Brené Brown : Hi, everyone. I’m Brené Brown, and this is Dare to Lead, and joining us for more conversations around pretty much any topic you can think of, Adam Grant. Hi, Adam.

Adam Grant : Hey, Brené. I’m excited to be back.

BB: I’m excited to have you back. It’s going to take me a very long time to get my head around my devaluation of future time. I fancy myself a realistic person, but I do not think of my future time with the same amount of discipline as I think about my time today. And it’s really changing me.

AG: Wow, that’s fascinating. Okay, I want to hear more. Why?

BB: I think right now, especially in my life, I’m feeling a lot of time scarcity. And one of the things I need to do right now is get more disciplined in my time now. So it’s not driving me to think tomorrow will be different. So I think it’s just a confounding variable for me is that the more scarcity I’m in with my time now, the more I project that the future is going to be easy.

AG: Is that a coping mechanism?

BB: For sure.

AG: So you’re telling yourself, this is only temporary?

BB: Yes, for sure. But this is year 10.

AG: So having done nothing to change it?

BB: Yeah.

AG: Hope is not a strategy. Is that the line?

BB: That is the line. I have very mixed feelings about that quote, so we should talk about it sometime because I’m not sure that it’s right. But I’m pro-hope, I am radically anti-magical thinking.

AG: Yeah, maybe the correction to it should be hope alone is not a strategy.

BB: Hope alone.

AG: Hope can be motivation for finding a strategy.

BB: I think it’s C.R. Snyder’s work. And hope as a…

AG: Agency and pathways.

BB: Goal, agency, and pathway. So in some ways, hope is the ultimate strategy if you’re a Snyder follower because that hope, high levels of hopefulness are correlated with the ability to set a goal, to determine a pathway, to be relentless about the pathway, even if the first one doesn’t work out, and then to believe in your ability to do it. So in some ways, hope is actually a strategy if you define it with his definition, right? But I guess, I wonder, our last conversation makes me wonder, this is my exercise I’m going to do with my coach. When I am thinking, when I’m devaluing future time, what specifically does my world and my life look like in the future that’s so radically different than today?

AG: And why aren’t you creating it today?

BB: Damn. And why am I not creating it today? So if you’re joining us and you missed the last podcast, I think it’s really worth going back to because we had a really interesting conversation about paradox and about the paradox of discipline and freedom, of productivity. And I was explaining to Adam that I thought, I always think it’s going to be better moving forward. And tell us about the research you introduced from the economist.

AG: Oh, this is Laibson on hyperbolic discounting. And the idea is that people value the same thing in the future much less than in the present. And sometimes with disastrous consequences. You could offer, I think in a typical experiment, you give people the choice between, I’ll give you $5 today or $50 in a year. And most people prefer the $5 today.

BB: Yeah, because this is the magical thinking because I’m going to invest that $5 today and it’s going to be $100, not $50. And really, I’m just going to buy like a Diet Coke and a power bar.

AG: Yeah. And also, I think there’s often an identity disconnect of that future person is not me. The now is me. And I need to take care of the now.

BB: No, that’s it. Oh, my God. That’s it. That’s it.

AG: Future Brené is a different person. That’s part of the challenge here, right?

BB: Yeah, future Brené doesn’t need to be thoughtful about time. She’s got all this shit figured out.

AG: I’m realizing as we talk this through, this is another difference between us.

BB: Hmm.

AG: You live in the present and I live in the future.

BB: Say more.

AG: I think when you were talking last episode about seeing me as a disciplined person, I don’t feel particularly disciplined. I just, I spend probably half my time thinking about tomorrow and next week and how am I going to work toward the goal I’m trying to accomplish and how am I going to solve a problem that someone I care about is facing. And it’s great for momentum and motivation, but sometimes it means I’m not engaged in the moment because I’m too busy thinking ahead. And you do the opposite, I think, from what I’m hearing.

BB: I do.

AG: I got some really interesting feedback about this difference between us. I’m now realizing a couple of years ago when I was doing a virtual event with a colleague and afterward I asked what I could do better. And she said, you should answer questions more like Brené.

BB: Jesus!

