Courageous Leaders Blog

While engaging in a conversation with a colleague we explored whether the time is ever right to be courageous? Will you ever be well enough prepared to be courageous in your conversations, your decisions and your actions? It reminded me of the dilemma many face when starting a family - is it the right time to have children - do we have enough money saved, do we have a big enough house, are we ready emotionally, are we getting too old? Ultimately most of us who eventually made the decision to proceed would agree there is never a "right" time to have children.

Leap in, allow yourself to BE vulnerable and most importantly relinquish the need for control. This is what gets in the way of most people wanting to action the value of courage. Leaders in particular can let ego, control and power get in their way - far easier to claim we are just not ready yet. In my experience you can never be ready. I facilitate workshops to guide people in being courageous - and naturally I need to role model what courage looks and sounds like.

I believe people too often claim the time is not right because they don't feel ready to engage in the conversations or make the behavioural choices to demonstrate courage. This is an important distinction to make - differentiate right time from being ready! The reason I say this is that the time is very often right and the excuse is used because the leader or person does not feel ready. They do not feel like they will have control.

I can honestly say that I have never felt ready in the moment, to be courageous. My heart still pounds, I still question whether I should engage in the conversation or take the action - and it takes great discipline to stop myself from using the excuse of the time not being right. It has nothing to do with time and everything to do with the feeling of readiness.

Return to the metaphor of having children - and it is nothing to do with the time and everything to do with feeling ready - because we lose control, for many we relinquish power and our ego can certainly take a bashing. Exactly the same in business for leaders.

Recognise when you rely on the excuse of time, appreciate you might never feel ready and then challenge yourself to unleash the courage to do it and say it in the moment.

As a leader wanting to facilitate courage in action with your team requires real conversations and very real sharing.  Invite people to do this, make it safe for them to do it and you find out the obstacles and the fears they harbour to being courageous. Engage in this kind of conversation and you find many people fear "rocking the boat." So much safer and easier to go with the flow. I love the way Margie Warrell  acknowledges this in her book: Find your Courage:

"We stay silent, keep our thoughts to ourselves, and avoid all danger of rocking the boat. Ultimately we choose the certainty of never resolving an issue because of the possibility that our conversation won't produce the outcome we want."

These unsaid things impact on the quality of our relationships, the performance of the team and the level of engagement. Leaders need to support their people to find ways to make it expected and acceptable for everyone to be courageous - this is where my talking in draft concept fits well. I have talked about this in previous BLOGs.  This means talking out loud the thoughts and feelings that pop into your mind and heart - without the need to polish them, because you don't feel concerned about how you might be judged.

It means you agree to tell the truth and share openly with each other. It means you agree to receive what others say with the intent to think the best of the other person and come with a mindset of curiosity. Stop worrying about polishing your thoughts and checking out your feelings in case they are not "right". Feelings are yours and they are always "right" for you! Learn to be present with them. Learn to acknowledge them and appreciate the importance of them.

People don't want to look and feel silly so instead they remain silent and we lose them and their input. What fear and what a suit of armour we laden ourselves with to protect ourselves from the perceptions of others. Be courageous and stop this kind of behaviour.

What if you actively encouraged everyone to step up and be vulnerable with each other and realise the value of rocking the boat in a constructive way.

We need more courageous leaders to actively encourage their team members to rock the boat.

One of my favourite things to encourage people who participate in our leadership programs to do is - be curious. When something happens do not jump straight to a conclusion or some kind of judgement - think out loud - how curious! Curiosity is a wonderful mindset to open yourself up to learning and exploring.

Think of a child - they are the most open to learning and in their first seven years of life learn such an incredible amount - think about it - we learn to eat, to drink, to talk, to walk and so the list goes on. We are able to do this because we are curious and bring a "what if" attitude. What if I stand up against the table, what if I put my fingers into this hole...........curiosity. We constantly push or even ignore the barriers, especially those our parents try to tell us about.

Adults come from a "this won't work" attitude far too often and put up barriers to learning. Much safer and easier to remain in our comfort zones. This is why I actively encourage myself and others around me to bring curiosity into their life.

How curious that I am feeling angry right now; how curious that my team member chose to give me some very honest feedback after we both experienced a very challenging meeting with a client - this kind of mindset requires you to think and feel differently about what turns up for you.

Over the next week try this out and record what happens for you - how you feel, think and act differently because of this new mindset. Bringing curiosity into your life opens you up to experiences you may never have imagined.

Look at the world through the eyes of a child - wonderment and imagination wrapped up in curiosity. It takes courage to bring this mindset - much safer to remain in your comfort zone and rely on the tried and true ways of doing things and reacting.

