June 17, 2020 | Brené Brown
In the style of a healthy One, here is Brene Brown’s statement in a very difficult situation. She simply states her facts without judgment.
On June 1st, I received a letter signed by over twenty people who were former colleagues or associates of Chris Heuertz. The letter detailed pervasive patterns of inappropriate behavior by Heuertz as their leader and/or director. The behaviors described in the letter are in direct conflict with my ethics and values. Based on the number of signatories and the nature of the allegations, we took the following actions: my team addressed these concerns directly with Heuertz; we immediately removed the Unlocking Us episode with Heuertz and all related social media; and I requested that the foreword I wrote for his book, The Enneagram of Belonging, be removed immediately.
I did not offer a public explanation for removing the podcast episode at that time because the people who wrote the letters were still in the process of deciding how and when to make their experiences public and I wanted to be respectful of their privacy and their process. Their full statement now appears here.
In his response to their public posting, Heuertz writes, “If you’ve heard me speak or have read my books, you’re aware that I made some inexcusable mistakes. Because those mistakes have been transformative in my life and my work, these mistakes have not been a secret.”
I want to be perfectly clear: I have read Heuertz’s books and find no specific mention of these behaviors. Knowing that there was no public record of these concerns and therefore no way for me to have known about them, I believe that assuming full accountability would have been telling me about this history when he asked me to support and amplify his work. That did not happen.