AG: And I said, oh, tell me more. What do you mean? And she said, Brené pauses and thinks about a question and you get to experience her thinking out loud in real time. And she said, you just rattle off the answer and it doesn’t have the same curiosity or engagement or mindfulness to it. And I had a hard time parsing it in the moment. And now I’m realizing some of the time it’s because I already thought through the questions that I expected people to ask and tried to prepare a helpful answer. And now, okay, that’s my job to deliver that as opposed to the off-the-cuff random thought that I had. But it means I wasn’t connecting to the audience, right? I was like, here, I’m just going to deliver to you my preplanned thought as opposed to I’m going to work through this with you. And I think that present focus is one of your superpowers.

BB: This is really weird and really interesting because I think all of our superpowers and our kryptonite are on the same continuum. Do you believe that?

AG: I think my favorite definition of a weakness is a strength overused or misused.

BB: Okay, so yes, I agree. I think it’s really interesting because my team gets feedback every now and then, the people that help me get to events and plan them and execute against them and do all the really hard, tedious work of making sure they’re successful, that the event organizer is not pleased with the fact that they’ve been told by my team, don’t bother sending the questions, she’s not going to read them. And I think it’s because I don’t want to think about them in advance. I want to be able to… If I’m in a fireside chat with a CEO and the CEO asks me a question, I want to be able to follow up with the 30 questions to that person that I’m going to need to understand better to answer. And I think there’s some value in modeling that. I even put one of those in the book, in Strong Ground, I’m like, I don’t know the answer to that. They’re like, well, here’s this variable. I’m like, I still don’t know. And I think sometimes there’s really great learning in that. And I think that I’ve given my team different direction now, which is, if this is something that’s deep in my content area, great. If you think you’ve never seen this question come by, I may want to see it in advance. So I probably have some really important learning to do there, too.

AG: But you know what’s so interesting about this is I think in your case, it’s really easy to do the same thing with a different framing, right? To say, hey, what I’m hearing is you want a sense of predictability and control.

BB: Yes.

AG: And we’re happy to give that to you, but we also want to preserve Brené’s ability to be in the moment.

BB: Yeah. I just don’t read questions in advance. And it can make people really nervous. And they have to be okay with sometimes they’ll ask me something and I’ll say, I actually don’t know. And then I’m not sure that’s always what they think they paid for.

AG: This is the tension between they’re excited to learn with you, but they also want to learn from you. And if you take off your expert hat too much, they’re dissatisfied.

BB: Yeah, and you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of my husband Steve, who has taught so many medical students and residents in pediatrics over the years. And he said one of the most difficult things to teach them is when you’re working with parents, the patient is the child. There are so many occasions when a parent will look at you, all welled up and said, I love that you shared how you’re thinking about this as a parent. I love that you talked about the decisions that you would make, and this is why I come here. And this is, you know, you’re amazing. And there are other times when I came here because you damn well better be God and you better tell me right now what to do. I don’t give a shit what, you know, like, you know, it’s like sometimes they just want the all-knowing God when they’re scared. And sometimes they want the empathetic kind of, and it’s something that pediatric residents really have a hard time. And they’ll know when they get it wrong, right? But it’s, you know, sometimes they want us to know everything. And then the other time they’re so grateful that we’re human beings and we don’t know the answers, but we’ve got great questions. And what we study is how to be curious and ask the right questions. But if people are in scarcity, they want the expert with the answer. And I have to say, like, just if you’re listening, I think I have a lot to offer in terms of how to get underneath what you’re really worried about and what’s keeping you up at night and how to ask the right questions. You and I can both source research, but I don’t think the definition of a great leader is someone who has all the answers. It’s just questions.

AG: This connects so well to one of my favorite topics in Strong Ground.

BB: Uh-oh, I’m curious.

AG: Which is presence.

BB: Oh. Oh.

AG: So one of the things, we have a lot to talk about here, but one of the things that you excel at, and clearly Steve does too, is a form of presence that I think with it brings a high degree of situational awareness. And it’s different from the ways that we normally talk about presence in leadership. So I think the kickoff question for this conversation has to be, tell me what you have against executive presence.

