30 pages • 1 hour read
Brené BrownDaring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapter 6-ConclusionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “Disruptive Engagement: Daring to Rehumanize Education Work”
To stimulate creativity, innovation, and learning, work and education have to be rehumanized. Scarcity interferes with our desire to rehumanize institutions. In her years of research, Brown has never seen a shame-free school or organization. Brown asks Kevin Surace, then the CEO of Serious Materials and an expert on disruptive innovation what the most significant barrier to creativity and innovation was. He responds the fear of being ridiculed, laughed at, or belittled. Learning and creativity are inherently vulnerable, unknown, and risky. Shame enters into many office and education cultures. Key signs are gossip, blaming, name-calling, harassment, and favoritism. In some contexts, shame is a management tool and people in leadership positions use rewards systems or punishment to belittle, shame and humiliate people. This results in “creativity scars” (174-5) where people become afraid to try again. Over half of students reported feeling scarred in creative exploration, while 54% of American workers reported being bullied at work. Brown documents several examples of people experiencing shame in the workplace and how that prevented wholeheartedness. Shaming people results in fear, anxiety, and lower productivity. It stops innovation.
When shame is the dominant culture, people begin to disengage to protect themselves. This results in cultures of blame and covering up mistakes. We need to build shame resistant workplaces. We can do this with honest, constructive, and engaged feedback. Feedback is necessary for transformative change that helps us close the gap. However, people are afraid of hard conversations, and we often don’t know how to provide constructive feedback. Vulnerability is at the root of an effective feedback practice. A common instinct before receiving or giving feedback is to armor up. This interferes in our ability to connect in a wholehearted way. Brown points to simple ways that people impose barriers, such as sitting behind a desk that applies physical distance between two people. When we are approaching a difficult feedback situation, the most effective strategy is to model the openness that you hope to get back. Giving and receiving feedback is about learning and growth. The goal shouldn’t be to get good feedback, rather, it is to take off our armor. It is only once we do this that we can truly embrace growth.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Wholehearted Parenting: Daring to Be the Adults We Want Our Children to Be”
Shame and judgment are common feelings in parenthood. Raising kids triggers anxiety and uncertainty, which often causes us to feel shame and to judge other people and ourselves. Brown identifies herself as an engaged, imperfect parent and describes parenting as her “boldest and most daring adventure” (200). Parenting is critical to understanding shame because our experiences of worthiness first occur in our families. How we were parented shape how we understand our own value. Effective parenting gives us courage, self-esteem, and resilience. If we do not receive effective parenting, we have to spend time reclaiming our self-worth.
How-to parenting guides are both seductive and dangerous. They make parenting prescriptive and establish a set of metrics that can be measured. If we put down the measuring stick and focus on being, we raise happier, more fulfilled children. Parents have to model worthiness for children. To raise brave, open-hearted children, parents have to embrace their own worthiness. Wholehearted parenting requires figuring it out together alongside your children. It works from the position that parents don’t have everything figured out and that children have a lot to teach parents as well. Parents have to be conscientious of what qualifiers they are placing on worthiness. In other words, how do your anxieties about your status and lovability impact how your kids view their own self-worth. Childhood experiences of shame impact us throughout our lives. Parents also have to stop shaming other parents. Shaming parents for behavior we don’t approve of creates a values gap.
Children need unconditional love and to know that they belong. Belonging must be unconditional. Engaged parenting requires sitting down with children and really listening to them. Allowing children to struggle and experience adversity is important to raising wholehearted children because “hope is a function of struggle” (222). For children to be hopeful, they have to struggle. Struggle teaches resilience, tenacity, and grit. It is not possible to protect your children from the world, but you can teach them the skills they need to thrive.
Conclusion Summary: “Final Thoughts”
The conclusion begins with a Theodore Roosevelt quote that Brown returned to frequently while writing her book. In it, Roosevelt celebrates the person who “dares greatly” (230) suggesting it is not success that matters, but courage. Brown returns to the quote when she gets negative reviews or meanspirited comments to remind herself that vulnerability is worth it. Daring greatly isn’t about the outcome, it lets go of winning or losing. Instead, the focus is on bravery. Showing up and being seen is terrifying. We may fail. But it is the only path to a meaningful life.
Chapter 6-Conclusion Analysis
In the final sections, Brown turns to specific areas of our lives: education, work, and family. In doing so, she shows how shame, judgement, and fear inhibit vulnerability, open-heartedness, and courage. She reveals how universal these experiences are. Brown draws parallels between distinct sites and personalities throughout the book. For example, in Chapter 6, she highlights the similarity in response from corporate CEOs and middle school children about what blocks creativity and innovation. She argues that schools and corporations are very similar. Likewise, she repeatedly shows the common patterns of shame, guilt, and fear that people from all walks of life report. Describing the necessity of constructive, clear feedback, Brown argues we must normalize discomfort. This is a theme that weaves throughout the book. Being vulnerable is uncomfortable. We avoid discomfort, which stands in the way of us achieving our goals. This can lead to self-righteousness, which tends to surface in parenting.
Throughout the book, Brown includes a number of personal anecdotes. However, her chapter on parenting is by far the most personal and details both her anxieties, failures, and successes as a parent. She uses her own experiences of shame and vulnerability as a parent to highlight how critical it is to embrace vulnerability in families:
Vulnerability lies at the center of the family story. It defines our moments of greatest joy, fear, sorrow, shame, disappointment, love, belonging, gratitude, creativity, and everyday wonder. Whether we’re holding our children or standing beside them or chasing them down or talking through their locked door, vulnerability is what shapes who we are and who our children are (201).
At the conclusion of the chapter, she includes a manifesto for wholehearted parenting. It opens with “Above all else, I want you to know that you are loved and lovable” (227), which in a sense, is the larger argument of Brown’s book. That everyone is worthy and loved. The manifesto concludes with the lines, “I will not teach or love or show you anything perfectly, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of seeing you. Truly, deeply, seeing you” (228). Wholehearted living, then, is being vulnerable enough to be present, to be engaged, and occasionally wrong.
It is never too late to teach or learn shame resilience. Once we own our stories, we can change the ending. Here, Brown clearly articulates a core argument in her book. Being able to name and identify our patterns, our limiting beliefs, and destructive behaviors is the necessary first step to moving past them. If we are defensive, deflect blame, or overcome with shame—if we refuse to face the gap between our ideals and where we are currently—we can’t grow. Being vulnerable thus is rooted in speaking our truth, especially when its uncomfortable. Normalizing discomfort is important because growth is uncomfortable. Discomfort is the path to growth, and open, honest reflection is the way forward. We will not be the parents and the leaders that we want to be if we can’t accept our own truth. This is daring greatly, which is the key to wholehearted living.
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