02.15.25
Dare to Lead: Embracing Courage Over Comfort
By Sadie Rudolph, Vice President of Strategic Communications, The Chamber
Jill Nelson facilitates Dare to Lead at the Armory Event Center in January 2025.
In today’s rapidly changing world, leadership is no longer just about holding a title—it’s about showing up with courage, taking responsibility and leaning into challenges. At January’s Women Connect, Dare to Lead certified facilitator and North Dakota State University professor Jill Nelson, Ph.D., taught us that now more than ever, we need leaders who are willing to embrace discomfort, challenge the status quo and lead with grounded confidence.
Jill taught us what it means to be a daring leader—one who chooses courage over comfort. Drawing from the groundbreaking research of Brené Brown, she showed us two different styles of leadership.
Armored Leadership vs. Daring Leadership
** From: Dare to Lead by Brene Brown, 2018
Armored Leadership
Leading from Self-Protection
- Being a knower and being right.
- Tapping out of hard conversations.
- Using shame and blame to manage ourselves and others.
- Fostering a scarcity-driven culture (There is never enough…).
- Professing values.
- Driving a “fitting in” culture.
- Leading for compliance and control.
- Leading reactively.
- Resisting change.
- Getting stuck in and owned by failures, setbacks and disappointments.
- Perceiving leadership as “being served by others.”
Daring Leadership
Leading with Grounded Confidence
- Being a learner and getting it right.
- Leaning into vulnerability and skilling up for hard conversations.
- Leading ourselves and others from a place of empathy, accountability and learning.
- Committing to and modeling “We are enough, and we have enough.”
- Practicing values.
- Cultivating a “belonging” culture.
- Leading for commitment and shared control.
- Leading proactively and strategically.
- Accepting and embracing change.
- Owning our failures, setbacks and disappointments through open discussion, learning from them, and embedding the learning in our work and our teams.
- Understanding leadership as “serving others.”
The Heart of Daring Leadership
Brené Brown defines a leader as: A leader is anyone at any level who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes and has the courage to develop that potential.
At the core of daring leadership are three key principles:
- You can’t get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability. Embrace the suck.
- Self-awareness and self-love matter. Who we are is how we lead.
- Courage is contagious. To scale daring leadership and build courage in teams and organizations, we must cultivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations and whole hearts are the expectation, and armor is not necessary or rewarded.
Dare to Lead Today
True leadership requires courage, vulnerability and a commitment to growth. It’s about stepping into the unknown, owning our mistakes and leading with authenticity. The world needs daring leaders—leaders who are willing to be uncomfortable, to have tough conversations and to champion change.
So ask yourself: How will you choose courage over comfort today?
Why Daring Leadership?
Daring leadership is about leading with confidence rather than self-protection. It means living into our values, accepting change, and aligning our actions with integrity. In contrast, armored leadership relies on fear and self-preservation—keeping us from embracing growth and innovation.
If you’re curious about your own leadership style, take Brene’s free Dare to Lead assessment here: daretolead.brenebrown.com/assessment.
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