This post was originally published on Audible.com.

Rachael Xerri: Hello, listeners. I'm Audible Editor Rachael Xerri and joining me today is researcher and author of six number-one New York Times bestselling books, the one and only Brené Brown. We're here to talk about her latest listen, Strong Ground. Brené, welcome back. How are you?

Brené Brown: I'm doing great. How are you?

RX: Doing well, thank you. I'm so excited to chat about your book. I could not put it down.

BB: Thank you.

RX: I was so immediately drawn in as soon as you started narrating the book. You hit the nail on the head when you said, "We're at a time when many feel like we're losing authentic and vulnerable leadership." With that in mind, what do you hope listeners will take away from Strong Ground?

BB: I just have to start by saying that listening is such an intimate experience, but also recording it is such an intimate experience. The producer was laughing. She's like, "You have to stop saying, ‘Hey, this is just between me and y'all. This is not in the book, but what I wanted to tell you here…’ She's like, "A lot of people are listening to the audiobook, so I don't know about the secret sharing on the Audible version." I was like, “I don't care, because it's just different when you're in someone's ear.”

RX: I love the secret sharing. Thank you for sharing the secrets with us. I thought your narration really added to the overall title. It definitely led me from one chapter to the next. No notes from me.

BB: Because I'm always thinking, “Hey, I'm riding shotgun with you on the way to work, or we're on the train together, or we're folding laundry, let's chat.” I just really appreciate what you do, as both someone who reads the book—which I will say, it's hard—but also as a big Audible listener. I think in a world where, my assessment, people are dysregulated, distrustful, and disconnected, it's an intimate medium that I really appreciate. So, we'll start there. Strong Ground, I think maybe the takeaway is deep breath. Settle yourself, settle the ball, plant your feet firmly into the ground for both deep tethering and a platform for big action if you need to move. But deep breath to settle ourselves.

RX: Love that. So, you just alluded to this, but we cannot talk about Strong Ground without talking about your healing journey from your pickleball injury. First of all, are you feeling okay? How are you feeling now?

BB: Oh, I'm back on and just causing a ruckus.

RX: Well, I'll say. We cannot talk about this book without talking about how this moment that you had with your trainer, when he said to you, "You need to strengthen your core." Really, this is the impetus for the entire book. Can you explain how this experience led you to develop “strong ground” as a metaphor?

"Remember, deep breath, settle yourself, settle the ball. Nothing good comes from moving too quick."

BB: Yeah, I didn't even think about it in the very beginning as a metaphor because I was in such a crisis. So, I was on the pickleball court. I played tennis for 30 years. I just completely pooh-pooh dismissed pickleball. I was like, “I don't do that. I'm a tennis player.” For two years, I wouldn't try it. And then the first two hours I played, I have not played a game of tennis since. I play six days a week now. I'm obsessed. I love it. For those of us who kind of grew up as athletes and an athletic identity is really important, it was a way to be competitive again and have fun. And it's a team sport. I was a singles tennis player, so it was really interesting to become a doubles pickleball player. But a month in, I was playing way beyond what I should be doing, and I got really hurt.

Once I could go to a trainer that everyone recommended, the first day he said, "We're going to take a test and see how you're doing." I took the test and it was movements and doing all kinds of stuff. It took about 30 minutes. And he said, "You scored a 10." I said, "Yeah, of course I did. Let's go, let's move some heavy shit." And he said, "Out of 22. Your physical age is like 78 and you have no core."

I was so devastated. And then he said something that obviously I've never forgotten because I've used it as a metaphor for a book. But he said, "You have a compensatory injury. You are using inefficient muscles to do the work of big muscles that are no longer in shape and doing what they need to be doing. You have no core, no lats, no glutes, no stomach, so you're using arms and legs and shoulders and all these things that are getting hurt."

He also said something interesting. I was like, "Well, can we just start moving heavy stuff? I don't like to do all this, like, little baby, on one foot, bend down three inches." He said, "No, we're not going to do that because we're not going to build on dysfunction." So, maybe a month or two ended working out with him, which was infuriating and of course worked. I started thinking about the similarities of compensatory injury, not a strong core, and not building on dysfunction. It took me right into my work, which is I spend 95 percent of my time working with either C-suite leaders or the level of folks who report up to the C-suite.

