As a subscriber to The Next Big Idea Book Club, I was invited to attend an online conference by Brené Brown, bestselling author New York Timesa researcher and speaker I frequently read and listen to on her podcast Dare to lead (Dare to Lead) Brown has just published his latest book Strong land (Something like this Solid foundations), bringing together lessons learned from working with global leaders, exploring the paradoxes of leadership, and the skills and mindsets needed for complex environments.
What she imagined as a group Zoom, was an intimate session of a few people who, with the camera running, were able to chat with her. I’m interested in your approach to impaired driving and took the opportunity to ask you about this. Since that day, I can’t stop thinking about a concept that he shared with me by asking: Which side of the line are you on? Below or above?
The line he refers to is fear, because he emphasizes that there is no leadership without these omnipresent feelings. Above the line, we feel afraid, but we are in control. We understand that we are in it and how it can affect our behaviors. When we are below the line, we are driven by fear and we are not even co-pilots.
Fear changes the way we think and how we act. Brown drew two triangles in the air. The first, above the line, is where we can be creative, united or Trainers. Below the line, we fall into the position of hero, victim or villain. He gave a concrete example of what happened to him and his team. “Brené, we accidentally copied the wrong person in an email. There was confidential information about a book draft they entrusted to you, and we’re not sure how to handle it.” Her first reaction was below the line: “Oh my God, this isn’t the first time this has happened. No one understands how bad I look when they do this. People trust me to look at their business and make me look bad. You know what? From now on, I’m going to do it myself. And obviously no one understands how hard this is for me.” Language monitoring. “Hero”: I’ll do it myself. “Victim”: No one understands. “The Villain”: Who will take the blame?
The same scenario, where we put ourselves above the line of fear. “Oh no. You know what? This puts me under the line. I need a moment to compose myself and I’m going to try to drive. Let’s start by saying that these situations are rare and I know people are very careful. People trust me and I take it seriously and my team takes it seriously. Can we dive into how this happened and how we can put some sort of system in place to protect us from this happening again?” The Virtuous Desaviadora Triangle: How to Fix It? “Coach”: We have to look for patterns. “Creator”: We need to build systems that support people we trust who are doing good work.
We will not be able to avoid situations in which fear arises, but we can be prepared to jump over the line.