BB: Oh, my God. No, I’m going to rat you out. I’m going to rat you out right off the bat. So, oh, man, where do I start? So sports metaphors, we talked about this last episode. We both use them. We both love them. We both believe that sports can be an amazing kind of leadership theater where you can really point to where in the chain things go wrong, from ideation, strategy, execution, evaluation. You know, it’s helpful. I think we’re both committed to doing better jobs with a setup so that everyone can follow the metaphor because that’s probably a key to being able to use them. But I’ll tell people who are listening right now, actually what happened is I was raised by a father who was a football player, played in college, played in high school. He was on the O-line. He was someone who would protect the quarterback when the offense had the ball. And I grew up with a really interesting understanding of this term pocket presence. And in American football, the quarterback, who’s kind of the leader of the offense, who immediately gets the ball, runs with it, throws it, needs to move the ball down the field to score a goal, to score a touchdown.

BB: Pocket presence is how you evaluate a quarterback’s ability in this pocket. So when the play starts, all the big guys protect the quarterback. They form a little pocket around him so that he can figure out what he’s going to do with the ball. And a quarterback that has good pocket presence is someone who has a very strong internal clock, anticipatory awareness, situational awareness, major, major trust building with the line of folks that are protecting him. And so through a series of events, I talked to Steve Sarkisian, the coach at University of Texas football, Hook’em Horns, that’s my team, about what is pocket presence? Because I was very curious, I was really curious about the skill set that made up pocket presence. And it started with a conversation, I was on the sideline of a game and I was standing with Emmanuel Acho, who played for the Longhorns and ended up playing professional ball and now is a writer and a speaker doing really interesting work. And I looked at him during the game and I said, hey, how would you define pocket presence? I’m curious. And he said, the ability to read the entire field without seeing it, and the trust in your team to get something done, move the ball down the field. And I thought, man, I think what leaders need today is pocket presence. And I was talking about it with my team, and they said, is that like executive presence? And I was like, Jesus, I hate executive presence. But I was scared because there are a lot of people who study executive presence, you know? So I texted Adam. I’m going to tell on you. If I’m going down, if I’m going down on this sinking executive presence ship, I’m taking your ass with me, dude.

AG: Happy to come along for the ride.

BB: Yeah, we can both swim, luckily. So I texted you. What did I say in the text? I can’t remember. Let me see. I’m going to try to find it. This is worth finding.

AG: Yeah, it’s in here somewhere. I read it.

BB: Hold on. It was funny. Wait, I’m going to look. Oh, there it is. When I texted my friend Adam Grant, I’ll read from the book, saying, I’m going to talk about the problem with executive presence in this book. And I asked his thoughts. The first thing I got was the dreaded three dot iPhone response. I’m like, oh my God, he’s writing something. It’s taking a long time. Maybe he’s going to be mad that I’m taking down. And then after waiting, because my thought was like, maybe this is like sacred territory in the leadership world. Finally, your text came up and it said, yes, please. Executive presence is cover for discriminating against women and introverts. And then half a second later, he followed up with, and while you’re at it, could you do a smackdown of charisma too? I was like, this is why we’re friends. I don’t like executive presence because I think the world right now, especially on the political stage, is full of people who would tick all of the executive presence boxes, you know, like blustery and, you know, your tie and you’re, you know, commanding. And they’re saying nothing. And what they are saying is terrible. And so I don’t know that executive presence to me. I don’t know what that means. To me, it is a prescriptive way of how you think a leader looks and sounds. Where you and I both agree that the quiet nerd in the meeting, he or she normally has the best answers of the group, right?

AG: Yeah, this captures so effectively what’s bothered me about executive presence for a long time is it’s all style, no substance. Like executive presence is all about style and it says nothing about whether there’s any substance behind it. Yeah, so do you look the part? Do you act the part? Do you talk the part? But what are you actually saying? What’s your contribution to the meeting? Not clear. And I think, I guess, we haven’t talked about this yet other than that little text exchange, but I’ve seen it, I have seen it used as an excuse to say, well, we can’t promote her yet because she’s not ready. She doesn’t have the executive presence we’re looking for. So what does that mean, so talk to me about what she’s missing.  And the most consistent answer I get when that happens with women is, well, there’s just an air of confidence that we’re looking for. Bravado. I’m sorry, how is that relevant to being an effective leader? Is she competent? Is she caring? Has she demonstrated an ability to live by her organization’s values and make other people around her better? Yes, yes, and yes, promote her.