With AI, we're definitely building on dysfunction. We're trying to layer on a technology that's not a bolt-on but a deep integration in the change of the way we work. We're not investing in the humans who are going to be using it. We're not aligning business strategy with technology disruption. We're moving out of scarcity. So we're building on dysfunction and we have no core. We have none of the deeply human skills that make uncertainty, complexity, and disruption manageable. So, I thought, "Well, Tony [my trainer] and I are going to take this on."

RX: And take it on, you did. I'm so glad to hear you're feeling better. So, there are so many threads throughout this book that we could honestly sit and have a full conversation about each one. One topic that really stood out to me was, and you were quoting Adam Grant here, but I know you agree, and I agree as well: “Executive presence is code for discrimination against women and introverts.” This resonated so deeply as someone who has had to sit through so many talks about executive presence. I remember one leader saying that I should wear a red lipstick in order to be taken more seriously, and this was drawn from a study that she had quoted. I could not find the study when I tried to look this up. First of all, for anyone who hasn't listened yet, what is executive presence? Feel free to use your own definition. And what should women in leadership positions be focusing on instead?

BB: I think probably the most cited research definition of executive presence comes from Dagley and Gaskin. A person with executive presence, it's how they're perceived by people around them at any given point that they exert influence beyond their actual authority level. That's, I think, how they define it. So, what happened was, I've never been a fan of it. I didn't get the red lipstick lecture. I'm grateful for that. But I did get the lecture, as in the last year of my PhD program where I got pregnant, and excitedly so; we wanted to have a baby. I was told by the head of the doctoral program at the time that I could have been someone. I could have had a great career. I commanded a lot of authority, and that changes when you become a mother or, God forbid, are pregnant.

I remember thinking, “I don't know what this bullshit is, but I'm not having it.” So, when I texted Adam, I said, "Man, this is a weird story. I was on DKR Field…”—the football field at the University of Texas at Austin. Hook'em horns. I was standing next to Emmanuel Acho, who played for the Longhorns and played in the NFL. I looked at him and I said, “What do you think pocket presence means?" And he said, "Wow, that's a wild question." Pocket presence is kind of a metric where you gauge a quarterback's ability to think very quickly, move the ball down the field during the two or three seconds where he's protected by a little pocket of offensive linemen. And he said, "I think it's the ability to read the entire field without seeing it, and to trust your training and your teammates to do what you've trained to do."

In that split second, I said, "Jesus, we need pocket presence. I don't give a shit about executive presence and red lipstick or whatever it is.” Being a mom has made me so much better at what I do. So, when I texted Adam and said, "I'm taking on executive presence in Strong Ground," I was worried. He came back and he said, "Great. Total smackdown. It's cover for discriminating against women and introverts.” And I would add all marginalized people that are not, like, white, male, 50, in a navy suit with a red tie.

Then he texted two seconds later and said, "While you're at it, could you take down charisma?" Which I thought was so good because I think executive presence is about perception-based influence, and how you're perceived is less interesting to me than your mindset, your skill set, and your ability to gather a group of people and move them toward a mission and impact. To me, that's what's impressive. And if you really want to break it down further, if you look at some of the skills that quarterbacks have, that's what leaders need today. Anticipatory awareness, situational awareness, temporal awareness, systems thinking, trust in teams. That's the stuff we need right now.

Neither one of us are wearing red lipstick, by the way, if you're listening. It's a secret that I'll share with you just because I'm in your ear right now. We're not wearing red lipstick, and you have on a really fun—I love that blouse.

RX: Thank you.

BB: And I'm wearing a sweatshirt, and I'm fairly sure the tag is still in it.

RX: Thanks, Brené. I think everything you just said is so spot-on. Another point you really hammered home is the importance of preparedness as well. I love that. I think it is so important to come prepared to situations, especially when you're a leader. When people are looking up to you, I feel like it's almost the least you can do.

BB: Oh, my god, so wait, we should tell that story really quick, as two women in our careers doing our thing. So, I was in a meeting, there's three women and maybe eight guys. During one of the breaks, a young woman came up to me, she’s probably in her late twenties, and said, "Wow, you have so much executive presence. How do you get that?" I was so confused, but I was curious, and I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "People are listening to you, they're deferring to you. You're pausing us when we're in agreement, and you're like, ‘Hey, have we thought about this?’" I asked her how long she had prepared for the meeting, and she was a junior person, and she said maybe 20 or 30 minutes. I said, "I prepared for four hours. I watched investor calls, I read articles, I had to Google shit that I didn't understand. Never confuse preparedness with presence.” You're the first person in all this book tour that has asked me about that. But I'm like you, because what I hear you saying is it's a fundamental act of self-respect and respect for others, preparedness.

