Thrive: Invite Courage
Adapting to change. Speaking up about important issues. Taking on a hard, new project. Attempting to solve a persistent problem. Exploring all sides of a solution. Pointing out an error that no one else realized was occurring and causing quality issues.
All these and more are common challenges faced by team members everywhere. And all these situations and outcomes can be helped by one behavior: Courage.
Courage and Its Impacts
The word courage is the ability to do something in the face of fear. Its roots in Middle English denote the heart, as the seat of feelings, and comes from Old French corage, from Latin cor meaning ‘heart’.
With courage, we can speak and act in the face of fear in these important situations in alignment with what we know and believe. When we do, and when our courage is received, we bring value that would otherwise be hidden benefiting the team. And for the individual, this courage taking is a relief! Cognitive dissonance lowers, and we experience a sense of well-being. We have done the hard thing. We are not at odds with ourselves or our team and feel deep satisfaction for contributing. We are centered in our heart, which is notable because the root of the word courage is from the heart.
When you think about courage, perhaps the archetypal hero or heroine comes to mind, people who have faced unfathomable challenges or oppression and have spoken or acted with courage and changed history. Rachel Carson. Frederick Douglas. Judith Heumann. Nelson Mandella. Malala Yousafzai. So many others. Surely, they and others like them have something the rest of us don’t have.
Maybe, but I have personally discovered that courage is available to us when we need it. Years ago, when I faced my husband’s traumatic brain injury with two small children, I found the courage that I could not have imagined the day before. It was there when I needed it. I found it. And I learned to practice it. You see, courage is a learnable skill; almost everyone has the capacity to be courageous.
Day to Day Courage
Courage not only happens in the face of terrible hardship, crisis, disaster, or oppression. In fact, day-to-day courage is perhaps needed just as much as heroic courage.
But here’s the thing: Courage in these day-to-day moments is more likely to happen if we make it easier on each other rather than harder to have courage. That might sound contradictory to our notions of courage, but our own inner dialogue and doubt along with the social risks that come from speaking and acting with courage are in and of themselves sources of fear and are HARD. Those fears are plenty to overcome.
So much is at stake if we don’t learn to both create a courage-friendly environment and then act with courage in it. To perform well and meet our objectives, we have to courageously repair trust, address toxic behaviors, build relationships, listen more to ideas offered by everyone, shift culture, learn to change, and take risks as a team to learn, grow, improve, create new products, and try new processes.
Steps Toward Courage
If you are ready for more courage on your team, then take these steps to create the safety needed to invite courage.
Overtly plan for courage.
Discuss what courage can look like sharing an idea, pointing out a problem, dissenting, etc. Discuss why that matters to your success and how everyone needs to support creating a psychologically safe team. Talk about why it is important to the team and to individuals. Have discussions about what it will take to become a team where courage is welcomed. Talk about the situations needing courage, how it feels to take the risk to speak up, and the kind of team you want to be. Ask for feedback when you sense there’s hesitation. Address behaviors, yours or others, that create fear and doubt for team members about their acceptance on the team. Talk about what it will take to be able to speak and act with courage. Agree on how you will support each other, accept each other, and create a team of courage.
Demonstrate courage as a leader.
Be courageous yourself and then be authentic and transparent about your own courage taking. Do this with humility, realizing when a leader is courageous is not exactly the same as someone who has less positional power in the organization or on your team. Still, model courage.
Develop courage.
Support team members to build their courage muscles by taking small steps of courage to learn and discover what happens, and how it feels, to find success and gain confidence.
Then, support courage when it happens.
The moment will come when someone will take a deep breath, take you at your word, and test out your courage. Here’s how to be ready for this and what to do.
Watch for courage. Be on the lookout for it. When you see someone acting with courage, respectfully notice and name it. Acknowledge the risk-taking and applaud it.
Appreciate courage. Say “Thank you!!!” for acts of courage. Even if it’s awkward. Even if something difficult is named; especially then. Even if it takes you by surprise. Even if you are having a hard day. Say “Thank you.” Then…
Respect their contribution. Be sure the risk-taking is supported with respectful consideration for the idea or information being offered. Even if you don’t agree with the input or the observation makes you uncomfortable, take a breath and choose a path to consider or explore the input.
Be patient with courage. Often when we act with courage, we are in a heightened emotional state. This may bring a little more energy or animation to our courageous moment. We may be a little louder, talk a bit longer than needed, shake, get red in the face, etc. Be understanding of that; normalize this human experience. The easier it becomes to act with courage on your team, the more emotionally regulated people will be in these moments.
Coach courage. If they are open to it, debrief the experience with the person. How’d it go for them? What did they learn? What are they proud of? Do they have any feedback for you or for the team? What did you notice? Express value and appreciation. Normalize the experience.
Act on their courage. Discuss the issue they raised. Explore any nuances; discuss the path forward and next steps. Be sure to follow up. Find out if the process was satisfying to them. Explore this carefully and respectfully.
Remember: Everyone on the team is watching and will decide if this risk-taking is worth it. You want their courage to be worth it to them, and to be repeated by all. So embody courage as a leader by embracing change and opening to all that the courage of others will bring. Create a team where the courageous voices and actions of everyone are welcomed and supported each and every day.
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I share more about leading teams that thrive on To Work: With Love a NEW series airing on the Gut + Science leadership podcast. Find episodes HERE.
If you’d like to take a Thrive Self-Assessment, email me at Renee@MakeWorkMoreHuman.com
And if you want to talk about real strategies to address burnout, contact us here.
Our Thrive Strategy Lead is Faith Addicott and our Thrive Program Lead is Lili Boyanova Hugh. To learn more about the Invitation to Thrive, reach out here.
