Brene Brown

I frequently show Brene Brown’s short cartoon video on empathy. My students like it. It’s clever and relatable. I finally broke down and bought one of her books: Daring Leadership. It’s a more recent one so I guess I skipped several earlier ones.

The book fascinates and frustrates me. Her connectedness, honesty, and transparency—I guess what she would call vulnerability—comes through in the books. There is a lot of wisdom there about relationships and authenticity and other topics. It has challenged me to deal with fears and “armors.” I want to keep reading, but in short bites. I’m not sure what would happen to my brain if I tried to read a few chapters at once.

On the other hand,  I have questions. 

She keeps talking about her research. Is this published anywhere? What is the methodology? What does she actually research (I think it’s organizational leadership, which is what my Ed.D. is in) but it seems more like humanistic psychology. And she owns a company, called ? She holds a university position, but does she actually teach? Is it a figurehead kind of thing, so the university can get the publicity, and they pay her to do research (or is it funded by an outside agency and the university allowed them to use it? When does she find all the time to do this?

She does say that she is a queen of boundaries, and that is really the only way one can produce—to have very definite and protected boundaries on one’s time. I’ve watched the MasterClass on fiction writing by Joyce Carol Oates and that is one of her main pieces of advice—the enemy of writing is distractions, not having boundaries, and not protecting the ones you have. 

There’s also a lot of pop psychology in the books, and for someone like me who desires a theological basis for living, that’s not there at all. She speaks of being grateful. I realize that in psychological literature, of which I’ve read plenty, gratitude does not have to be directed at anyone to have mental health benefits, but seriously, how can one have gratitude without a recipient of the gratitude? Then it’s just an optimistic attitude.

Anyway, I’m not an acolyte, but I’m definitely a little hooked on Brene Brown in a “what’s going on with her and what is she saying?” kind of way, not a “wow, she’s great, I swallow it all whole” kind of way. There are benefits and disadvantages to having a doctorate.