RX: Yeah, and I couldn't help but tie it to the section in your book where you talk about the pursuit of mastery and the importance of mastery. I had this young woman from your story in mind, and you made an observation that Gen Z and younger generations perhaps are not as interested in this pursuit of mastery. I think we could tie that back to the smackdown of charisma—

BB: Yes.

RX: —and executive presence. Obviously, influencers are very popular. Younger people want to be influencers. They're seeing those qualities echoed back at them. And that's just my take on it. But why do you think younger generations aren't as interested in this pursuit of mastery? And what can leaders do to get more junior employees back on track?

BB: Well, first of all, I'm a huge fan of Gen Z, and I've taken some hits lately defending them. I'm a mom of a 20-year-old and a 26-year-old. What I appreciate about younger folks is I appreciate their pushback on the “I told you so,” because “I told you so” reasoning, I think that's how I was raised, but it's not helpful. They want to know the why. They're deeply interested in context and connective tissue. They want to understand the cost and consequence of things. So, I appreciate their curiosity and their insistence on tying what they're doing to something larger, which requires context.

It's interesting because I maybe would rewrite how I phrase that. What I might say is that Gen Z shows— and we see this in some of the research studies and certainly anecdotally in the classroom for me and at work I can see it—shows less interest in the pursuit of mastery. But here's what I would say: There is an overall decline across generations in interest in the pursuit of mastery. But we come from a period of time where it was still heralded and still really taught and expected. So, I think the overall decline that's across generations has just hit the younger generations differently. I think part of it, to be honest with you, interestingly, is scarcity of time.

The whole influencer thing is so interesting to me because I'll ask my kids, "So, what does he do exactly? Or what is he really good at?" And they're like, "Hmm, not really anything, but he's got a million followers." I think the pursuit of mastery is the long game. It's saying, "I want to be a student of this game. No matter what I'm doing, I want to understand how it works. I find joy in solving the puzzle and looking. And when I solve it, I'm going to move the goalpost 10 more feet and I'm going to keep going." I think it was probably a poorly written piece, because I'm seeing the loss of mastery across all generations, but it’s especially hitting Gen Z hard.

RX: Thanks for sharing that. I think this all ties back to the central metaphor of Strong Ground.

BB: Yes.

RX: If the company culture, or our overall culture, our society, isn't valuing mastery, how can we expect younger generations to value it? And so we may have grown up in it, but—

BB: Yes. Wait a minute. Whenever I do a podcast, I call it a pause-cast, because I actually want to listen to you with all my listening, so I can't think while you're talking because you're saying really interesting things. I think that's true. I don't think the culture values it as much right now. And the paradox, which is a big part of this book, as you know, is it's never been more important. So, outwardly, we don't value the slow, steady student of the game getting better and better and developing deep expertise and understanding. But at the same time, every employer I know is desperate to find those people. Isn't that weird?

"We're not neurobiologically hardwired for this level of uncertainty, change, and we're not skilled enough yet for the level of complexity."

RX: I keep thinking of the really old aphorism that all that's old is new again. Although you just said that we grew up valuing authentic leadership, I think for many folks, especially younger folks, this is a new idea. So, I'm really thinking about Strong Ground as a guidebook for the future.

BB: Yeah. It's interesting. That big honking chapter on grounded confidence: If we're going to be brave, we can't be armored. We replace our armor with grounded confidence. What are the skill sets and mindsets that make that up? It's a big chapter. It's like 80 pages, because I list them, but then I tell stories about them and explain them. But I do think when I finished that chapter, it's the hardest chapter I've ever written in any book I've ever written. I didn't think about the leaders I worked with. I immediately thought about my kids. I thought about my 26-year-old daughter, my 20-year-old son. I was like, “I want them to have these skills because this is about thriving in the future. I don't care whether you're leading or not leading. This is about cognitive sovereignty, making choices with your own attention and your own focus, about who gets it and who doesn't and why."

