The Three Kinds Of Executive Courage
You've got to embody all of them before your employees can master any.
What sets apart great leadership? The best leaders demonstrate bold but thoughtful judgment, spirited but calculated risk-taking and assertive but reflective dispositions. The list of characteristics goes on, but they all lead back to one clear starting point: courage.
Courage, contrary to popular belief, is a skill. It is teachable and learnable. The most powerful determinant of whether workers will act courageously is that their leaders do. To understand how to act courageously yourself, as a leader, first apprehend that there are three specific types of courage. They are:
--Try courage. This is courage to take initiative and action, to step up, to attempt new things and be willing to make mistakes.
--Trust courage. This is courage to have confidence in others, to let go of control, to show faith in people and be open to direction and change.
--Tell courage. This is the courage of voice, being unafraid to raise difficult issues, share unpopular opinions and engage others with candor and conviction.
To create a courageous workforce, you must first walk the talk. You must set an example by displaying all these behaviors. Let's look at them more closely.