Brené Brown, Vulnerability, and the 5 Critics

While working on some tedious elements of a prototype this week, I listened to a few hours of videos by author and motivational speaker Brené Brown. She shares some incredible insights about vulnerability, empathy, blame, and criticism, and I’ll share some highlights and thoughts in today’s post.

Vulnerability

Brown talks about how there is no courage or creativity without vulnerability. I can absolutely relate to that with my games and the other content I create–I never know what people are going to ask me on my weekly Facebook live chat, for example!

I also like that Brown talks about the importance of boundaries as part of effective vulnerability. She shares the example of a CEO who heard one of her talks and said that he planned to open up to his employees about how the company was failing on every level. Brown encouraged him to add some boundaries to his doomsday proclamation in order to balance his position as a leader with his newfound desire for transparency.

Empathy

Brown shares a lot about the value of empathy in the short video linked above. One key takeaway for me (particularly as someone who highly values empathy but struggles with knowing the right thing to say to someone who is struggling) is to avoid the phrase “At least”.

For example, if you came to me and said, “Jamey, my crowdfunding campaign is failing, and I feel terrible,” I shouldn’t reply with, “At least you can try again in the future” or “At least you can learn from the experience.” While those things might be true, in the moment I’m not getting in the mud with you by saying those things.

Blame

In the other short video linked above, Brown talks about how blame is simply the “discharge of discomfort and pain; it has an inverse relationship with accountability.” I think the modern culture is full of blame–think of how many times you’ve seen a person on the internet call out someone else (directly or passively) for doing/saying or not doing/saying something? It’s so much easier to point the finger instead of actually taking on the accountability to move the needle or progress the cause yourself.

My current journey with blame is about how I respond when I’m blamed for something, as I think that’s an opportunity for me to listen, learn, and act instead of defending my position. The recent public process of people finding mistakes in the Expeditions rulebook (while there was still time to fix them, fortunately) was humbling for me–I learned that the more I responded receptively to revisions, the better the suggestions became.

Critics

I loved Brown’s talk on critics. She talks about how it’s always a huge red flag for her when someone says that they don’t care about their critics. She says, “When we stop caring what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. When we become defined by what people think, we lose our capacity to be vulnerable.”

So how do we walk that line? Brown advises that instead ignoring the critics, we can simply know who the critics are and reserve seats for them. Invite them into our arena and say, “I see you, I hear you, but I’m going to do this anyway.”

Brown specifically mentions these 5 critics: shame, scarcity, comparison, ourselves, and a wild card (for the specific person in each of our lives who has become a voice inside our heads).

I can relate the most to the critic of comparison, even having been aware for years of how dangerous it is. I look at the amazing games from other designers and publishers and wonder if I belong here at all (i.e., imposter syndrome). But the way I deal with comparison is that I try to invite those games into my life–I buy them, I play them, I share my favorite mechanisms on YouTube, I spread the word about them on Instagram. Instead of worrying about those games, I learn from them.

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Huge thanks to Brené Brown for sharing her insights with the world. This is just the tip of the iceberg, so if there’s something you’ve learned from her that has stuck with you (or a thought about the key takeaways I shared in this article), please share it in the comments below.

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