I read Dare to Lead by Brené Brown while thinking about how it would/might inform my own scholarship. As it turns out, it was a quite timely read. While reading, I spent a good deal of time anticipating what the counter arguments might be, but I won’t go into all of that here.

My only skepticism is not one of the book or the ideas, but that the author claims to be a 10 out of 10 introvert, and in reading the anecdotes throughout I just think there is no way! Not because of the speaking and busy life–no introverts can do all of that. It was because of moments in the book like when she seems to applaud a company’s move to replace walls with glass and keep doors open, and it is in the way she schedules herself with so much peopling. Even her time blindness is something I see mostly in my extrovert friends. In fact, she reminds me of a few extroverts I know. They like to unwind with a bath daily, and then they call themselves introverts for that quiet time, but in my opinion, they’re still a million miles away.

I’ll end by saying that this book reminds us of our humanity, especially at work, a place and dynamic where negativity can thrive. Most of us spend a lot of our time in work for pay, and this book offers some other ways of interacting within those long spaces.