Recently I had a conversation with two of my international colleagues (one in India and the other in Turkey). We were talking about a theme that we use from Beyond Authority – Courage and Caution.

When a leader steps forward to create change in a space where no one has to listen to them, they are committing to a giant task.

First, if you really are leading beyond your authority, no one has to listen to you. You are trying to solve a problem that affects lots of individuals, but they may not want to accept your leadership or the solutions you propose. In such cases, you are likely to feel that individuals attack you, your beliefs, and the work you are doing. You are going to need to be prepared to stand out.

Second, when you listen properly, some of the feedback you are hearing is valid. As a leader you are going to have to accept this and do something about it. Listening properly is going to take work.

Third, change can feel so slow! From my experience, especially trying to create change in institutions, people can become jaded too quickly. I love hearing, ‘Oh no! Not another one!’ If you want to create change you’ve got to pace yourself and even more importantly be prepared for the long haul. It is going to take time to change people’s hearts and minds, and if you give up too soon, you most likely are making it harder for the next person.

I could keep going and break these points down, there are many more to add I am sure, but any one of the points above can be difficult. To work to make something change requires courage because any of those things could happen to you. In fact they all might happen at the same time. And per my usual ramble I digress… so our conversation on courage led to the statement – Courage is jumping off a cliff (figuratively). – And my immediate action was ‘?!?’

My colleague from Turkey spoke up at this point and said much more beautifully than I will now that courage and caution are two sides of the same coin. You cannot have one without the other. Courage is leading with your heart and caution is leading with your mind.

Now looking at this I might say at times you can reverse the two. Because I do believe there are times where logic dictates that one step forward and do something and the heart says, hang on there I don’t want to subject myself to ridicule. But I do like the fact that leading with courage and caution is learning how to balance a logical (mind) approach with an emotional (heart), in one’s leadership.

So there may be a case out there where jumping off a cliff is courageous, I won’t argue that now. But in the metaphor the three of us are using now – courage is jumping off a cliff when you are afraid of heights and you have to trust a parachute to catch you, you are terrified, but you know it is going to get you to where you need to be. Otherwise jumping off a cliff is just plain stupid, and requires no courage.

In leadership, courage is – knowing the risks and being ready and able to deal with them even when it means hearing things you do not want to; committing to see something to completion; braving the censure of colleagues and peers. You may not run a full risk assessment, but to be courageous you’ll have done a partial one.

I know there is much more to courage in leadership. Here is one of my favourite quotes on the subject -

‘Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.’

-Robert F Kennedy- 1966

Ethan Ohs

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.”

Now don’t get me wrong I am not morbidly focussed upon the inevitable collapse of everything and the impending doom that is coming. But I find that it is often in those difficult situations, conversations and circumstances during your day that you have to remind yourself to have courage. This may not be the courage to force yourself or others to act but in fact to have the courage to keep trying or the courage to re-evaluate.

The last two RealEdge Practices pick up on the theme of having the courage to have those difficult conversations, to make mistakes and accept them, as well as forcing yourself into uncomfortable places and looking at things from all angles even those unfamiliar to you.

It occurs to me that it is not just about having the courage to challenge yourself when things are going wrong and look at them differently but actually to give those around you the same courage to stop and review, to go into the unfamiliar or in fact to push on regardless.

Common Purpose

Common Purpose gives leaders the inspiration, the knowledge and the connections they need to produce real change. Through our unique leadership development courses, a growing number of people around the world are making a difference in the industries and places where they work, in the communities where they live and in wider society.

Website - Twitter - More Posts