BB: Yeah, I agree 100%. And I think you have to go back to a very dangerous leadership origin story to understand how the quote-unquote style was first formulated. And I do think it’s really hard for women. And I do think it’s hard for black and brown folks. I do think it’s hard for introverts. I do think it’s hard for LGBTQ people. The definition, I think, of presence has been built on a leader from a 1950s movie. Yeah, I just, pocket presence to me is more interesting because, you know, I was really, like when I was thinking about it, the ability, you know, anticipatory awareness, strategic thinking, critical awareness, internal clock, which we never talk about temporal awareness and leadership. And it’s so huge. It’s so complex. And it was interesting because you’ve read the book now, so you know, but when I had to guess how much time a quarterback has in the pocket before the defense is on top of them, do you know what I guessed? 40 seconds.

AG: Wow.

BB: What would you have guessed? What would you have guessed?

AG: I mean, I spent way too much time on fantasy football as a kid.

BB: Okay, got it.

AG: I would have counted three seconds probably or four seconds max.

BB: It’s usually 2.8 to 3.5 seconds before they’re clobbered by, you know, 1,200 pounds of fury and rage. And so I was trying to think, well, does the metaphor work, you know, or does it work to think about leaders in pocket presence? But I do, because I don’t think you have 1,200 pounds of fury coming at you as a leader and have three seconds. But I think you have 1,200 pounds of pressure coming at you all the time. And I do think you have to make quick decisions. And I think the skill set of pocket presence is really important. And I’d much rather have a leader that has pocket presence than executive presence.

AG: Me too. I think the concept of pocket presence is so powerful. How do you think about building that?

BB: Well, what’s interesting is that takes years to build in a quarterback. So if we want to go to the original source of the metaphor, it takes years to build that. That internal clock, the footwork, the being able to read a field without being able to see it. You know, they said, I don’t know how you feel about Tom Brady. I was not a Patriots fan. But you can’t, if you watch American football, you can’t discount how good Tom Brady, what a good quarterback he was, right? They said that he was able, without seeing the offensive lineman protecting him, he knew where they were and how much time he had by the vibrations through his feet on the ground.

AG: Talk about strong ground.

BB: Talk about strong ground. I mean, yeah. And so I think it takes years to develop this. I think it does take a lot of metacognition, meaning your ability to think about your thinking, self-awareness, the ability to build trust. And then you have to hone situational awareness and anticipatory awareness skills. I think that takes time.

AG: Brené, how did you build your pocket presence?

BB: I feel really lucky. I think I have pretty decent pocket presence.

AG: Pretty decent.

BB: I do. I think it’s one of my strengths.

AG: Understatement of the century.

BB: Well, I attribute mine to social work because, you know, that’s my education, bachelor’s, master’s, and my PhD all in social work. And the foundation of social work is actually systems theory, weirdly enough. So I’ve studied a lot of systems theory. And so I think built into understanding how systems work is anticipatory and situational awareness. I think you understand if you move A, you’re going to have repercussions in B, C, and D. And understanding the timing of those things is critical. So I think it’s the way I think. And social work is also about contextualized practice. So I think when we teach it in organizations, you know, because I’m using this metaphor of strengths building in the book, I say that there are some kettlebell exercises that we talk about. So one exercise that hits 10 muscle groups, you know, as a kettlebell, a good kettlebell exercise would do. I think there are some exercises that we teach that really hit everything from situational awareness, temporal awareness, systems theory, critical thinking. And one of those is the five C’s. So we teach people how to talk about the five C’s of delegation, strategy, operations, which are help me understand context, connective tissue, color, context and consequence.

AG: Say them again.

BB: Yeah, so the five C’s are give me context, connective tissue, color, talk to me about the consequences involving this decision, and the costs. And it’s so ingrained in our culture now that if a brand, you know, we hired someone about a year ago, right out of college, and we were in a meeting and all I said to her was, can you pull some data for me? And she looked at me and she goes, can you give me the five C’s? And I was kind of pissed off, to be honest with you. I was looking for more of a yes chef response in that moment. And I said, I’m sorry?

BB: And she said, it would be helpful if I had the five C’s. And I was like, oh my God, you know, be a good leader. So I said, here’s the context. I’m going into a meeting at three o’clock. I need to be able to present this data. I’m trying to persuade the people of this. This is what I think we need to do next. Here’s some more color on how this is playing out across our organization. Here’s the cost of getting it wrong. Here’s the cost of getting it right in terms of potential revenue. And here are the consequences. And then she says straight out of our playbook in our training, can I play back what I think you’re saying? I was like, oh my God, yes, please. So she plays back everything. She said, you want me to pull this data for you because you’ve got a meeting at three o’clock with this group of people. You want to help them understand this because you’re trying to persuade them to make this decision. Here’s what this decision would mean for our organization. And here’s what this decision, if it doesn’t go in our favor, would mean. And I said, that’s correct. And she looked at me and she goes, you’re asking for the wrong data.