RX: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. And speaking of the future, as if contending with all the human challenges of being leaders wasn't enough, with the emergence of Gen AI, there's a significant amount of disruption, both emotionally and also to our workflows, that's happening in the workplace. How would you say strongly grounded leaders can really help employees navigate this integration, both emotionally as well as strategically?

BB: Yeah, I think right off the bat about Linda Hill's research from Harvard, who writes that the most difficult challenge of digital transformation is never the technology, it's always the people. What I would say is if you want to look at that MIT study that just came out that showed 90 percent of early investments in AI across industries, 90 percent of them yielded no ROI whatsoever. Basically, I think it would be okay to say failures. Settle the ball. Take a breath. Think about your business, think about your business strategy. Center your people who are going to be using the technology. Show me what you want to do. Show me how it's deeply aligned with business strategy. Show me how the budget line for training and bringing along people is as big as the technology budget. Show me a deep integration, not a bolt-on, and I'll be interested and probably think you could succeed here. Anything short of that, anything that's like, “Holy shit, I need an AI strategy right now.” “Okay, great. What do you want it to do?” “I don't care. Just get me one.”

We're just seeing that that doesn't work. I think in all fairness to leaders making those types of decisions right now, we're not neurobiologically hardwired for this level of uncertainty, change, and we're not skilled enough yet for the level of complexity. We have abandoned systems thinking, which is the only way to think about the world right now. So, it's hard on us from top to toe.

RX: Can you explain, just for our listeners, what you mean when you say systems thinking?

BB: Well, just kind of old-school systems theory, that we are all parts of systems that are connected to each other, that when there's a movement in system A, system B has a response to it. That if we want to build healthy, thriving systems, whether you're talking about a forest or a cell or a leadership team, those systems have to have permeable boundaries where feedback can flow in and out of the system to keep it healthy and growing.

What's happening right now is, because of the fear and scarcity, because of the level of uncertainty and complexity, we are walling up the systems in which we work and live. And what happens to a system that has impermeable boundaries is atrophy. But before it atrophies—and this is happening politically right now—that system becomes self-referencing. Instead of real feedback flowing in and out to foster growth, the feedback just hits the wall of the cell, of the system, because it's impermeable, and bounces back in. Then we become a self-referencing system. “Are we right? Let's see. Oh, yep, we're right. Do we hate them? Yep, we hate them. Are they wrong? Yeah.”

So, systems thinking, a deep appreciation for systems theory, and if you want to just jump into it and do a great team read, pick up anything by Donella Meadows. She died maybe 15 or 20 years ago, but I've read her work my whole career because, weirdly, when you study social work—and I have a bachelor's, master's, and PhD in social work—it's a deep dive into systems theory. Because what we're taught is if you're working with a mom who's really struggling and she's a single mom with two kids and she works three jobs, but it's not enough, we think about people in their environments. So, is that depression or is that poverty? Or is it depression because it's poverty? And then what systems is she pushing up against and moving through that are creating huge demoralizing obstacles in her life? And we think about family systems. There's a change in the family system and it reverberates through 20 different systems that are connected to it. I think if you're not talking and thinking about work in terms of systems thinking, you're not going to succeed.

RX: This is a perfect segue into my next question. Speaking of systems, you don't just focus on the workplace in this book. I thought your insights on life outside of the office were really impactful. I literally went straight home and talked to my fiancé about lock-through and asked for a 20-minute break at the end of the day. It's really changed my life for the better.

BB: Oh, my God, I love this.

RX: I really hope everyone listening to this interview goes out, downloads this book, listens. Feel free to go ahead, skip to that chapter and then go back to the beginning of the book.

BB: [Laughs].

RX: I really loved your lock metaphor. It's truly one of my favorites. Do you want to talk about it a bit more? I would love to hear it again.

BB: Sure. And I have to say that this is a direct Audible connection, because I became obsessed with the Rivers of London on Audible, the book. I literally choose books by narrators. I could tell you all the narrators that I follow on Audible. So, I was listening to this, and I will say, and I think Steve would say the same thing—we've been together 37 years, 38 years; married 31. If we look back at the most difficult moments of our marriage, included in the top three would be transitions home, when we both get home from work. He's a pediatrician. Things can go really great or really tragic. I have a big career. We have two kids. So, one of the things I was really interested in studying, who's doing those transitions well and who's not doing it well.

