Dare to Lead
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"Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind."
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"Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings, or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behavior."
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"Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; it's choosing what's right over what's fun, fast, or easy; and it's practicing your values, not just professing them."
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"Daring leaders who live into their values are never silent about hard things."
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"Empathy is connecting to the emotions that underpin an experience."
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"Self-awareness and self-love matter. Who we are is how we lead."
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"You can't get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability. Embrace the suck."
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"We are born makers. We move what we're learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands."
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"Courage is contagious."
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"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."
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Introduction
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Dare to Lead is a 2018 leadership book by Brené Brown, published by Random House.[1] Grounded in a seven-year study, it presents four teachable skill sets—rumbling with vulnerability, living into our values, BRAVING trust, and learning to rise.[2] It defines leadership beyond titles as the work of recognizing and developing potential, and organizes its chapters around those four skill sets.[1][2] Brown writes in a research-driven, story-rich register that pairs qualitative grounded-theory findings with practical tools such as the BRAVING Inventory.[3][4] Commercially, Random House lists it as a #1 New York Times bestseller; in the week of 22 October 2018 it ranked first overall in U.S. BookScan with 63,823 units; and Bloomberg included it among the Best Books of 2018.[1][5][6]
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Part I – Rumbling with Vulnerability
Chapter 1 – The Moment and the Myths
🎭 Defines vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure that shows up in high-stakes conversations, feedback, and decision-making. Dismantles six myths—“vulnerability is weakness,” “I don’t do vulnerability,” “I can go it alone,” “you can engineer the uncertainty and discomfort out of vulnerability,” “trust comes before vulnerability,” and “vulnerability is disclosure”—to show why courage and connection require exposure to risk. The Square Squad exercise narrows focus to the few people whose opinions truly matter, reducing approval-seeking and defensiveness. We need to trust to be vulnerable, and we need to be vulnerable in order to build trust.
Chapter 2 – The Call to Courage
🦁 Fear triggers a predictable pattern of “armoring up”—starting with “I’m not enough,” moving to secrecy and blame, and ending in superiority—so leaders must replace armor with grounded presence. A practical call to action follows: name “the cave you fear to enter,” choose one arena to be braver this week, and balance gritty faith with gritty facts so hope and reality can coexist. Care and connection become non-negotiable leadership work by naming emotions and using clear, kind language that enables real accountability. Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings, or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behavior.
Chapter 3 – The Armory
🛡️ Self-protective “armory” blocks vulnerability—perfectionism, cynicism, numbing, hustling for worth, weaponizing fear and uncertainty, being a knower, and using power over—and these patterns corrode trust and stall learning. Daring alternatives include healthy striving, gratitude and celebration, clarity-kindness-hope, power with/to/within, and practices that reward rest, play, recovery, belonging, and shared purpose, inviting teams to assess themselves across a sixteen-element spectrum. To scale daring leadership and build courage in teams and organizations, we have to cultivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations, and whole hearts are the expectation, and armor is not necessary or rewarded.
Chapter 4 – Shame and Empathy
💞 Distinguishes shame (“I am bad”) from guilt (“I did something bad”), shows how secrecy, silence, and judgment intensify disconnection at work, and names telltales like perfectionism, favoritism, back-channeling, and public shaming. Shame resilience grows through emotional literacy, speaking about difficult feelings, practicing real empathy (and avoiding misses like Sympathy vs. Empathy, the Gasp and Awe, the Mighty Fall, the Block and Tackle, the Boots and Shovel, and “If You Think That’s Bad…”), and identifying the “shame shields” of moving away, toward, or against. Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.
Chapter 5 – Curiosity and Grounded Confidence
🔍 Curiosity powers effective rumbles, using language such as “The story I make up…,” “I’m curious about…,” and “Help me understand…” to slow down, surface assumptions, and name horizon conflict across roles before leaping to solutions. Confidence is treated as a trainable outcome of deliberate practice—like repeating flip turns or a consistent pool stroke—so leaders stay with problem identification, listen longer than is comfortable, and keep asking better questions. grounded confidence is the messy process of learning and unlearning, practicing and failing, and surviving a few misses.
