Strong Ground
Lessons in Daring Leadership
By Brené Brown
Category: Motivation & Inspiration | Reading Duration: 17 min | Rating: 4.2/5 (48 ratings)
About the Book
Strong Ground (2025) is a guide to daring leadership and personal development in a time of unprecedented uncertainty, paradox, and change. It offers a suite of mindsets and skill sets for identifying and reconnecting with one’s strong ground, to facilitate living, loving, and leading from a place of grounded confidence.
Who Should Read This?
- Leaders navigating increasing uncertainty and change
- Coaches or mentors guiding values-driven growth or transformation
- Anyone interested in developing grounded confidence and emotional resilience
What’s in it for me? Unlock grounded confidence, reconnect to your strong ground, and step into daring leadership.
It was a pickleball injury that gave Brené Brown a whole new perspective on the research she’d conducted since the release of Dare to Lead in 2018. Four weeks after the incident that left her writhing on the court, Brown was sent to work with a personal trainer to protect against reinjury. Eager to return to the game she loved, Brown handed her new trainer a long list of competencies she wanted to improve. Increased speed!
Increased power! Increased endurance! Her “let’s go! ” outlook, however, was met with a reality check: she could get there, but only with time, an overhaul of her technique, and a whole lot of deliberate practice. She would not be building on dysfunction. Like Brown, most organizations – and the individuals within them – are seeking greater agility, strength, and stamina.
Also like Brown, many individuals and organizations are experiencing their own version of acute muscle and nerve injury: change coming thick and fast, uncertainty a constant, all within cultures that tend to prioritize performance over people and deliverables over humanity. Whether in the gym, the office, or the home, the prescription is the same: we must ensure we’re building on a stable foundation. And finding that stability requires slowing down, taking stock, and strengthening the muscles – our values and our people in the work and life contexts – needed to keep us centered when life around us is a centrifuge. In other words, we must identify our “strong ground” and remain firmly tethered to it.
In this Blink, you’ll learn how to reconnect with your strong ground by developing five core mindsets and skills. You’ll explore how to refine metacognition and mindfulness, strengthen courage and accountability, expand perception through awareness, think critically and symphonically, and communicate with clarity and affect. Together, these practices form the foundation of grounded confidence – the inner steadiness that enables us to lead, live, and love with both strength and spirit.
Chapter 1: Grounded confidence workout 1: Core
Grounded confidence begins with truly knowing ourselves. That means understanding how we feel, think, and react, and cultivating the ability to pause before we respond. This doesn’t mean having all the answers, but being deeply curious about how we relate to ourselves and the world around us. Self-awareness is the primary muscle.
Developing it requires both inward sensitivity and outward support, in a coach, therapist, or trusted friend, for instance. It can be challenging to distance ourselves from our biology, biography, behavior, and backstory, so it helps to have an external presence on hand to offer some perspective. Language plays a bigger role here than we often realize. Language doesn’t just express emotion; it can shape it. This is why it’s so important we learn to more accurately name what we’re feeling – doing so gives us a better hold on our emotions, and lessens their hold on us. For example, the next time you feel “mad,” consider whether “anguished,” “humiliated,” or “self-righteous” are more precise descriptors.
Accuracy brings clarity, and clarity gives us the space to choose our next move with intention. Metacognition – thinking about how we think – is another essential muscle. As fallible humans, we can fall victim to cognitive biases that skew our experiences of the world to align with what we expect or already believe. By noticing those patterns, we can create just enough of a pause to question their validity. And a single moment of metacognitive awareness is enough to prevent a serious misstep or open the door to a profound paradigm shift. Mindfulness then ties it all together.
The Latin root of “attention” – attendere – means “to stretch toward,” and that’s exactly what mindfulness asks us to do: to stretch toward the present moment. Whether we’re leading a high-stakes meeting, having a hard conversation with our spouse, or rumbling with a painful internal experience, the ability to remain in contact with the current reality is grounded confidence in action. Together, these practices – self-awareness, metacognition, and mindfulness – form the core muscles that help us stay steady when our lives are in motion. They remind us that true confidence doesn’t come from knowing everything, but from being anchored enough to stay open, curious, and conscious.
