Great leaders model courage.
They have that ability to overcome fear, and step into danger when needed.
Real courage is it’s not an abstract thing. It shows in your actions.
Or doesn’t.
Courageous leaders inspire trust, with or without fanfare.
People follow that.
Pretending to be brave doesn’t cut it, at least not for long. Humans are good at detecting fakes or fear in others – if words don’t betray it actions do.
Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s the ability to act against what you’re afraid of.
For you as a leader, your choice to act, or not, against what you’re afraid of defines your leadership style.
It’s also infectious.
Courage isn’t a magic superpower, it can be developed. You can grow courage, in yourself and others.
Getting courage starts with knowing what you’re afraid of.
Your deepest fears can be hidden, and rationalised away until they’re invisible.
Maybe it’s losing your job, or offending someone, or losing someone, or exposing ignorance, or uncertainty, or making a mistake, or imperfections, or just failing.
It maybe someone – your boss, your peers, your customers.
Acting against a fear is hard. If it’s not hard it’s not a fear.
Like anything hard, achieving it is best done gradually, and persistently.
Start small.
Choose one little thing you don’t like and choose to confront it.
Causing minor offence, getting close, admitting you’re wrong. Talking to your boss, your peers, your customers.
Take a small risk and go somewhere you haven’t been.
You might be surprised, you might regret it.
Do it again.
That’s how courage grows, sometimes surprising, sometimes painful. Step by step.
Encourage your team to do the same.
Don’t reward passivity, reward courage.
Step by step. It’s a growing thing, not a magic bullet.
“..Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s the ability to act against what you’re afraid of…”
What are you afraid of?
Seriously – do you know?
Your close friends or your team might know.
What are your team members afraid of? They’ll all be different.
Do you encourage them to confront their fears? Do you talk about what they’re afraid of? Help them act against their fears?
When did you last do something that made you nervous? Kept you awake? Woke you up at 3am?
Are you worried about something you’ve done, or something you didn’t do?
When you have a choice do you take the familiar or the new?
If you know there’s risk do you go anyway?
Does your team take risks? Do they stay with familiar things?
How do you get Courage?
.
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“I might be wrong, but at least I’ve thought about it…”