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Part II – Living into Our Values
Chapter 6 – Living into Our Values
🧭 Identify two core values and define the specific behaviors that reflect them when stakes are high, turning values from slogans into lived standards. Put those behaviors to work—use values to set boundaries, choose courage over comfort, and keep decisions consistent across work and home. Team tools like the List of Values and the Living Into Our Values exercise make commitments teachable, observable, and measurable. We can’t live into values we can’t name.
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Part III – Braving Trust
Chapter 7 – Braving Trust
🤝 Trust is broken into seven observable behaviors captured by BRAVING: Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Nonjudgment, and Generosity. Build and repair trust in small, consistent moments—set and respect limits, do what you say you’ll do, own mistakes and make amends, keep confidences, practice your values, ask for and offer help without judgment, and extend generous interpretations. Leaders use the BRAVING Inventory to turn vague tensions into clear agreements and next steps. Integrity is choosing courage over comfort; it’s choosing what’s right over what’s fun, fast, or easy; and it’s practicing your values, not just professing them.
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Part IV – Learning to Rise
Chapter 8 – Learning to Rise
🌅 Adapts the Rising Strong process for teams: the Reckoning (notice emotion and get curious), the Rumble (write the SFD, reality-check the story with “the story I’m telling myself…,” and name what’s true), and the Revolution (turn the learning into new practices and agreements). By normalizing falls, naming triggers, and building language for hard landings, groups create cultures that invite calculated risk and faster recovery. The tools emphasize preparation—naming emotions, drafting the first story, and agreeing on rumble commitments and circle-backs—so people can reenter tough conversations with clarity and self-respect. We have to teach people how to land before they jump.
—Note: The above summary follows the Random House hardcover edition (9 October 2018, ISBN 978-0-399-59252-2, 298 pp.).[1][7]
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Background & reception
🖋️ Author & writing. Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston (Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair) and a Professor of Practice in Management at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business, with two decades of work on courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy.[8][9] She builds the book on grounded-theory methods and qualitative data, shaping a four-part, skills-based playbook.[10][2] In The Washington Post, Mary Beth Albright calls it a “practical playbook” informed by research with 150 global C-suite executives.[11] Time likewise describes it as a leadership manual that systematizes courage into four skills.[3] Across the text and companion resources, Brown operationalizes trust via the BRAVING checklist and other downloadable tools for teams.[4][12]
📈 Commercial reception. Publishers Weekly reported that for the week of 22 October 2018, *Dare to Lead* was the No. 1 book in the United States, with 63,823 BookScan units.[5] Random House lists the title as a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, and the Wall Street Journal included it among “Five Books Executives Should Read to Prepare for 2019.”[1][13] Bloomberg also named it one of its Best Books of 2018.[6]
👍 Praise. The Washington Post praised it as “an absorbingly actionable handbook on creating a space for better work and more fulfilled people.”[11] Library Journal called it “an intriguing new approach to leadership development that combines courage, connection, and meaning,” recommending it to readers of servant-leadership classics.[14] Time highlighted Brown’s blend of grounded-theory rigor and warmth, noting that she “moves people rather than merely training them.”[3]
👎 Criticism. Commentary has cautioned that the book steps into the airport-lounge style of business management and adopts pithy guru-style phrasing.[3] Earlier profile coverage in The Guardian reflected a strand of skepticism toward Brown’s popular reach, dubbing her a “celebrity self-help queen,” a label she rejects.[15] A Kirkus Reviews assessment of a follow-on leadership volume argued that the franchise risked reading like a sales pitch and rehash of earlier books, notably *Dare to Lead*.[16]
🌍 Impact & adoption. The University of Texas at Austin announced on 4 February 2020 that it would implement institution-wide courage-building training based on *Dare to Lead*, becoming the first university to adopt the program.[17] In the public sector, the U.S. Air Force documented *Dare to Lead* training with the 19th Airlift Wing at Little Rock Air Force Base on 13 December 2021.[18] The brand extended into media and enterprise platforms: in 2024 the Dare to Lead podcast returned under Vox Media’s network,[19] and BetterUp launched the Center for Daring Leadership with Brown as Executive Chair to scale the curriculum across organizations.[20]
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See also
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References
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