What Courage Really Looks Like

While searching online for images of courage, I discovered something fascinating: Apparently courage is all about diving off a cliff, or hanging from a ledge, or jumping from an airplane. Also featured are images of people hanging upside down rock climbing, or swaying across a suspension bridge. These photos are meant to capture the true essence of courage.

(BTW this image of a guy relaxing nonchalantly in a tent suspended from a cliff just makes me nauseous!)

But while these images are stunning and compelling, they don't look anything like the courage I'm witnessing right now.

Instead, what I've seen looks more like opening a door, or taking a small step out onto the porch, or just pausing and not jumping to what is familiar and easy.

Here are a few examples of the real courage I’ve seen recently.

A friend had the courage to show up at a small outdoor celebration despite his severe anxiety. I was so happy to see him but quickly realized it was hard for him to be in the open backyard with a few vaccinated, close friends. He sat on the outskirts of the circle near the gate, not moving from his chair. The look on his face conveyed his distress, barely smiling, eyes averted, he mostly listened to the conversation and left after a short time. The stress of this year had taken a toll on him, and it may take time, gentleness, and easing back in with small steps for him to find his way back.

I've talked to many people who are similarly anxious or, like me, just worried about socializing. As much as we are excited to be with people again, we don't know if we will remember how to make small talk, or share a joke, or have the emotional bandwidth to remain engaged in someone else's story. We fear embarrassment, and we fear being rude to others too. I don't want my wimpy social skills to make you think I don't care about you! But I'm still not as good at conversation as I was a year ago. And a sustained conversation can be downright exhausting. 

Experts counsel us to take our time and ease back in. There's no rush. Begin re-integrating socially with a small group for a short time period, increasing group size and duration as tolerance grows. Practice in short social moments like the grocery checkout. My confidence was boosted when I had a random and positive two-minute exchange with a group of young guys when I was cross-country skiing several weeks ago. After the exertion, experts recommend rewarding yourself for the effort.

Keep in mind that many people will also need to take such gradual steps professionally to ease their nervous systems back into regular presence with others at work. Some of us will benefit from counseling to work our way through this experience too.  

This process will take courage and it will help if we normalize this, talk about it, post about it, remind each other that this re-adjustment is to be expected. We have after all been sequestered for more than a year. We can support each other, family, friends, colleagues with loving-kindness and understanding as we remember how to engage, rebuild social muscles, restore our ability to be in the presence of others, and increase our capacity to hold mental and emotional space for each other. This is what courage looks like right now.

Courage is taking other forms as well...

It takes courage for a team member to say, "I'm leaving. This is not the work I want to do anymore." The pandemic and the year of racial reckoning have clarified priorities for many. People are making choices to align their lives and work with their values more than ever. And many more will if their organizations don’t begin to honor those same values. It takes courage to separate and embark on a new path.

It takes courage for a leader to suspend their assumptions about when and how their team will return to the office. Instead, they can show the courage to trust team members, listening to their needs and concerns, their hopes and preferences for their new way of working, and a return-to-work plan co-designed and -created with respect, empathy, and creativity. 

It takes courage for a manager to remind her organization that they can't "just go back" to business 2019-style. We’ve all changed and there’s no going back. At least not if we want to thrive. We’ve learned things we didn’t know before. We like to walk the dog at 10:30 a.m. and the dog likes it too. We hate that commute more than life itself. And we now know we don’t have to make that commute, at least not every day. We know remote work is possible, we have collectively proven it for innumerable occupations that never before had “been allowed” to work from home, even though for years employees were asking for flexible options that many leaders said were just not possible.

But we all managed to figure it out, working under intensive fear and stress, either suffering from isolation or cooped up with family or housemates. We’ve worked sitting on the bed or at the dining room table, perhaps monitoring kids in online school or communicating with aging parents in isolation via iPad. Now we are ready to take the best of remote, hybrid, flexible work, and try it without the pandemic stress, struggles, and suffering.

We know many people can and will choose to work from almost anywhere. This means organizations are competing with many more employers for employees. And that means it will be imperative to retain employees to listening to what they want and need, engage them in co-designing their new work and teams and embrace a more human-friendly approach to work.

Worried about culture? Of course, we have to find new ways to create culture. But if we figured out how to work remotely with so much stress, surely now we can figure out how to create an engaging, human values-focused culture without forcing people into work lives they don’t want. So many teams will have members who are only occasionally in the office and rarely all together. Not sure how to create culture? What an intriguing challenge! Let’s seize this moment to engage our teams to co-design the culture they want to work in. We have the collective motivation to make the work experience we are coming into more human, loving, and meaningful than the work experience we left in March of 2020.

What does courage look like? The courage to co-create a new loving and more human future in which to work.

Take a deep breath. Let’s get started!

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If you or someone you know are in danger of self-harm, please call 911, or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255 Or text “HOME” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741

Remember, if you are struggling, please know you are not alone.

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Looking for support for co-designing the new future with your team? Our Human Culture Design and Integration Workshops guide teams through this process with fun, inspiration, creativity, and a solid workplace model. Reach out to learn more.