Nano Tools for Leaders—a collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management—are fast, effective tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes, with the potential to significantly affect your success and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Goal: Stay steady under pressure and make better decisions by grounding your actions in values, engaging difficult moments with curiosity, and inviting input that strengthens trust and alignment.

Nano tool: In her book Strong Ground (Random House, 2025), Brené Brown argues that leaders deliver their best work not by projecting certainty, but by staying grounded: engaging with courage, clarity, and compassion even as conditions shift around them. In a series of conversations about the book’s core ideas (listen here and here), Brown and I explore how this grounded stance enables leaders to think more clearly, act more effectively, and stay connected to their teams under pressure.

Brown’s framework is extended with insights from my research on curiosity, learning mindsets, and the value of admitting what we don’t yet know. Together, we offer a practical path for replacing performative toughness with grounded confidence—helping leaders navigate uncertainty while still delivering for their organizations.

Action steps

1. Build grounded confidence by defining your top two values and translating them into behaviors

Brown emphasizes that leaders often feel enormous pressure to have the answers—to project certainty, expertise, and control even when situations are ambiguous. This “pressure to know” drives defensiveness and performance posturing. Grounded confidence is the alternative: acting from a clear internal foundation rather than trying to appear infallible.

How to do it

Identify your two core values. Find Brown’s list of values here; her research suggests that more than two dilute clarity. Then write down two or three specific behaviors that demonstrate each value. For example, if courage is a value, a behavior might be, “I talk to people, not about them.”

Use your values to steady yourself when you don’t have the answers. Before a conversation or decision, ask: “Which value matters most here?” and “What behavior can I choose that keeps me grounded, even if I don’t have certainty?” This shifts leaders from performing confidence (“I need to know”) to practicing grounded confidence (“I act from what anchors me”). It creates the stability Brown calls “strong back, soft front,” a learning mindset that’s essential for leadership.

2. Replace armor with curiosity in tough moments

When conflict or uncertainty hits, Brown notes that leaders tend to “armor up,” becoming defensive, shutting down, or reacting from assumption rather than understanding. One of her core tools for staying open is the “story I’m telling myself” script: naming the assumption your brain is making before treating it as fact. This complements my research showing that opening with vulnerability (“I’m unsure how to say this...”) reduces defensiveness and increases trust. Together, they shift leaders from reactivity to inquiry.

How to do it

Interrupt your assumptions by naming them. Begin tough conversations in a way that reframes the moment from judgment to curiosity: “The story I’m telling myself is ___. Is that accurate?” or, “Help me understand how you’re seeing this.”

Lower defensiveness by acknowledging uncertainty. Use this approach: “I don’t have the full picture yet, but I want to get this right.” This signals openness rather than armor and invites collaboration.

3. Turn values into visible behaviors—and hold consistent boundaries around them.

Brown emphasizes that values only strengthen a team when they translate into everyday actions; otherwise, they remain slogans. Cultures shift when leaders model behavioral clarity and enforce it consistently, even when it’s uncomfortable. Strong ground comes with knowing what you stand for and acting on it with both generosity and limits.

How to do it

Define how each value looks in practice. Turn abstract principles into specific behaviors—e.g., “We talk to people, not about them,” or, “We don’t hold meetings after the meeting.”

State your boundaries aloud—and uphold them. Use Brown’s “boundaried generosity,”as in, “Here’s what I can offer, and here’s what I can’t.” This prevents overextension while modeling integrity.

Apply behavioral expectations consistently. Address misalignment even when performance is high; otherwise, values lose credibility, and the culture becomes unstable.

How leaders use it

Brown shares that her two core values are faith and courage, and that she uses them to make hard professional decisions, especially when career demands compete with family commitments. By faith she means a belief in connection to something larger than herself. Holding that perspective helps her to tolerate uncertainty and trust that acting in alignment with her deepest values will ultimately lead where she is meant to go. 

Courage, in turn, is the willingness to live out that trust, saying no to compelling roles or invitations that would require travel and cause her to miss her children’s events, even when she worries this may disappoint others or make her seem ungrateful. In Brown’s framing, faith provides meaning; courage supplies the resolve to act on it.

I routinely begin tough conversations with colleagues and students by saying, “Here’s my view, but I might be wrong; what am I missing?” This simple phrase replaces performative toughness—the pressure to act like the person who already knows—with grounded confidence, the willingness to stay open and steady even without all the answers. This approach invites richer debate, brings overlooked information to the surface, and leads to better decisions because people feel freer to challenge assumptions and contribute what they see.

In a meeting at her company, Brown’s CFO used the “story I’m telling myself” script to address a moment of tension. When a key agenda item was cut for time, she said, “The story I’m telling myself is that this isn’t a priority anymore—is that right?” Instead of escalating frustration or making assumptions, the question opened space for clarity. Brown confirmed the item was still important and explained the time issue. The exchange restored alignment and strengthened the working relationship, replacing armor with curiosity.

Published Feb. 17, 2026, by Knowledge at Wharton.