in late August of 2015, five men – a British businessman, two American military men, one American tourist, and a Frenchman – were about to become heroes. The hum of their otherwise average day was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot and shattered glass. An unknown man entered their train car with an AK-47 assault rifle.
The five men jumped into action, tackling the attacker, then hog-tying him and holding him down until the train could stop and the French police could take him into custody. All the while, other passengers stood in shock, horror, and disbelief, considering the incredible tragedy that was averted by the swift and selfless acts of these five men.
Later, French president François Hollande said the men showed us “that faced with terror, we have the power to resist. They also gave us a lesson in courage, in will, and thus, in hope.”4
Imagine a world without five heroes on a train.
Courage is what moves us to action in the face of tough times. Without it, we suffer from our humanity instead of rising above it. The good news is that courage is accessible to everyone. It is not in short supply or limited to the elite, powerful, rich, or heavily trained. It is something we all have the capacity to obtain once we understand the origin of it and how to overcome the obstacles to leveraging it.
Although the demographic makeup of leaders varies dramatically, their challenges largely remain the same. Leaders of all shapes and sizes are asked to make tough decisions, have tough conversations, take on tough workloads, inspire tough people, and achieve tough goals. These challenges are not unique. But not all leaders are capable of doing the tough stuff. What separates a good manager from an exceptional leader is the willingness to face any challenge rather than avoid it, delegate it, or run from it. Simply put, when the time comes, does the leader have the courage to move to action?
Best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert found her resolve to continue writing after six years of being rejected because, as she explained, “I loved writing more than I hated failing at writing.”5 Maybe one of the key questions you have to answer for yourself to be a courageous leader is this: Do you love leading more than you hate failing at it?
Let me be the first to provide you some leadership absolutes if you haven’t already figured them out for yourself. You will fail. You will fall down and scrape your knees, break a bone, and maybe even end up in a body cast (metaphorically speaking, of course). There will be pain. Courage is the willingness to do something in the face of fear, discomfort, and pain. As a result, courage is what separates those of us who want something from those of us who actually achieve it.
Individuals enter into leadership for their own reasons. Some find themselves there by accident, and others have simply been anointed leader without any real understanding of what it means, often emulating behaviors of old bosses, both good and bad. Some decide to become leaders because of the paycheck or because of the image their ego conjures up about the status and power leadership brings. In these cases, the ego is the leader’s oxygen, and like a diver without a tank, he or she eventually suffocates. Rarely do individuals enter into leadership with the intention to serve others or something bigger than themselves – even though it’s what gets results long term. The kind of selflessness that goes along with this kind of leadership, as you will learn, is challenging and requires courage.
Courageous leadership is a choice. In each of us, a seed of possibility exists as our potential state. Standing at the crossroads of reality and dreams, it is those who are courageous who ultimately find their way to achieving their goals. There are no hidden roadblocks intentionally set out to derail success or make leaders struggle unnecessarily. The path to courageous leadership is as different as our DNA, but it is equally accessible to everyone.
So where do we start? If courage is equally accessible, then why don’t we all leverage courage equally? What gets in the way?
Often what limits us from leveraging courage is our own preconceived notions about it. We see courage as a muscle that we either have or don’t. Those of us lucky enough to have it can use it while the rest of us have to resort to lesser, more available tools. Yet every human is equipped with approximately 300 unique muscles to stretch, strengthen, and leverage. When we underestimate the diversity of courage, we also underestimate the possibility it brings. There are many ways to see courage and to access it. For a firefighter, courage is stepping into a burning building, but for a schoolteacher, courage may be addressing with a parent unproductive behaviors at home that lead to class dysfunction.
Embracing the diversity of courage is just one part. Pain and choice are equally as important. Just like in our bodies, when we first start using our muscles, we feel pain. Anyone who’s joined a gym for the first time as a New Year’s resolution knows this well. Your first day is full of promise and excitement. Dressed in your workout gear pulled from a box in your closet, you enter the gym with your favorite music blaring on your iPhone only to find that after just 20 minutes of exercise, your chest hurts, you can barely breathe, and you’re ready to pass out. And that’s not the best part. Two days later, the lactic acid in your muscles has built up, and you can’t seem to remember how to walk or move without excruciating pain. It’s no surprise, then, that there is a high attrition rate of people who give up their gym memberships by March.
Pain will follow the act of building courage just as it does building a muscle. We can accept that pain either as our body’s white flag of surrender or as feedback that we are making necessary progress. It’s up to us to decide. Make no mistake – it is a choice.
Therefore, to build a complete courage toolbox, we’ll need to explore the diversity of courage, embrace pain as part of the process, and make the choice to engage courage fully. To do this, in The Courageous Leader, we’ll look at courage in a multifaceted way:
The Courage to Get Unstuck. “The Courage to Get Unstuck” challenges you to consider that discomfort or pain may be an indication you are stuck. Oftentimes, we find ourselves stuck when we are unwilling to move past the fear of making a needed change that would otherwise propel us forward professionally.
The Courage to Take a Stand. “The Courage to Take a Stand” is about identifying what is important to you. In this chapter, you’ll evaluate your own values and priorities so that your courageous decisions and actions are aligned with who you are and what you believe is right for you and your organization.
The Courage to Be Humble. “The Courage to Be Humble” introduces the power of humility as a tool for leadership growth. Specifically, we’ll introduce The Humbling Experience and the importance of courage to get back up after you have been brought to your knees.
The Courage to Be Confident. “The Courage to Be Confident” looks at the opposite of arrogance and encourages the development of self-confidence and self-trust in leadership, while identifying the consequences when you don’t exemplify this courage.
The Courage to Delegate. “The Courage to Delegate” is a window into the struggles leaders face when delegating, and more important, the struggles they face when they don’t delegate. In some ways, delegation is one of the most vulnerable things a leader can do, and in that vulnerability, there are risk, fear, and pain that require courage.
The Courage to Give and Receive Feedback. “The Courage to Give and Receive Feedback” illuminates the importance of having tough conversations in the midst of tough times for clarifying meaning, as well as obtaining healthy results long term.
The Courage to Be in the Middle. “The Courage to Be in the Middle” takes a deep dive into the world of systems thinking, specifically the work of Barry Oshry and the courage it takes to live in the middle space of organizational life.
Grow, Recover, Repeat. In the first eight chapters, you’ll explore ways in which you need to push past the pain and do the right thing for your team’s and organization’s success as part of their growth. That kind of courage is exhausting and requires appropriate recovery to continue to maintain a courageous