If you were to make a short list of some of the most important traits for school leaders, what would you include? You might start with confidence. Confidence affords leaders the ability to stay calm under pressure and remain focused on a course of action when the going gets tough. Or perhaps humility comes to mind. The quality of humility enables a leader to see beyond her own well-being in order to seek the well-being of others. Along with confidence or humility, you might think of perseverance. Perseverance is that invaluable leadership trait that propels a leader to never give up, no matter the setback.
When I think of leadership, my mind goes directly to Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quote:
“It is not the critic who counts…The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly … who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizen in a Republic,” 1910
However leadership is to be understood in terms of traits, it is manifested in Roosevelt’s image of “daring greatly.” Leadership is bold. It is messy. Leadership takes calculated risks, which leads to both glowing victories and temporary setbacks. In a phrase, leadership requires courage. And yet, paradoxically, despite what has just been said, courage entails vulnerability.
Like all organizations, schools are made up of leaders. Teachers are the leaders of their classrooms. Administrators are leaders of their divisions. And board members are the overseeing leaders of the school. These various examples of school leaders prompt a thoughtful and prudent understanding of educational leadership, which I hope to persuade readers should include courage and curiosity.
The Curious Leader
Over the past few years, Dr. Brené Brown has led the way in emphasizing courage as the paramount trait of leadership. Brown, a social work research professor at the University of Houston, defines a leader as “anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential” (Dare to Lead, 4). She goes on to explain that, according to her research, the courage she speaks of is not a static trait. Instead, it is a collection of skills that can be taught, observed, and measured. These skills include embracing vulnerability, living out values, risking trust, and overcoming failure.
Brown is right to point out that leadership is fundamentally about people and processes. As leadership expert John Maxwell quipped, “He who thinks he leads, but has no followers, is only taking a walk.” But what I appreciate most about Brown’s definition is that she emphasizes the reality that leadership requires “finding.” Finding what? The potential in people and processes. This emphasis on “finding” is striking. It reveals that leadership exists in an ongoing state of not knowing…of continuous searching in order to find. This searching process requires a key trait that all educators do value: curiosity.
Courage and Vulnerability
As a social work expert, Dr. Brown’s research is centered on human beings, and in particular, the way human beings interact with one another. She rose to prominence in 2011 when her TedTalk “The Power of Vulnerability” went viral on YouTube. It currently boasts nearly 13 million views and is one of the top five most watched TedTalks online.
According to Brown, vulnerability is the most accurate measuring tool of courage. It is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change. Before I explain why, let me acknowledge that the name Brené Brown and the topic of vulnerability both tend to have a polarizing effect on people. From what I’ve discovered, people either love what she has to say and find her insights into personal growth and leadership brilliant. For others, she is yet another proponent of a secular ideology, but with a social worker’s twist.
Let me suggest that Brown’s emphasis on vulnerability offers educational leaders, and Christian educational leaders in particular, some valuable insights into the human condition, even if these insights need to be shored up with biblical theology. (Note: for a thoughtful analysis of Brown’s work from a Christian perspective, I commend this article, which translates some of her secular terminology into more familiar Christian language.)
So what is vulnerability and why does Brown insist it is the key measuring tool for courage?
Vulnerability is “…the emotion we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure” (19). It is therefore present in nearly every worthwhile decision leaders make. Whenever a leader puts his neck out there and declares, “Let’s go that way!”, he places himself in a potentially vulnerable situation. There is credence to the pioneer adage “You can always tell a leader by the arrows in his back.” Courageous leaders step out into the unknown, take calculated risks, and force themselves to endure emotionally turbulent, pressure-filled circumstances.
The Courage to Rumble
In her book Dare to Lead, Brown disposes of a number of myths about vulnerability, the chief one being that vulnerability is tantamount to emotional weakness. According to her qualitative research, which in part consists of interviewing hundreds of senior leaders, no one has yet to give an example of courage without vulnerability. Circumstances that require courage are those in which a person is in some state of uncertainty, risk, or emotional exposure. In one memorable interview with a soldier, the young man acknowledged, “I can’t think of a single act of courage that doesn’t require managing massive vulnerability” (23).
So then, how does a courageous leader respond to vulnerability? Rather than flee or downplay feelings of uncertainty or emotional exposure, Brown advises leaders to rumble with it. Brown defines rumbling as follows:
“A rumble is a discussion, conversation, or meeting defined by a commitment to lean into vulnerability, to stay curious and generous, to stick with the messy middle of problem identification and solving, to take a break and circle back when necessary, to be fearless in owning our parts, and…to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard” (10).
This resolve to rumble, for Brown, is the key to becoming courageous. And I assure you, it occurs everyday in schools everywhere. Teachers rumble when they respond to student misbehavior with the desire to shepherd rather than merely punish. Parents rumble when they refuse to assume the worst about a teacher but instead seek first to understand. And administrators rumble when they debate challenging issues in which a clear path forward is not immediately evident.
Where is Courage to be Found?
Brown’s understanding of courage as a collection of skills employed in moments of vulnerability is framed in a quintessentially modern sort of way. It is explained in psychological and sociological terms with an emphasis on self-awareness and authenticity. As a result, you might be wondering how her understanding of courage squares with the way it was understood in the classical tradition. In antiquity, for example, courage is listed among the virtues as a moral attribute of excellence. It was demonstrated most notably in wartime when a soldier would fight the enemy, refusing to abandon his post. Courage, as a virtue, was reserved for moments when one may very well have to choose between life and death.
