Leadership Courage – Do You Have It?

Leadership Courage – Do You Have It?

I’ve been thinking lately about the essential qualities of great leaders and which qualities are teachable.  The one I’m going  to write about today is Leadership Courage which I believe is very coachable.

The definition of “courage” according to dictionary.com is:  “the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty,  danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.”

If Webster asked me, I would take out the “without fear” and change to “in spite of fear.”  Why?  All the successful leaders I know feel fear everyday but they move foward anyway.

Last week I faced an example of this.  I was scheduled to present a workshop on work/life balance to 100 corporate leaders in a national bank with several more individuals participating via video feed.  I felt solid with the material but 2 days before the presentation I was told I needed to shrink the presentation to 30 minutes from 1.5 hours.  They had a “time crunch.”  Where was my fear?  It was my inner critic saying that they didn’t really want this training, it was not important enough to devote sufficient time to it, and I was going to struggle in engaging this audience.  My visual was 100 people in chairs either checking their smart phones or looking at me blankly.  What were my choices?  Get out of the engagement or just tweak the material and do my best.  It turns out all went well, they were an open and participatory group and I was able to present the best parts of the workshop.

Since I do a lot of presentations in my work, you can bet that I often feel some type of fear on a weekly basis.  And when it comes up,  I acknowledge the feeling and move foward anyway.

How do great leaders show courage in the work place?
1. Telling employees the hard truth even if the information is
upsetting
2.  Being honest with your board of directors or stakeholders about
organizational challenges
3.  Apologizing when you did something wrong
4.  Because you have certainty around an issue you take a stand even though it’s unpopular
5. Resisting external or internal pressure to do something out of integrity even if it’s quicker and easier
6.  Being authentic with who you are – sharing all of you (or most of you ) and not pretending you are super human without flaws
7.  Asking yourself everyday, “what’s best for the organization?”  And acting on the answer
8.  Asking for honest feedback from your employees, customers/clients, colleagues, and those above you about your performance
9.  Asking the questions that you are afraid to find the answers to
10.  Being willing to consider ideas and viewpoints from all levels of the organization
11.  Being willing to let go of what’s not working even if you created it
12.  You tell me… Feel free to post on this site!

Now for you:  If you were to rate your Leadership Courage on a scale of 1-10, what would it be?

What would others in your organization rate you?

Looking at the examples I shared above, what area could be strengthened in  you?  What’s holding you back or stopping you from growing your Leadership Courage?

I wish you the best with this and have an awesomely courageous week!