PDF Summary:Strong Ground, by Brené Brown

Too many people in positions of power mistake arrogance for confidence and cruelty for strength. In Strong Ground, Brené Brown pushes back by advocating a kinder, healthier, and more effective style of leadership. This book, part of the Dare to Lead series, asserts that true leadership means finding and developing your own potential first, then learning to bring out the full potential in others.

We’ll start this guide by reviewing some foundational skills that support self-awareness, self-control, and focus. Next, we’ll explore how paradoxical thinking—comfortably holding conflicting ideas in your mind—leads to greater understanding and better decisions. Finally, we’ll discuss some key practices of strong and effective leadership.

Additionally, we’ll compare Brown’s ideas with those in other influential self-help and leadership books such as Awaken the Giant Within and Radical Candor. We’ll also provide background information to deepen your understanding of Brown’s suggestions and why they’re effective. Finally, we’ll provide tips for applying these principles to your own life and work.

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Hone Your Focus

Finally, Brown says that having a strong stance requires you to develop two practical skills: the ability to focus intensely on challenging work, and the ability to shift your focus between different areas of your life. These two complementary skills will allow you to quickly bring your full attention to whatever task is at hand.

Skill #1: Directing Your Focus

Many people think focus is simply a matter of discipline or mental fortitude. However, Brown argues that’s only one of many methods to control your attention.

Method 1: Build mental fortitude. Mental fortitude is your ability to manage stress and pressure. The term encompasses your control over your emotions, your commitment to goals, your ability to find the opportunities in adversity, and your level of confidence in your abilities. Mental fortitude allows you to force yourself to concentrate, which is the most reliable way to focus on something. However, focusing through sheer willpower is tiring, and you won’t be able to keep it up indefinitely no matter how much mental fortitude you have.

(Shortform note: Brown says that mental fortitude, or willpower, is a reliable (if limited) way to maintain your concentration. However, not everyone agrees with this approach. In Willpower Doesn’t Work, psychologist Benjamin Hardy says the best way to improve your performance at work is to change your working environment in ways that force you to focus, negating the need to rely on willpower at all. For example, you can leave your phone in your car so it can’t distract you, or invest some of your own resources into a major project so that you’ll personally suffer a loss if it fails.)

Method 2: Intentionally trigger flow. Flow is a deeply absorbing state where you become fully immersed in an activity. The key to triggering flow is to take on a task that’s challenging, but possible to accomplish with your current skills. When you’re in a flow state, concentration is so effortless and complete that you lose track of time, you’re unaware of what’s happening around you, and you may even be unaware of your own body (for instance, you might come out of a flow state and suddenly realize that you’re extremely thirsty).

(Shortform note: In Atomic Habits, James Clear says the ideal level of challenge—and therefore the level most likely to bring you into a flow state—is one where you succeed about half of the time. If the task is much easier than that you’ll get bored, and if it’s much harder you’ll get frustrated. Both boredom and frustration are incompatible with flow.)

Method 3: Engage in deep focus. This means managing your attention as a singular, limited resource directed toward only one thing at a time. This is the opposite of “multitasking” (more accurately described as task-switching), which is a wasteful and ineffective use of your mental resources. It takes time and effort to fully focus on a new activity, and you can’t do your best work during that transition period. Therefore, when you repeatedly switch between two or more tasks, you quickly drain your mental reserves and hinder your performance.

(Shortform note: In The One Thing, Gary Keller explains that task-switching can become addictive because you get a little jolt of dopamine—a feel-good brain chemical—each time you shift your attention toward a new task. Keller also notes that task-switching has negative effects in many areas of your life, not just at work. For example, multitasking in social situations can erode your personal relationships, and multitasking while driving can be dangerous.)

Skill #2: Shifting Your Focus

Although task-switching is tiring and ineffective, there are times when it’s necessary. Brown says you need transition time between work and home, between different projects, or between different emotional states. This is a deliberate form of task-switching wherein you allow yourself time to shift from one activity or mindset to another. If you try to force these transitions to happen too quickly, you’ll just end up exhausted and distracted, as we discussed before.

(Shortform note: Brown notes that it takes time to switch from one activity to another, but exactly how much time do you need for this transition? Brian Tracy (Eat That Frog!) says that each time you switch your attention, it takes 17 minutes to totally focus on your new activity. Other sources say the average person needs over 23 minutes to regain their full focus after an interruption or task switch, and some research suggests it takes as much as 25 minutes to fully transition to a different activity.)

Brown adds that it’s helpful to have specific practices or rituals that signal you to shift your focus. For example, the commute between work and home is a ritual that many people have built into their schedule, and it’s a valuable opportunity to switch mindsets.