Many leaders face the need to let go of control as they strive to be more courageous. This regularly pops up in conversations with people in our workshops and programs.

This feels threatening, especially for existing leaders and can bring about a hasty retreat to the safety of control and power.

Because when you are serious about being courageous then you are serious about speaking up and sharing thoughts, ideas and feelings; and you are equally serious about listening. When you do this - you don't know where the conversation is going to end up. For many leaders this is far too threatening - they want to be in control and have the answers. This can be the ego at work..........protecting and warding off challenging thoughts and ideas, and importantly being seen as having earned the title of "leader" - leaders are expected to have the answers - this is why we pay them the big bucks!!

This is at the very essence of vulnerability - and seeing it as a strength rather than a weakness is a challenge for many leaders to overcome before they can truly unleash their courage.

I engaged in a few conversations recently about the link between courage
and business outcomes. What is the business benefit of engaging more
courageously with each other?

When people hold themselves personally accountable to turn up more
courageously then conversations are different - they are more open, more
real, more challenging and ultimately result in improved:

1. Decisions - higher quality, greater speed, willingness to diverge
before they converge into a final decision and higher levels of buy in
to implement and embrace the decisions

2. Engagement - when people are real with each other and share openly
there is heartfelt connection and people bring themselves completely to
the resulting actions and activities

3. Intellectual application to business issues - when people are
enCOURAGEd to bring their thoughts, ideas and feelings openly and in a
very real way then you are leveraging the intellect of each person and
this adds up to far greater intellectual capability than just that of
the boss - it is simple mathematics!

4. Innovation and entrepreneurial thinking - because people are actively
invited to think outside the box and test the boundaries without fear of
retribution, labelling and judgement

5. Collaboration - increased speed at which people work together to
achieve a result in an innovative way, while feeling inspired and
engaged. Ultimately this provides a competitive advantage in the market
place.

And it all starts by bringing personal accountability for being
courageous. It works quicker and with greater success when it is
initiated and lead from the top - the existing leaders.

My initial and quick thoughts demonstrate the business outcomes for
putting courage into action are significant.

I recently listened to emerging leaders share their stories of initiating change in their organization as part of a leadership development program we are facilitating. As they shared their stories so they chose to BE vulnerable - exposing their fears, insecurities, areas of weakness and concerns about being able to change.

Vulnerability is such a strength - to watch and feel the movement created in the room as people shared their stories was inspiring.

Someone shared how his heart was about to leap out of his chest he was so nervous. Another person shared the feedback they received about when they operated at their "worst" and how saddened they felt and how committed they felt to changing this.

What we experienced was a group of emerging leaders who dropped their egos. We had a room full of real people standing up and sharing with their colleagues and their bosses who had joined us at the back of the room. When you are real other people can't help but respond and empathize in a real way - in the moment. After all we all want to belong and we all want to do our best - this is human nature!

Courageous leaders allow themselves to BE vulnerable - let the learning and the people come into their lives. What a difference we can make as leaders if we adopt this philosophy and principal!!

While facilitating a recent development initiative for Courageous Leaders we explored the importance of consciously responding. We differentiated it from the alternative of impulsively reacting and this created brilliant clarity for everyone.

Understand that we each turn up to situations with our intellect, our thoughts and our emotions; and it is often the  emotions that get in our way. So we could do well to invest energy into creating awareness of how we turn up. Be mindful of our emotions as we walk into a conversation.

Then as we proceed in the conversation be aware of the thoughts and feelings that pop up along the way - and make a conscious decision of how we want to handle them. Consciousness takes great presence and great personal discipline.

Most important to our conscious  choices of how we handle these thoughts and feelings is to acknowledge that they are neither good or bad. Stop investing time and energy in this kind of internal debate which often leads to "bashing" ourselves up. Instead acknowledge the feelings that have turned up and know they ARE just there. Make it OK to feel them. Then, rather than impulsively reacting and allowing these feelings to escape in your interactions; use mindfulness to consciously decide how you want to respond. When responding you make a decision to share your feelings constructively.

Is this easy? NO! - it is the discipline of a courageous leader.

Impulsive reaction more often takes the form of either angry and aggressive behaviour or submissive and disappointed behaviour. Neither of these lead to constructive interactions.

Courageous leaders take responsibility for consciously responding; they recognise the downfalls of impulsively reacting.

If you don't understand - ask me
If you don't agree - challenge me
If you don't like it - tell me
But don't start judging me silently.

