Empathy, courage and the power of vulnerability are the source code we need for the changing future of work.
With more than 23 million views of her 2010 “Power of Vulnerability” TED Talk, six number-one New York Times bestselling books, two award-winning podcasts (Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead) and documentaries on Netflix and HBO Max, Dr. Brené Brown is a big deal.
But at SAS Innovate 2025 – we’re talking about a tech audience – people who are largely more comfortable with 0s and 1s than discussions about courage, empathy and pixie dust. Would she be a good fit for thousands of technologists in person and watching online?
It turns out she absolutely was, and offered the mind reset and heart respite we didn’t know we needed.
Managing the maelstrom
In an on-stage chat with Chief Marketing Officer Jenn Chase, Brown said she decided to accept the SAS speaking engagement because she is obsessed with data, something she knew everyone in the room could relate to.
“Y’all are like the O.G. data people,” she said. “I think your work is interesting and you got here before everyone else. I think you have an incredible handle on this maelstrom that’s happening right now.”
Brown would know. She’s a data researcher by profession (among a lot of other hats she wears these days) and she thinks of data as her happy place. “Next to being with my family…I’m really the happiest when I’m alone coding data,” Brown said. “I think there’s poetry in it. There’s beauty. At its best, it’s elegant.”
But Chase knew Brown was also aware of the more chaotic, technology super-cycle we’re experiencing in the world now and asked what she had learned about this in some of her recent work.
Brown said she sees more opportunities for the biggest shame trigger at work: irrelevance. When people feel irrelevant, it’s easy to fall into a predictable and dangerous pattern she described as looking something like this:
- My job is changing.
- What I have to know and understand is changing.
- I feel threatened.
- I’m going to cross my arms and get territorial.
- I’m going to say things like ‘that’s not how we’ve done it before.’
“Then, all of a sudden, my armor ensures my irrelevance,” she said.
It’s a paradox, something she claims continues to emerge right now. “We have to be daring, but we have to be incredibly grounded. We have to be very creative and super disciplined. We have to love our technology and make sure there are humans in the loop,” Brown said. “Holding a paradox, two things that are true but seem like they should be opposite, freaks us out.”
Failure to empathize
Chase cited a recent Harvard Business Review study that indicated 55% of CEOs think they show empathy, yet only 28% of employees think they do. She wondered what Brown made of the finding.
Brown said the power differential must be considered. “The only leaders I work with who do not want to have honest conversations about power are those who are committed to misusing it or don’t want to know too much in case they might need to misuse it,” she said.
But empathy is tough. As a leader of her own team, she knows this firsthand. “If you had a dollar for every time I had to circle back because I had an empathetic failure, you would have a lot of dollars,” she said.
“I study empathy for a living, but I’m also a human being, so I go below the line, I get fearful … and I fail. The good news is, I have the skills to say: Do you have a second? I don’t like the way I showed up in that meeting. I owe you an apology. I want to know if you’d like to sit down with me. I’d like to hear from you in a new way.”
Chase called that kind of language powerful and something we can put into practice.
“That’s a skillset that we teach,” Brown said. “People are not good at it because it’s uncomfortable, and we’re not hard-wired for discomfort.”
Showing up sans armor
Part of understanding vulnerability is unpacking it. Everyone from the boardroom to the sports field to the military arena wants to be brave and courageous, but no one wants to be vulnerable. “I’ll ask people to prove to me that vulnerability is not a necessary source code for courage and bravery.” They can’t.
“It’s not fear that is our greatest barrier to courage. It’s armor. It’s how we self-protect when we’re in fear,” she said. That shows up as micromanagement, over-protection, extreme certainty or a lack of curiosity. “Courageous leadership is about self-awareness, knowing I’m engaging in behaviors that are self-protective right now. It’s moving me away from being a good leader/person/partner/parent, and I’m armored up.”
Chase shared her feelings of vulnerability following a recent eye surgery, which left her feeling weak and dependent on others at work and home. Brown applauded her willingness to share the story of that raw emotion with the audience.
“That’s the story!” Brown said, applauding.
She noted that there were many middle-aged people in the audience, a fact she validated with audience response. “Hard shit’s happening, right? With your parents, the kids, the country.” She reminded participants that when we feel weak and exposed, we’re going to choose behaviors that are going to be tough for the people around us. “And if I’m in a position of power, and you’re around me and I’m choosing those behaviors, it’s going to be a very bad delta between my perception of empathy and yours.”
“We’re in a very serious time where we have to make choices every day about how we’re going to show up for ourselves and each other,” she added.
When asked to share her best leadership advice, Brown recited a quote: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space, and in that space is the power of choice. In our choice is our liberation and our freedom.” She believes a leader’s job is to create space where it doesn’t exist, to help people avoid the stimulus-to-immediate-response behavior. “Slow things down. Don’t be reactive. Pay attention.”