Chapter 2: Grounded confidence workout 2: Strength
Once we’ve started reconnecting with our core, our next challenge is to build some strength. Strength is what allows us to keep showing up when it would be so much easier to shut down. True strength looks less like gritted teeth and white knuckles and more like meeting uncertainty with courage and self-respect. Courage begins where certainty ends.
Courage is also better framed as a choice, not a trait. It’s the decision to admit a mistake to our boss, to speak up at the dinner table, to take a leap of faith that feels aligned but no less scary. Vulnerability, then, is the beating heart of courage. It’s the difference between protecting ourselves and evolving ourselves; fastening our armor and peeling it off. Both can be draining, but only courage grounded in vulnerability is ultimately sustainable. Strength is also honed through mastery – the quiet, sometimes agonizing discipline of practicing something until we demonstrate excellence.
But let’s be clear: striving for excellence and striving for perfection are two very different things. Perfection can’t take us to mastery. People who operate from grounded confidence stay close to the edges of their competence, flirting with failure, where they know they will learn the most. Accountability then gives strength its integrity. Accountability means owning our choices, cleaning up our messes, and following through on our commitments. While blaming, deflecting, and hiding can all feel mighty tempting in the short-term, accountability pays a massive dividend in the long-term: trust from others and from ourselves.
Facing sticky situations with honesty and humility generates respect that no job title or social status can buy. Finally, strength requires balance. The capacity to “lock in” – focus intensely when needed – and to “let go” – to release that focus when it’s time to shift – is an essential skill. The intensity you display while polishing a deliverable for a high-profile client in the morning is unlikely to be the energy you need while helping your kids grapple with math equations in the evening. Courage, mastery, accountability, and balance weave together to form an authentic, enduring strength. Not the kind characterized by rigidity or control, but the kind that’s responsive and receptive.
Chapter 3: Grounded confidence workout 3: Awareness
With our core and strength shaping up, our next frontier is our awareness. Awareness is what takes grounded confidence from something largely turned inward to something largely turned outward, enabling us to stay attuned to others and to the shifting dynamics of the complex world around us. Awareness starts with perception, but perception alone isn’t enough. True awareness asks us to see and understand others or dynamics, not just register them.
For instance, situational awareness helps us “read the room” and anticipate challenges. Whether in the boardroom or dining room, situational awareness encourages us to zoom out, take stock, and respond accurately and appropriately. Temporal awareness, on the other hand, is a sensitivity to pace and rhythm. In leadership and in life, knowing when to accelerate and when to hold steady, when it’s the right time and when it’s the wrong time, can make all the difference. Too much or too soon can breed burnout; too little or too late can breed boredom. Developing a feel for timing helps us foster “productive urgency” – progress without panic.
Mental rehearsal is another practice that boosts awareness. Athletes visualize their event or game before they compete; individuals centered in grounded confidence do the same before stepping into challenging situations. Running through possibilities – both positive and negative – helps us meet whatever arises with poise. Mental rehearsal doesn’t pretend to masquerade as control; rather, it unlocks our ability to remain cool and calm. Finally, awareness can dive deeper by extending to multicultural considerations. Possessing multicultural awareness means reminding ourselves that everyone moves through the world wrapped in their own stories, histories, fears, and dreams.
Recognizing the inherent uniqueness of others’ perspectives and staying curious about them, even when they differ from our own, is grounded confidence at its highest. Together, these layers of awareness – situational, temporal, mental, and relational – give our actions greater accuracy, intentionality, and integrity. And whether at work or at home, with others or with ourselves, accuracy, intentionality, and integrity are key to moving through today’s world while remaining rooted on strong ground.
Chapter 4: Grounded confidence workout 4: Thinking
The penultimate skill set and mindset we want to develop is our thinking. We discussed metacognition in the first section, but we will unpack distinct types of thinking in this section – specifically, those essential to living, loving, and leading with grounded confidence today. Critical thinking is the first type of thinking to tap into. In an age of constant noise and competing narratives, learning to pause and examine what we’re told is mission-critical – and far easier said than done.
A simple yet revealing question to cut through the clutter is “Who profits from people believing this? ” This kind of inquiry hones our discernment, encouraging us to make informed, rather than impulsive, decisions. Paradoxical thinking is the second type of thinking to heed. Paradoxical thinking is the willingness to hold two opposing ideas without rushing to “solve” them. Life, after all, is rarely “either/or” and almost always some iteration of “both/and”. When we resist the urge to pick a side, we open ourselves to the tension between perspectives.