Everyone needs different transition practices, so find what works best for you. For instance, some people take a walk or do some stretches, while others sit quietly and read or let their thoughts settle.

(Shortform note: The Covid-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity to study the effects of losing a key transition period—namely, many people stopped commuting as lockdowns required them to work from home. Multiple journalists reported that workers actually missed their commutes, even though many people view commuting as an inconvenience and a waste of time. Researchers concluded that these workers were experiencing role blurring: They had trouble separating their role as an employee from their role as an individual or as a member of a family. The inability to transition out of a work mindset led to stress, exhaustion, and burnout.)

Find Your Balance: Think in Paradoxes

Brown says one of the key benefits of a strong, stable foundation is the ability to become comfortable with paradoxes. That is, to hold contradictory ideas in your mind without choosing one over the other, or seeking some nonexistent compromise between them. Eventually, a new and greater truth can emerge from the tension between those ideas.

For instance, an effective company needs clear processes that ensure operational excellence, yet it also needs space for creativity and innovation. The temptation is to choose one—either imposing rigid systems or allowing complete flexibility—but Brown argues that great leadership requires you to hold both simultaneously. The best leaders build reliable systems to deliver consistent results, but they also give people a sense of purpose and the autonomy to achieve that purpose in the best way they can.

In this section we’ll explore two paradoxes that Brown particularly values. First, we’ll discuss the apparent contradiction that you can only be courageous by making yourself feel vulnerable. We’ll then explain how organizational change requires you to paradoxically build stability by dismantling major parts of a company.

(Shortform note: While Brown mainly explores specific paradoxes that she finds valuable, Creating Great Choices by Jennifer Riel and Roger Martin dives deeply into the process of paradoxical thinking, which they call integrative thinking. The goal of integrative thinking is to take two conflicting options and integrate them into a third possibility that encompasses their strongest points while avoiding their weaknesses. Riel and Martin add that integrative thinking requires creativity, courage, and patience: You have to give yourself permission to explore courses of action that seem impractical or impossible, look for ways to make them happen, and accept that many of your ideas will fail before you find one that works.)

Vulnerability and Courage

One key paradox Brown discusses is the relationship between vulnerability and courage. On the surface, these appear to be opposites: Vulnerability is a state of uncertainty and fear that comes from putting yourself at risk, whereas courage is the absence of uncertainty and fear. However, Brown argues that you can only build courage if you’re willing to make yourself vulnerable—to put yourself in situations where you might fail, look foolish, or get hurt. After all, any meaningful accomplishment (whether personal or professional) is likely to come with some level of risk.

(Shortform note: Brown says you sometimes have to make yourself vulnerable in order to achieve your goals and that you build courage by doing so. Risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb goes a step further: He argues that vulnerability is more than a necessity; it’s something you should actively embrace as a businessperson and a leader. In Skin in the Game, Taleb explains that taking on personal risk—putting your own resources or reputation on the line—ensures that you’ll act carefully, thoughtfully, and ethically. So, not only will you build courage in the long run, you’ll also make better decisions here and now.)

Brown adds that courage is a skillset you can develop through practice, rather than an inherent trait you either have or lack. To build courage, she says you must consistently work on four skills:

1. Character: Identify your core values and make sure your actions align with what matters most to you.
2. Daring: Recognize and welcome situations where you will be vulnerable, rather than avoiding them.
3. Trust: You must be trustworthy and able to assess others’ trustworthiness. Brown says this skill relies on specific, observable behaviors; a vague sense that someone “seems like a good person” isn’t enough to merit trust.
4. Resilience: Learn to recover from setbacks and disappointments. You have to be able to learn from your failures and try again, rather than getting stuck in shame or despair.

(Shortform note: Brown discusses courage as a set of specific, trainable skills that help you take risks when needed, but not everyone shares this view. In Learned Optimism, psychologist Martin Seligman says your willingness to take risks (what Brown would call your courage) is ultimately rooted in your mindset. Seligman argues that optimists are much more willing to take chances because they assume their efforts will pay off or, if not, that they’ll be able to recover from the failure. Conversely, pessimists aren’t willing to take risks because they assume things will go badly for them. To a pessimist, important goals seem unreachable no matter what they do, and vulnerability just creates more chances for them to get hurt.)

Vulnerable and Courageous Leadership

Brown also says the fear of vulnerability—which is to say, a lack of courage—is consistently one of the greatest barriers to effective leadership. Her research found that certain behaviors from leaders always hinder productivity and growth: avoiding difficult conversations, pretending nothing is wrong rather than directly addressing concerns (their own concerns or their employees’), and preventing team members from taking necessary risks.