I shared this with you in an earlier BLOG and wanted to check in on how you were going with putting it into action. It is one thing to read the mantra, understand it and another thing completely to action it.  I will share my thoughts and experiences and welcome yours!

In my experience it has been most difficult to stay true to this mantra with the people you know really well - because of my fear in hurting their feelings. It certainly requires complete transparency and this necessarily incurs and incites hurt for you and for others. The old saying - the truth hurts - is so true.

Yet when you engender this kind of truth, it means complete trust and openness with the people in your life - no games, no politics, no hiding and no false promises. It is actually an empowering place to operate in once you muster the complete courage to create this kind of personal accountability. Because what I found as I brought this mantra to life was the only person who knows you are judging silently is YOU!

What has been your experience?

Facilitating a module in our leadership development program we started to compare business teams to sports teams. We explored the elements of a high performing team and moved on to what leaders needed to do to keep and maintain a team in this high performing space. I challenged that from my experience we get sports teams into the high performing space with much greater speed and effectiveness than business teams because we have a coach who is prepared to give very honest feedback. The coaches give this kind of feedback as they know this is the best way to shift the skills and attitude of each individual in the team with the greatest speed - and in sports teams you only have a season, and that is normally only a number of months! Leading the team into the high performing space for a sports coach takes great courage.

This moved the conversation to the role of the coach - because I claimed the coach in a sporting team is the leader of the team. Very quickly a participant disagreed claiming the coach is not on the field playing so how can they possibly be the leader of the team? This provoked insightful thought and conversation within the group.

A breakthrough in thinking erupted for everyone and I heard myself saying "absolutely that is exactly the point". The leader delegates and supports but they do not "play" - they do not go onto the field - what a great analogy! Thanks to the challenge from a participant we had a wonderful conversation and a breakthrough in thinking. Participants clearly understood how essential it is to let go of "doing" if you want to manage and lead a high performing team. This is an experience and conversation I plan to hold onto as I facilitate future programmes.

In this fortnightly series, Alison Glynn-Baker discusses some key concepts in Mandy Holloway’s book, ‘Inspiring Courageous Leaders’.  She also poses some provocative questions.  We invite you to provide your opinion and join the discussion.

Never, "for the sake of peace and quiet," deny your own experience or convictions.
- Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961), United Nations Secretary-General and posthumous recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize

When Dag Hammarskjold died in a plane crash at the age of 56, he had, in his role as United Nations Secretary-General, tackled some of the toughest international issues of his time. These included Arab-Israeli Relations, the Suez Crisis and the Congo Crisis.

Once you’ve established the confidence that your leadership mastery empowers you to make the right choices, you need conviction in your leadership mastery.

What is conviction?  Mandy defines it in her book as a “deep-seated belief that certain choices are right for you”.  These can be choices about how you integrate your authentic self with your work. How you lead.  But without passion, your conviction will waver as soon as you think your choice is unpopular.  How far will you go to stand your ground?  Will you accept the consequences?

Acting without conviction has its advantages, of course. It’s easier to get on with your day job if you’re not spending energy defending your ground.  You may be better-liked in the short-term, by your peers, but not necessarily by those you lead.  You may, initially, be the “right sort” of leader for a market or company obsessed with the bottom-line.

Two unsettling things may happen, though, if you act without conviction:

1.      Guilt.  Female leaders in particular feel torn between advancing professionally and bringing up their children, and Mandy talks about her own experience.  There is no right answer, but unless, as a leader, you may make a decision which absolutely feels right for you, you could spend your career either blaming your employer (or, worse, yourself) or feeling defensive.

2.      Wondering what might have been.  Mandy and I have met some very senior leaders who seem almost wistful about the choices they have made:

“It’s a real pity, I always wanted to travel.  But straight out of university, I took this job, and I’ve been here 20 years.”

“I’m sorry – our organisation just isn’t ready for you.”

Dag Hammarskjold was strongly opposed by a number of leaders for the UN’s policy in the Congo.  Among these was John F Kennedy, who then went on to say, after Hammarskjold’s death, “I realise now that in comparison to him, I am a small man. He was the greatest statesman of our century.”

It’s worth considering what might be lost if you don’t act on your convictions.   Think about what you can achieve if you do.

What’s wrong with corporate “peace and quiet”?  This is your chance to have your say.

Don't have a copy of Inspiring Courageous Leaders? Buy it now


About Alison Glynn-Baker: Alison Glynn-Baker has 15 years’ experience in professional services marketing, business development and operations.  Through her own consultancy, she has combined her two passions - training and writing – to help clients improve performance both personally and in business.