Brown’s new book Dare to Lead is the culmination of a seven-year study on courage and leadership which found the greatest barrier to courageous leadership is not fear, but how we respond to our fear.

Dare to Lead offers daily practices to overcome “armored leadership” and encourages everyone to step up, be brave, and lead the way because “courage is contagious”.

It’s not fear that gets in the way of showing up – it’s armor. It’s the behaviors we use to self-protect. But armor suffocates courage and cages our hearts.
Brené Brown

 

ACTION

Recognize Your Armor
Do you need to always be right? Do you micro-manage to get “perfect” results? Resist delegating until your burn yourself out? Figuring out the barriers you’ve put up for “protection” is the first step to breaking them down and getting in better alignment with our values and purpose.

Explore Productive Alternatives
The heart of Brown’s strategy is a willingness to be vulnerable. To give up the protection that defensiveness, posturing and absolute control provides and instead focus on pursuing purpose and be open to being questioned, encouraging curiosity and exploring different paths to achieving a goal.
(For example, Brown shows breaking down defensive armor could be learning to “make a big shift from wanting to “be right” to wanting to “get it right.”)

“Embrace The Suck”
None of this will be easy. Admitting vulnerabilities can leave you feeling uncomfortable, edgy and exposed. But the ability to accept and manage uncertainty, risk and emotion is a key to unlocking courageous, purpose-driven leadership.

 
 
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