The tactics people use to hide their vulnerabilities prevent them from authentically connecting with their workers, and these defensive strategies stop them from bringing their full capacity to workplace challenges. Some common examples include perfectionism, toxic cynicism, micromanagement, and numbing themselves with overwork or substance abuse. Fearful leaders believe they need tactics like these to maintain control and achieve the company’s goals, but such methods only hurt people’s morale and performance.

(Shortform note: Brown urges you to show courage and vulnerability in the workplace, but offers few specifics about how to do so. In Radical Candor, Kim Scott argues that one of the most important things you can do to build connection and trust with your workers is to regularly ask them for honest feedback about your performance. You can then show you value their opinions by adjusting your leadership methods accordingly, or by explaining why such adjustments aren’t feasible. Your workers will appreciate feeling heard and respected, which boosts workplace morale and employee engagement.)

Stability and Change

Brown argues that organizational change is an especially difficult leadership challenge because it comes with the paradoxical need for both stability and transformation. To effect major changes, you must dismantle systems that no longer serve the company, yet protect the core elements that define its mission and identity.

Brown emphasizes that any major transformation should begin with a rigorous assessment of the organization’s current operations. The assessment process must be brutally honest about what assumptions underlie the company’s practices, and whether those assumptions still hold true. In particular, Brown urges you to examine whether people feel safe to share their authentic ideas, feelings, and struggles, or if the company punishes vulnerability. You should also determine which specific systems enforce that state of affairs.

Once your assessment is complete, Brown says the next step is to dismantle those systems that no longer serve the organization’s needs and goals. This is likely to create a great deal of uncertainty, as some of those processes might be well established, so people will be afraid to lose them. However, just because something has been a certain way for a long time doesn’t mean it should be that way—this is a key part of the paradox of transformation.

Even as you tear down large parts of your company, you must protect the people who will do the transformational work. This requires consistent, truthful communication about what’s changing and why, as well as what’s still uncertain. Brown urges you to place someone in charge of communications who understands that trust is built through transparency, and people prefer difficult truths to uncertainty.

Finally, once you’ve dismantled the outdated and dysfunctional systems weakening your company, you’ll be left with a strong foundation on which to build new and better practices.

Six Steps to Organizational Change

Brown’s primary focus here is the balance between maintaining stability and effecting change. As such, she gives general guidelines about how to navigate these conflicting needs. But what does this look like in practice? In the business fable Our Iceberg Is Melting, John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber go into more detail about the practicalities of organizational change, which they break into six steps:

1. Raise the alarm. The first step toward making any major change is recognizing that there’s a problem and alerting the people who have the authority or ability to do something about it.

2. Make a team. The authors stress that groups can accomplish things that one person never could. You must carefully select the best team for the job and consider who would excel in each role that you need filled—even if your “organization” is a fixed group, such as your family.

3. Develop a vision. Create a clear and specific goal for your team to work toward—it’s not enough to simply push for “change.”

4. Spread the word. Once you have a team and a vision, spread the word to everyone it concerns. In a company, that means your employees; in a family, that might mean extended family and friends.

5. Empower others. The more people who are able and allowed to contribute to your mission, the more successful it will be. Letting people contribute in their own ways will also keep them enthusiastic about the mission.

6. Don’t get complacent. Even when you’ve accomplished your goal (assuming it has a fixed endpoint), don’t assume your work is done. Keep looking for ways to improve your organization, and look for new goals to pursue.

Find Your Power: Be an Effective Leader

Now that you have a stable foundation of self-understanding and self-control, and the balance to hold conflicting ideas comfortably in your mind, you’re ready to be a strong, effective leader.

In this final section we’ll discuss three important aspects of leadership:

1. The skill to clearly and honestly communicate with people in your organization
2. The ability to balance demanding expectations and accountability with support and compassion
3. The strength and commitment to be a leader no matter what your current role is

Lead With Clarity

Brown asserts that one key element of effective leadership is clarity. Everyone you’re responsible for should be able to articulate the organization’s ultimate purpose, why it matters, and how their work serves that mission.

When people truly understand what they’re doing and why, they can reach a level of performance that they could never achieve by rigidly following procedures. They’re able to take advantage of unexpected opportunities, as well as solve problems before they become crises, and do so in ways that support the company’s broader operations. Furthermore, because they understand why the company’s ultimate goal is important, they’ll have a sense of purpose that motivates them to do their best work.

(Shortform note: In Drive, Daniel Pink writes that the strongest form of motivation comes from having autonomy, mastery, and purpose—autonomy is our desire to direct our own lives; mastery is the urge to get better at something that matters; and purpose is the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. According to Brown, clarity supports all three of these needs, so when you empower your workers with the understanding they need to choose and carry out their own courses of action, you greatly boost their motivation and job performance.)

