To help manage a turnaround, Lumen Technologies tapped Brené Brown

“Rumble.”

“Clear is kind.”

“The Five Cs.”

Such concepts may sound unusual to a layperson, but for acolytes of Brené Brown, they’re practically gospel.

Some employees are now learning how to lead in the workplace through the frameworks of Brown, an academic with a background in social work whose teachings took off during the pandemic.

Since 2024, Brown has partnered with BetterUp to offer a curriculum through the coaching platform. The program, backed by an institute known as the Center for Daring Leadership, seeks to help leaders “build a culture of courage, connection, and high performance,” according to its website.

The telecom company Lumen Technologies is among the employers drawing on Brown’s work to help foster its employees through a transformation. The company was drawn to the Dare to Lead curriculum because “it gives you a common vernacular and a really good toolset that you can use to lead in a very different way, both at work and even how you operate in your personal life,” Chief People and AI Enablement Officer Ana White told HR Brew.

White and Lumen’s CEO, Kate Johnson, originally sought out Brown’s assistance when Lumen was “at an inflection point” in 2023, White said. At the time, the company was facing “declining revenue, legacy systems holding us back, declining stock,” she said.

In order to facilitate a turnaround, Johnson and White embraced the mindset of “playing to win” rather than “playing not to lose”—another one of Brown’s favorite metaphors.

All Lumen employees have had access to the Dare to Lead curriculum since the company began working with Brown in 2023, White said. More recently, Lumen rolled out specific offerings for its VPs and directors, who can access these trainings through BetterUp’s Center for Daring Leadershipthe BetterUp platform.

The result, according to preliminary research from BetterUp, is that Lumen saw a 12% increase in “courage across the organization,” a 13% increase in team performance, and a 11% decrease in burnout.

But what do these statistics mean in practice?

White pointed to “learning how to rumble” as one lesson of Brown’s that’s been particularly valuable for Lumen employees. In a Dare to Lead glossary published in 2021, Brown defines the “rumble” as a type of conversation that connotes, “Let’s have a real conversation, even if it’s tough.”

“When challenges arise, we go directly to the person and debate, and really openly and respectfully decide together and work through our issues with a high degree of success. That ability to rumble is a game changer,” White said. Adopting this practice, she continued, has helped Lumen employees avoid “the meeting after the meeting and back-talking and things like that.”

Lumen, which owns fiber optic networks, is seeking to transform from a legacy telecom company to an AI-focused provider of digital network services. The turnaround first started in 2023 and involved the sale of a legacy business to AT&T, as well as two major rounds of layoffs. In 2024, Lumen launched Private Connectivity Fabric, a product catered toward companies seeking to purchase fiber capacity due to AI needs.

While launching that product was a strategic move for the company, “it was a big pivot and it was a huge amount of change,” White said. Brown’s teachings—which emphasize fundamentals like trust, transparency, and clarity—came in handy during this moment, as well.

“Having these fundamentals around providing clarity...starting with the ‘why’ you’re changing, really centering around teamwork, trust, and transparency helped us to pivot very rapidly,” she said.