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Dare to Lead with Brené Brown

Brené and Adam Grant on Rewarding Effort With Time

35 min episode · 2 min read
·

Episode

35 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Productivity, Fundraising & VC, Leadership

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Rewarding Effort Framework: When employees show high effort but poor results, leaders should invest time in coaching conversations to diagnose why the ball isn't moving, rather than either ignoring the effort or falsely rewarding it with success metrics.
  • Bezos Prioritization Matrix: Evaluate decisions using two dimensions: how consequential and how reversible. Focus energy exclusively on highly consequential, irreversible decisions while delegating or acting quickly on everything else to avoid wasting organizational resources on low-stakes items.
  • Growth Mindset Misapplication: Praising effort alone without linking it to progress teaches people to keep using ineffective strategies. The correct approach rewards effort that demonstrably leads to forward movement, encouraging strategic adjustment rather than mere persistence.
  • Leader Signal Management: Emotional reactions from leaders get interpreted as signals about what's consequential, causing teams to misallocate effort. Disciplined above-the-line responses that focus on systems rather than people prevent teams from treating reversible issues as life-or-death priorities.

What It Covers

Brené Brown and Adam Grant explore how leaders should reward effort with time and coaching rather than grades or dismissal, discussing prioritization frameworks and the misapplication of growth mindset principles in organizations.

Key Questions Answered

  • Rewarding Effort Framework: When employees show high effort but poor results, leaders should invest time in coaching conversations to diagnose why the ball isn't moving, rather than either ignoring the effort or falsely rewarding it with success metrics.
  • Bezos Prioritization Matrix: Evaluate decisions using two dimensions: how consequential and how reversible. Focus energy exclusively on highly consequential, irreversible decisions while delegating or acting quickly on everything else to avoid wasting organizational resources on low-stakes items.
  • Growth Mindset Misapplication: Praising effort alone without linking it to progress teaches people to keep using ineffective strategies. The correct approach rewards effort that demonstrably leads to forward movement, encouraging strategic adjustment rather than mere persistence.
  • Leader Signal Management: Emotional reactions from leaders get interpreted as signals about what's consequential, causing teams to misallocate effort. Disciplined above-the-line responses that focus on systems rather than people prevent teams from treating reversible issues as life-or-death priorities.

Notable Moment

Brown realizes mid-conversation that her undisciplined emotional reactions to minor quality issues signal false urgency to her team, causing them to spend excessive time on inconsequential, reversible matters rather than focusing on truly important work.

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Episode Transcript

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e commerce and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com. Hi, everyone. I'm Brene Brown, and this is Dare to Lead, and I am back for episode six of this special series with my friend, Adam. Hi, Adam. Hey, Brene. How's it going? So far so good, but we'll see where this goes, won't we? Yeah. You know, you're one of the so there there are several there are teachers in the book, and the teachers in the book will include you, are folks who I thought their work was, their their impact on the book and my research and my thinking was so big. It was more than just kind of a paragraph. It was I want to share a lesson directly from you. So, Think Again is one of my all time favorite books. And so I share an excerpt from Think Again in the book. Were you surprised to see yourself come up in yet another chapter? I was. It's such an honor to be featured at all. And I, you know, I, of course, skipped through the part that I wrote, not wanting to reread my own writing. Oh, yeah. That's horrible. I don't do that either. The worst. I had so many edits when I got into the first paragraph alone. I was like, I can't do this. That's enough rethinking for now. And then and then I thought I was home free. And I'm just, you know, sailing along couple 100 pages, and all of a sudden, I came across my name. You're in yep. You're in the chapter called The Big Reward. And so I talk about your op ed. Let's get everyone caught up. So you wrote an op ed for the New York Times titled, no, you don't get an a for effort. Tell me about the origin of this op ed. Tell me the premise. Okay. This started when I was teaching a week long course for brand new MBA students. And at the end of the class, this is a …

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  • Bezos Prioritization Matrix: Evaluate decisions using two dimensions: how consequential and how reversible. Focus energy exclusively on highly consequential, irreversible decisions while delegating or acting quickly on everything else to avoid wasting organizational resources on low-stakes items.

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