Conversely, if people don’t clearly understand what they’re doing or how their role fits into the organization, they become disengaged and inefficient. Brown says workers in this situation can only follow the instructions they’ve been given, and therefore can’t quickly adjust when faced with sudden opportunities or problems—or, if they do act on their own initiative, they’re likely to accidentally interfere with another part of the company’s operations. Lastly, since they don’t have a good sense of why the organization’s work is important, they lack the passion and sense of purpose to reach their full potential.

(Shortform note: These principles closely resemble the human-centric business values that Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini discuss in Humanocracy. The authors say a culture built around connection, empowerment, and accountability enables every team member to nurture their unique gifts and ideas—and that nurturing, in turn, lets each person do better work for the organization. In contrast, many organizations function as bureaucracies that rely on rules and micromanagement to control their workers. While the bureaucratic approach is supposed to ensure compliance and quality, Hamel and Zanini argue that it leaves employees bored, frustrated, and disengaged, and they become less effective workers as a result.)

Lead With Balance

According to Brown, the most effective leaders are simultaneously demanding and nurturing. Therefore, she urges you to set high expectations, but also ensure your workers have the training and support they need to meet those expectations.

Brown adds that leaders who can’t balance these conflicting ideas (being demanding and being supportive) tend to create toxic workplaces in one of two ways. Those who demand too much and don’t offer the necessary support will set impossible standards. Those standards, in turn, lead to cultures of overwork and cutthroat competition. Conversely, some leaders offer too much support and don’t hold people accountable for their own work, which forces more responsible employees to pick up the slack.

(Shortform note: Another way to approach this balancing act is to reframe your leadership role as a coaching role. In Empowered, Marty Cagan and Chris Jones write that the most effective leaders are those who inspire and guide their team members, as opposed to those who simply assign tasks and deadlines. In fact, the authors say your primary job as a leader is to develop your team. As such, they urge you to create individualized improvement plans for each team member that focus on strengthening their three weakest areas, and to measure your success as a leader by your team’s growth rather than just its productivity.)

There will inevitably be times when people fail to meet your expectations, and these situations also call for you to find the right balance between strictness and compassion. It’s important to first consider why the person fell short—for instance, perhaps what you asked of them was more difficult than you realized, or maybe outside circumstances interfered with their work. You’ll then have to decide what’s best for both the organization and the person, which could range from extending a deadline, to additional coaching, to termination.

(Shortform note: To make use of Brown’s advice, let’s consider the various reasons why employees don’t succeed. In Right Kind of Wrong, organizational learning expert Amy Edmondson describes three types of failure. An intelligent failure is one where the lessons learned from a mistake are valuable enough to outweigh the costs. These failures generally deserve praise rather than blame. Simple failures occur due to a single issue, which is usually that someone made an error. As such, this is the only kind of failure that generally requires correction. Finally, complex failures happen when many factors interact in unforeseeable ways, and therefore shouldn’t be blamed on any individual or team.)

Lead From Wherever You Are

Much of what we’ve discussed so far assumes that you are in a leadership position, but Brown says you can—and should—practice leadership no matter what your current role is. According to Brown, leadership really means looking for and bringing out the potential in people and ideas. By this definition, leadership happens at every level of an organization, as well as in families, communities, and anywhere else people come together.

(Shortform note: Netflix has a company culture where everyone practices leadership as Brown describes it here. In No Rules Rules, Netflix cofounder and CEO Reed Hastings explains that he achieved this by making sure every employee is always open to both giving and receiving constructive feedback—anywhere, at any time, and from any source. For instance, if someone working their first day wanted to give Hastings himself some feedback, the new hire would be encouraged to do so.)

Finally, Brown asserts that if you’re only willing to lead when you’re in certain roles, you’re not really a leader. True leadership involves bringing your full energy and support to those around you, even if you’re not going to get any recognition or rewards for doing so. An effective leader’s first commitment is to their team, not to themselves. So, just like a benched athlete can still cheer for their teammates, you can inspire and support people even when you find yourself stuck on the sidelines.

(Shortform note: Though Brown doesn’t use this term, putting your team’s success ahead of your own self-interest is the basis of servant leadership, a philosophy developed by leadership consultant Robert K. Greenleaf in the 1970s. In his book of the same name, Greenleaf describes the three aspects of servant leadership: an overarching goal that serves the common good, the ability to inspire people to work toward your vision, and such a strong desire to help people that you prioritize what others need over what you want. Like Brown, Greenleaf emphasizes that you don’t need to be in a formal leadership role to embody those three tenets—anybody in any position can practice servant leadership.)