I kept thinking about a lock and about how a vessel, a ship or a boat, is at one level with one flow and has to change levels, either has to come up or come down, and spends time in this lock where they go into a chamber. The chambers close, it fills up with water. As soon as the water level matches exactly the water level of where they're transitioning to, gravity pulls open the gates and the boat goes on. I was like, “We spend all day locked in.” I probably say “lock in” 20 times a day, especially if it's a pickleball day, because I'll just look at my partner and be like, "Hey, dude, we need to lock in here." We spend all this time locked in and we get home, the only place we want to be all day long, but we don't go in. We sit in the garage and scroll through TikTok because we're just dreading going inside our own home.

I think part of it is because it's such a cognitive shift, on top of a domain shift. So, if my brain bank account's $100 and I'm working on something and you come up to me and say, "Hey, Brené, did you get that email yesterday?" I have to pull $25 out of my brain bank account because now I'm in a cognitive shift. “I'm sorry. Yeah. What were we talking about?” "Did you look at that email?" We have a conversation; that cost me $25. When we go from work to home, we're not just shifting thinking, we're shifting domains. And that's like a $50 or $60 tax. It's tough.

And so I love this metaphor of a lock. In my Rivers of London books that I listened to on Audible—and I also read them because the clues were tricky—I was introduced to the Teddington Lock, which is where the River Thames in London changes from tidal to non-tidal. In the book, it has this really important significance because there's gods of the river and this is where their territory changes. So, I went to Teddington and met the lock keeper, and she taught me how locks worked. I remember looking at her and saying, "This is taking too long. We're letting a narrow boat through this lock and it's taking 20 minutes. Can't we make it go faster?" And she said, "If you rush the lock-through process, you're going to see a capsize."

And that was my entire married life for many, many years, that I would come home, no acknowledgement of the domain or cognitive shift, someone would innocently say, "Where's my shin guard? Have you seen my goggles? What's for dinner?" And I would just start crying. Now I know, for me, Steve and I now both have our lock-through requests. I need 20 minutes alone time because I've been on all day and I'm an introvert. I think in a world where we're locked in all day, I find very little value in your locking-in ability if you don't have a lock-through ability, because it just leads to diminished thinking, empty brain bank accounts, and burnout.

"Normally what I'll do is, I'll listen first and if I really love it, I'll read it, because then I get to take the narrator with me in my head. But I always listen first."

RX: It's so true. Speaking of locks, I hear you're a really big fan of detective stories.

BB: Oh, my God.

RX: You already talked about one. Are you listening to one right now? And if so, what are you listening to? Who's narrating? What do you love about it?

BB: This is so funny, I'm in the second book of The Thursday Murder Club, and I only have an hour and 25 minutes left. I'm apoplectic because I understand we get a new narrator in book 3.

RX: Yes. That's Richard Osman, right?

BB: Yeah. The narration in 1 and 2 is so beautiful. I did this when I was reading Louise Penny. Louise Penny had the same narrator for 10 books. I read all 18 during the pandemic and I listened to them. Normally what I'll do is, I'll listen first and if I really love it, I'll read it, because then I get to take the narrator with me in my head. But I always listen first. I think, unfortunately, the narrator for Louise Penny's books after the 10th book got sick and they changed narrators. And on book 11 in the comments, you're like, “This is not going to work.” And then by book 12, everyone's like, "He's the best thing that ever happened." So, I think it speaks to the intimacy of your relationship with a narrator.

RX: Yeah, definitely. Now, I wish we had way more time to chat because I could talk to you all day, but with the little time we do have left, is there anything else you would like to share about Strong Ground or any other topic we didn't get to today?

BB: I would just say, I think the thing that surprised me the most about the book was that in that big honking chapter of the skill sets and mindsets that I think we need to navigate the future, I was both shocked and not surprised, the paradox can hold that the number-one skill is really self-awareness. We have to know who we are. We have to know when we're being our best selves and when we're being our worst selves. That's especially important when we have formal authority or power over people, because we're leading them, because then that gets really scary really quick. I think the other thing is just to remember, deep breath, settle yourself, settle the ball. Nothing good comes from moving too quick.

RX: Lovely. Thank you so much for your time today, Brené. For anyone listening, you can find Strong Ground and Brené Brown's other books on Audible.

BB: And all the secrets that I tell the reader [laughs].

RX: And all the secrets.

Note: Text has been lightly edited for clarity and may not match audio exactly.