Or was it? Even in the Greco-Roman tradition, things are not always as simple as they may seem. In Plato’s Laches, for instance, Socrates directly contests the notion that courage is reserved for exclusively wartime scenarios. As he engages in conversation with Laches, an Athenian general, the question is raised whether courage necessitates its typical martial, glorious manifestations. After Laches suggests that courage is remaining at one’s post as the enemy approaches, Socrates disagrees. He responds that some situations actually call for courageous retreat (Laches, 191a). If Socrates is right, then sometimes true courage calls for standing down rather than up. This feels strangely Brené Brown-ish in some ways insofar as retreat requires some sense of feeling vulnerable yet responding to it with confident rumbling.
As the dialogue proceeds, Laches, not to be easily outdone (does he know who he’s up against?), offers a second definition of courage: the wise endurance of the soul. But again, Socrates provides an example to contradict this definition, demonstrating that sometimes courage can be the foolish endurance of the soul. At this point, Nicias, a fellow Athenian general, jumps in, suggesting that courage is the knowledge of the grounds of fear and hope (196d). And although this definition may be preferable to Laches’, it, too, is problematic. For it implies a myopic focus on the future, when courage itself is not quite so limiting. Courage, after all, takes into account not only what is to be feared or hoped for in some future state, but also what has happened in the past and what is happening in the present.
I will spare readers the remainder of the exchange, but suffice it to say, characteristic of a socratic dialogue, the group does not settle on a definition of courage. And yet, paradoxically, Laches and Nicias both seem to demonstrate the courage to admit they are wrong by the end of the dialogue.
For those who criticize Brown for her reconceptualization of courage in terms of modern sociology and emotional vocabulary, I respond that she may not actually be that far afield. True, it is not how the ancients spoke, but her analysis of vulnerability and the connections she makes to courage seem to be getting at something true about the human condition nonetheless. To act courageously, one must be experiencing some degree of uncertainty or fear; otherwise, why the need for courage? And although Brown’s writing may be geared toward “first-world problems” they are problems nonetheless.
Moreover, it is worth noting that courage, if it is anything, is complex. We should therefore expect modern research of the social sciences to glean new insights about it. Courage, however, we want to define it, comes in all shapes and sizes. It is not reserved for only wartime scenarios, as Socrates and his friends agreed, but instead can be found wherever humans can be found, schools included.
The Call for Curiosity
So what of curiosity? I have written at length about courage but where does curiosity come in? Remember, for Brown, rumbling with vulnerability is the fundamental skill of courage building and, overtime, leads to grounded confidence. Brown writes,
“In tough conversations, hard meetings, and emotionally charged decision-making, leaders need the grounded confidence to stay tethered to their values, respond rather than react emotionally, and operate from self-awareness, not self-protection” (168).
It is in moments like these that courage kicks in. But curiosity must as well. This is because rumbling with vulnerability is a skill that must be learned and practiced. And one only seeks to learn if they are curious. So Brown here isn’t thinking of curiosity in its typical intellectual sense. Instead, she has in mind the sort of curiosity that remains calm about present ignorance due to a hopeful resolve to experience a fresh encounter with knowledge. Curiosity is the feeling of deprivation we experience when we identify and focus on a gap in our understanding. The more we know, the more we want to know. In this way, curiosity propels leaders to move past fears of failure, judgment, or looking foolish, and, instead, lead their teams toward trust, openness, and collaboration.
Brown actually references the latest learning science as she thinks about curiosity and growing in the skill of rumbling with vulnerability. Like any skill, rumbling takes practice. It is not easy to learn but easy learning does not build strong skills. Referencing the NeuroLeadership Institute, she makes the point that effective learning needs to be effortful. The brain needs to feel some discomfort when it’s learning–this is the concept of desirable difficulty (170).
Therefore, each leader must develop, through practice, the ability to remain courageous in vulnerable moments. Brown writes, “Building the grounded confidence to rumble with vulnerability and discomfort rather than armoring up, running away, shutting down, or tapping out, completely prepares you for living into your values, building trust, and learning to rise” (166).
She goes on:
“We’re scared to have hard conversations because we can’t control the path or outcome, and we start coming out of our skin when we don’t get to resolution fast enough. It’s as if we’d rather have a bad solution that leads to action than stay in the uncertainty of problem identification” (171).
Remaining at peace in states of uncertainty is a core principle for Brown and a key reason why curiosity is both an act of vulnerability and courage. Curiosity is content without certainty and knowing all the answers. It is not concerned with saying the right thing or knowing ahead of time how people will react. Instead it remains focused on rumbling with vulnerability, embracing the unknown, and pursuing further knowledge in order to lead most effectively.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, school leaders need courage and curiosity in order to engage in the important work of finding the potential in the people they lead and the processes they oversee. It takes courage to develop this potential through mining for conflict and leaning into vulnerable situations. Likewise, it takes curiosity to embrace uncertainty along the road to knowledge and understanding. Schools thrive when its people thrive and people thrive when they feel a sense of belonging, connection, and shared values. May school leaders rise to Dr. Brown’s challenge to lead courageously and remain “in the area,” trusting in God as their rock and foundation at all times.