This tension can be uncomfortable, yes, but it’s also where we encounter most of our transformations, revelations, and paradigm shifts. Third is intuitive thinking, which blends experience with instinct. Contrary to popular belief, intuition is far from a magical or mystical process; it’s our brain’s rapid pattern recognition firing at its best. When faced with familiar dynamics, we recognize signals that less experienced or receptive individuals might miss. Cultivating and trusting our intuition allows us to respond swiftly and smartly – which, you may have noticed, is increasingly essential at work and at home. Finally, creative and symphonic thinking bring imagination into the mix.
Creative thinkers learn through iteration and experimentation, seeing “failure” as merely a prerequisite to “success. ” Symphonic thinkers, meanwhile, connect ideas across domains and disciplines to give rise to something greater than the sum of its parts. Critical, paradoxical, intuitive, and symphonic thinking all compound our sense of grounded confidence by enabling us to see more clearly, more courageously, and more creatively. And with change and uncertainty now a constant, such clarity is strong ground indeed.
Chapter 5: Grounded confidence workout 5: Communication
The final skill set and mindset to train is communication. Once we’ve learned to think critically and creatively, we need to express these thoughts in ways that connect, build trust, and galvanize action. Start by making your communications accessible and clear. We’re after DUPLO, not LEGO.
We all have a collection of topics and issues for which we possess a rich and expansive understanding. However, when discussing or explaining these things to others, we want to trade complexity – LEGO – for simplicity – DUPLO. This applies whether you’re writing a company-wide memo or talking to your kids in the car. Make your message easy to follow and anticipate confusion before it arises. Then, consider an often-overlooked element of compelling communication: aesthetic force. Aesthetic force refers to our emotional and sensory response to powerful imagery.
“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a cliche for a reason. But wielding this power requires integrity. When imagery is used to manipulate rather than sincerely move, we can destroy trust in an instant. Next, transparency. When our direction changes – at work or at home – we need to communicate what’s happening, why, what’s changing, and what isn’t. Thinking we can “get away” with not naming such inflection points can feel like the more desirable option in the moment, but it rarely ends that way.
People notice shifts, and not having them acknowledged is often more unsettling than the fact that there is one. Finally, lean into stories, metaphors, and analogies. These literary devices can breathe life into communications, make information more memorable, and connect logic to emotion. Drawing on examples that resonate with us – a sport analogy or cooking metaphor, for instance – can help others better understand what we mean, and feel it, too.
Clarity, authenticity, transparency, and storytelling are the hallmarks of communication rooted in grounded confidence. When we share from this place, we don’t just transmit data, we create connection. And in doing so, turn our strong ground into strong ground for us all.
Final summary
In this Blink to Strong Ground by Brené Brown, you’ve learned that true confidence isn’t about projecting a persona of strength, but cultivating an inner steadiness. When the world feels as overwhelming and unwieldy as it often does today, what enables us to remain confident isn’t certainty or control, but connection. Connection to our values, our purpose, and to those in our lives who help us stay balanced when we lose our footing. Grounded confidence grows from self-awareness, courage, and curiosity, practiced deliberately, over time, until operating from stability becomes second nature.
It’s the un-showy superpower that encourages us to pause before reacting, to stay open when things get hard, and to keep moving forward with empathy and integrity. When we stand on strong ground, rooted in who we are and connected to those who steady us, we not only become more daring leaders but also more wholehearted humans. And from strong ground, we can face the change, complexity, and challenge of today’s world with clarity, humility, and, yes, even confidence. Okay, that’s it for this Blink.
We hope you enjoyed it. If you can, please take the time to leave us a rating – we always appreciate your feedback. See you in the next Blink!
About the Author
Brené Brown, Ph.D., is a research professor at the University of Houston. Known for her pioneering work on vulnerability, courage, shame, and empathy, Brown’s decades of research have shaped our understanding of leadership and the human experience. Brown is also the author of several #1 New York Times bestsellers, including Dare to Lead, The Gifts of Imperfection, Braving the Wilderness, Rising Strong, and Daring Greatly.