"Strong Back, Soft Front and Wild Heart"
Brene Brown writes about “Strong Backs, Soft Fronts, and Wild Hearts”. She talks about this in the context of fitting in and belonging. She was inspired by the Buddhist quote of “Strong Backs, Soft Fronts” from Joan Halifax.
“All too often our so-called strength comes from fear not love; instead of having a strong back, many of us have a defended front shielding a weak spine. In other words, we walk around brittle and defensive, trying to conceal our lack of confidence. If we strengthen our backs, metaphorically speaking, and develop a spine that’s flexible but sturdy, then we can risk having a front that’s soft and open, representing choiceless compassion. The place in your body where these two meet – strong back and soft front – is the brave, tender ground in which to root our caring deeply.”- Joan Halifax
These worlds resonate as a mantra to live our life by. I also see a strong application of it to the business world with respect to product managers or any kind of builders and leaders.
How does this apply to Product Managers?
If Product Managers could embrace this mantra, I believe our products would be more successful and the world would be a better place. With a soft front you can let yourself be vulnerable to empathize for those who you wish to serve. With a strong back you can continue to evangelize and solve for your customers with resilience. With a wild heart, you can imagine seemingly impossible solutions to create innovations that are wildly successful.
Soft front translates to empathy, humility and service
Empathy - If we can be empathetic, the insights we draw from our customers and their context can help us identify the right problems. As teams embark on customer discovery, I always remind them to empathize and not sympathize. Sympathy for our customers validates that we can feel for the plight of others. Unlike sympathy, empathy goes beyond the shared perspective of emotions combined with a will to solve their problems. Empathy develops from a deep understanding of people, their joys, their struggles, their lives, their environments, their neighborhoods and really all of their contexts. Without empathy, we won’t have the will to resolve our customer pain points.
Humility - I have worked with people who believe that they know all the answers, quick to judge customers, get excited after just one customer insight and love just building to solve for that insight. They not only jeopardize their own product but in the long run they jeopardize their team culture and their own careers. PMs who know they don’t have all the answers and leverage their teams and continuously learn from their customers build better products. They also have the humility to accept that they haven’t found the right product and sunset products that are not being embraced by customers.
Service - People who put their customer first and their team before themselves thrive. They always shine and build amazing products because their goal is to serve their customers and their teams.
Wild Hearts - Some people can think and dream big. More of us should do so. When we are able to unlock opportunities grounded on customer empathy, we can and should dream big. Such individuals are not afraid to think of wild ideas that might seem impossible to build or achieve. Without such wild, big, audacious thoughts, our results will be less than ordinary. So go on.. be wild in your ideation. Your empathy for your customer and humility in your learning will guide you with the right guard rails to help your wild ideas succeed.
Strong backs translates into strength and belief. It means you are brave and courageous. If we really took the right measures to truly understand customer problems and validated them then we have to stay strong in our beliefs and continue to iterate on the ideas despite hurdles to keep building until we find the right products that truly solve for customer pain, then nothing can get in the way. Keep building with the perseverance you need to solve for your customers.
I can see these principle at work in helping Tolaram bring Indomie noodles to Africa and make it one of the most successful products and a household name there. It was a completely wild idea to bring a low cost noodle product to a country that did not connect with the food, but there was deep empathy for the customers need for a low cost hot meal. There was the intention to serve. There was humility in all the failures they saw and how they turned these around to learn. There was wild ideas like building power plants, creating local infrastructure, running local schools to train employees all to produce noodles within the country. Today 92% of the ingredients needed are produced locally. All of this helped Tolaram succeed by creating a need in the market that did not exist, solved for the customer and brought wild success to the company. There are many such products that have succeeded in the market with this approach.
How does this apply to Leadership?
Brene Brown's work on vulnerability is helping develop leaders who are brave and kind, strong and caring, humble and confident, courageous and authentic. “Soft front” is key to being an authentic leader. Leaders are no longer expected to be all buttoned up or know it all. As a leader, with a soft front, you are able to connect to people as your true self even when there might be insecurities, gaps and self doubt. It allows people to connect with you at a deeper level. This allows you to support your teams through connection and with an intent to help them thrive. A soft front also demonstrates empathy for your teams as well as yourself. This is developed through self reflection and deep understanding of your team. A soft front also means you are kind in the way you deliver feedback. Like Brene says, being clear is being kind. Your team would prefer you to be kind and deliver the right feedback vs being nice and not giving any constructive feedback.
“Strong back” allows you to be strong and brave despite the struggles. It allows you to learn to develop your strengths to continue to work with a soft front. A strong back also lets you support your team during rough times.
A wild heart is about being creative and envisioning a world beyond ordinary. It is about being comfortable bringing your complete authentic self to leadership and not being bound by any “standard” expectations from others.
The team I am on, my peers, my manager, all bring this to life in everything that we do. How are you seeing this phrase being applied around you? How do you live with a Strong Back, Soft Front and Wild Heart?