AG: Wow.

BB: I said, what? And she said, you’re asking for the wrong data. If that’s what you want to do, the data you’re asking for are not going to give you that. I would pull these data, and I would slice and dice them this way. She was right. But that process, 20 times in a six-month period, you’re developing pocket presence.

AG: I mean, talk about pocket presence. Here you are coming at her with a very specific and urgent request.

BB: I am the 1,200 pounds of defensive linemen.

AG: And she has the wherewithal to stand there and ground herself and help you realize, in fact, you don’t want what you’re asking for.

BB: I mean, that’s—yeah, and we’ll end on this note. One of the things we talk about when we do Dare to Leadtransformations is you’ve got to build systems that are braver than people because it’s human nature to tap out of hard things sometimes. We just, we’re weary. I’m weary. Everybody gets weary. But when she was onboarded into our organization, she was taught that if you’re not given those, you must always ask for the five Cs. She was taught if someone says something to you that’s complex, you have to ask for a playback. You have to say, can I play back what I think I’m hearing? So we’re going straight into James Clear. We don’t rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. So to me, the kettlebell exercises that were in play there, that really saved my ass—and by the way, that meeting went exactly how I wanted it to go and exactly how it would not have gone had I had my way. But the kettlebell exercises there are two. One, the five Cs. Number two, the playback. Can I play back what I think you’re saying?

AG: Well, Brené, this is my big aha from this conversation, is I came into it thinking about pocket presence as an individual skill. But what you just spelled out is that it’s actually a collective capability. It’s enhanced by the systems that you build into your team and the norms that then a group of people follow together that allows each individual to have that presence.

BB: Oh my god, you just put icing, sprinkles, and an edible flower on my cupcake of pocket presence, and I actually understand it different right now. Will you say it again?

AG: Well, let me say it differently, which is if we go back to your Tom Brady example, which of course I have to love as a Michigan Wolverine, pre-Patriots, the description that you gave was not just of Tom Brady being cool under pressure. It was about his relationships with his offensive line and knowing that they had his back and knowing what they would do if a blitz came in or if there was a bad snap. And that was a system, right? He had faith in that system, and that allowed him to be present. And so I really think that part of what differentiates pocket presence from executive presence is not just substance versus style. It’s also individual versus collective. Pocket presence is embedded in a system, not just in a person.

BB: If you’re buying a copy of Strong Ground, please write this paragraph in on page 218 because I meant to say this. It just slipped my mind. This was so good, Adam. This was so good.

AG: That was such a fun realization that crystallized.

BB: Yes, because pocket presence is a collective effort made by a team that trains on these things together.

AG: And it might manifest in an individual or it might look like an individual decision or set of behaviors, but it’s actually, yeah, it’s a collective capability.

BB: It’s a collective capability. And you know I’m going to be saying that shit from the stage wherever I go talk about this book. I will attribute and send you a quarter every time I do it. But oh my God, this is so helpful. I have in here, you’ve got to trust your team and trust what you’ve built. But it’s bigger than that. It’s a collective capability and executive presence is party of one. We are thumbs down. Adam Grant, Brené Brown, thumbs down on executive presence.

AG: I’ll just say one other thing just quickly here. We can edit this out or not. But this is part of why we need book clubs, not just individual reading. Is like you sat down and wrote the book. I sat down and read the book. And we just had a eureka moment talking about it that neither of us had independently.

BB: Because I will go on the record here by saying I do believe that skills building happens in relationship. Yeah, I don’t think you move from knowing something to integrating it and becoming it without relationship. I’m really grateful for this conversation.

AG: Oh, so fun.

BB: All right, next time. We’ve got three more episodes left. I can’t wait.

AG: Looking forward to it.

BB: Grateful for you. Thank you.

AG: Right back at you.

BB: Dare to Lead is produced by Brené Brown Education Research Group. Music is by The Suffers. Get new episodes as soon as they’re published by following Dare to Lead on your favorite podcast app. We are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

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