{"id":212954,"date":"2025-10-14T14:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T14:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/212954\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T14:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T14:57:09","slug":"brene-brown-says-the-key-to-surviving-ai-is-rejecting-jack-welchs-advice-and-embracing-humanity-the-problem-is-humans-cant-stand-each-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/212954\/","title":{"rendered":"Bren\u00e9 Brown says the key to surviving AI is rejecting Jack Welch\u2019s advice and embracing humanity. The problem is humans \u2018can\u2019t stand each other\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our nervous systems aren\u2019t ready for the level of uncertainty we\u2019re facing right now. That\u2019s according to Bren\u00e9 Brown, author, researcher, and professor, who spoke at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit<\/a> in Washington, D.C., on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is extraordinarily difficult to be brave right now, for a lot of different reasons,\u201d Brown said. \u201cPolitics is one, but [also] radically changing markets. A workforce that is\u2014I\u2019m going to tell you right now, people are not okay. If you\u2019re leading people, you probably know people are not okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

People are neurologically wired for certainty, not for a high level of stress, fear, and uncertainty, Brown said. Successful leadership at work today requires self-awareness, managing one\u2019s nervous system, metacognition (or thinking about how we think), and the ability to slow down decision-making to stay aligned with one\u2019s mission and values.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brown said that while she\u2019s a tech optimist, there are still many skills that are deeply human and aren\u2019t replicable with AI\u2014but we\u2019re not doing a very good job at being humans right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re s\u2013t at being deeply human right now,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe can\u2019t stand each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Brown said we\u2019re not good at this for a \u201cvery serious reason\u201d: We\u2019re too attuned to the leadership principles of Jack Welch. The late General Electric<\/a> chairman and CEO taught that human qualities are liabilities to performance. Brown argued that this advice<\/a>, which was adopted by many Fortune 500 companies, no longer holds true in today\u2019s complex and uncertain world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Advice for the modern workplace<\/p>\n

The tough-minded, rigid leadership style that worked during Welch\u2019s era doesn\u2019t fit the needs of modern leadership, especially for younger generations who value vulnerability, authenticity, and emotional intelligence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those traits are often lacking in a Welch-style leadership model. Instead, Welch advocated for a \u201cvitality curve\u201d that ranks employees as top 20%, middle 70%, and bottom 10%, with the bottom group being removed annually. Critics like Brown argue this \u201crank and yank\u201d approach fosters fear, undermines collaboration authenticity, and has shown limited effectiveness in long-term performance and culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cFear has a short shelf life. You cannot keep us afraid for long periods of time,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt\u2019s not how our biology works. If we\u2019re afraid, one of two things will happen: We\u2019ll either kind of become numb to it, or we\u2019ll hyper-normalize the feeling. There has to be a periodic reminder of capacity cruelty in order to maintain power over [other people].\u201d <\/p>\n

Brown is a bestselling author, renowned researcher, and professor who gained global prominence from her 2010 TEDx Talk, \u201cThe Power of Vulnerability,\u201d which remains one of the most-watched TED Talks of all time. Her work focuses on vulnerability, shame, empathy, and courageous leadership, which she has spent more than two decades studying.<\/p>\n

She has authored six No. 1 New York Times bestsellers, including The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, and Dare to Lead, each selling millions of copies worldwide. Brown has also hosted two award-winning podcasts, Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead, which consistently rank among the most popular self-help and leadership shows. Her work has also inspired popular Netflix<\/a> documentaries The Call to Courage and Atlas of the Heart. This year, she published a new title, Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit.<\/p>\n

She is also a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work, and is a professor of practice in management at the top-ranked University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business. The core messaging from her research is that vulnerability is essential for courage, creativity, and meaningful connection\u2014and confronting uncomfortable feelings is necessary in developing resilience and authentic leadership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our nervous systems aren\u2019t ready for the level of uncertainty we\u2019re facing right now. That\u2019s according to Bren\u00e9…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,1871,119723,124211,105,33088],"class_list":{"0":"post-212954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-leadership","14":"tag-leadership-advice","15":"tag-most-powerful-women","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-vulnerability"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}