The Truth About Vulnerability and Leadership from Brené Brown

Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel

Careers, Business

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Brené Brown has spent more than two decades studying courage, vulnerability, and leadership. Her work has changed how we talk about shame and belonging—and helped millions of people lead with more humanity. In her new book, Strong Ground, Brené introduces the idea of “grounded confidence”: a practice of leading with consistency, clarity, and courage instead of bravado. She argues that the strongest leaders aren’t the loudest or the most certain. They’re the ones willing to hold paradoxes, set boundaries, and strip away the armor that keeps us stuck. In this episode of Hello Monday, Jessi Hempel sits down with Brené to talk about what it really takes to lead today, and why developing human skills, like courage and empathy, matters more than ever. Jessi and Brené discuss: Why we’ve been “building on dysfunction” at work—and how to stop How to embrace paradox instead of rushing toward certainty Why grounded confidence is a stronger foundation than bravado What leaders get wrong about vulnerability How values clarify choices and protect against resentment Practical ways to set boundaries and build trust Why human skills are the real core muscles of work today Continue the conversation with us at Hello Monday Office Hours! Join us Wednesday at 3 PM ET on the LinkedIn News page. 🎥 Want more? LinkedIn Premium members can watch an extended version of this interview.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We have been told for the last 20, 30 years, everything that makes you human at work is a liability around performance.
0:08.7	And now the world is being filled with platitudes that what makes you human will ensure your relevance in the age of AI.
0:17.7	The problem is that's been drilled out of us.
0:22.9	From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jesse Hempel and this is Hello Monday. And folks,
0:28.3	today in the studio, we have Bray Brown. Now, I'm going to bet that for most of you,
0:34.6	Bray needs no introduction, but I can remember exactly
0:38.0	when I learned about her work. It was in 2010 the year that her TED talk, the power of
0:43.9	vulnerability, went viral. Ted is, of course, an idea launcher, and this was one of the biggest
0:50.5	ideas that Ted has ever launched. The reason Brne's work matters is because she asks us to go deep on the things that we
0:58.0	mostly don't like to talk about, about being human, right?
1:01.1	Like empathy and shame and vulnerability.
1:06.3	I mean, her thesis is that if we really understand these conditions in ourselves and in others,
1:13.4	we will be free to be our best leaders, right? Now, Brne has a new book out. It is called
1:19.4	Strong Ground and it really is the book for our time. She is concerned with how we all figure out
1:25.7	how to lead through the kind of instability and uncertainty that we are experiencing.
1:30.3	We're all being asked to do more with less across every domain of our lives.
1:35.3	Bernay believes that if we really confront the emotional reality of that condition,
1:40.3	if we do so from a place of grounded confidence, that's a term we'll get into.
1:46.0	Well, we'll all be a lot better off.
1:48.0	Our conversation was recorded live just a couple of weeks ago right here at LinkedIn.
1:53.0	The original conversation was nearly twice as long, so if you love this episode, well, you should treat yourself to the full conversation. You can find a link
2:02.0	in the show notes, and if you're a LinkedIn premium member, it is free and available to you.
	...

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