We are living in an extraordinary time. As I write this, in October 2020, Covid-19 continues its global devastation of individual lives and entire communities, and protests about police brutality and systemic racial injustice are ongoing in cities across the United States and around the world. Amid this pain and despair, we’re also witnessing acts of true courage, from health-care providers speaking out about unsafe or unacceptable working conditions, retail clerks trying to enforce safety standards that those above them won’t, or people of color demanding change in their organizations and beyond.1
Though current events make the need for courage more obvious than ever, I committed to writing this book more than a decade ago. Around 2008, I began ending my courses with students and professionals with a short wrap-up lecture. Then I said: “If we had more time, there are many more tools I could have shared to add to your toolkit. But here’s the thing: in the end, I don’t believe the range of one’s toolkit is the primary differentiator between better and worse leadership. What I think matters much more is the courage to use those tools when needed.”
Then I’d give a few examples of workplace courage and share why I thought it was desperately needed for all of us to become examples for others. Not one student, then or since, said they worked in an environment where courageous behaviors weren’t critical or that they always happened when they should. Aspire as we might, there are as of yet few (if any) truly “fearless organizations.”2 So I’d implore them to go out and make the world a better place, to do something courageous and report back so I could update my final speech with their stories.
Here’s what has consistently happened since. People write me weeks, months, and even years after hearing these remarks to ask for resources on the topic because they need help preparing for a difficult conversation, engaging with an issue they’ve been avoiding, or pursuing what they know is important but fraught with risk.
That’s why I’ve spent the last few years reading everything I could about courage—and courage in workplaces more specifically—and collecting my own data from thousands of people in different investigations of workplace courage. I didn’t just want to add my voice to the cacophony of others just “encouraging courage” with no concrete road map or advice; I wanted to add something meaningful to the dialogue for those who know they should and would like to act more courageously. This book represents my attempt to distill everything I’ve learned into a research-based but highly accessible guide for those I’ve had the privilege of working with in person and the many more I’ve yet to meet. I was truly inspired by the incredible stories I’ve been told, and I want to share them with others.
Truth be told, I also needed these stories in a way I can only now articulate. I grew up in a relatively poor, single-parent family in a nondescript Midwestern city. I often felt impotent, knowing that my life wasn’t what I wanted it to be but unable as a kid to do much about it. Perhaps most depressingly, when I looked around for inspiration, it was often lacking. Adults, too, including those in positions of authority, seemed too often to be (to use Thoreau’s words) “living lives of quiet desperation” rather than competently and courageously charting a better future for themselves and others. All these years later, I’m still disheartened and angered by the lack of courageous action by leaders and non-leaders alike. I just can’t stand the idea that we’d be so willing to give up our agency, authenticity, and moral calling for whatever it is we get in return.
We all have fairly regular opportunities to act in courageous ways, to undertake actions that we or others perceive to be worthy or noble despite the risks the behavior entails. Worker safety or working conditions certainly weren’t perfect before Covid-19, and we were far from a world where people could expect the same treatment at work and elsewhere regardless of their skin color, gender, or other demographic or identity characteristics. What’s so unfortunate is that we’ve largely accepted the notion that courageous action is only to be expected from extraordinary people in extraordinary situations.
This book presents a challenge to the idea that courage is the province and responsibility of the few. I’ll share why I believe that courage, especially courageous acts done competently enough to create positive change, isn’t innate. We don’t believe that only some of us are born with the capacity to be virtuous in other ways—such as by being honest, fair, or prudent—or expect these kinds of behavior only once in a great while, so why would we expect that only some of us have the capacity for courageous action?
My goals in writing this are to urge you to accept the need for courageous action as your responsibility too and to understand that competent courage comes from the choices you can make to learn and repeatedly practice specific skills (just like competence in any domain does). And I want to help you more frequently choose to act during everyday opportunities to step up or speak out at work, rather than letting your fears hold you back.
I also want to help you understand that courage isn’t just about the spectacular, rare acts that make headlines or get one labeled Time’s Person of the Year.3 It’s about all kinds of behaviors that are desperately needed in organizations if individuals and organizations are going to learn, be healthy, and thrive.
If you want to do more to protect others at work—whether colleagues, subordinates, or customers—who are powerless and often ignored, taken advantage of, or discriminated against, this book is for you.
If you want to do more to solve important problems at work, whether they be inefficiencies that waste time or money, internal processes that sap morale, or product or service choices that lead to dissatisfaction among current customers and inability to attract new ones, this book is for you.
If you want to pursue opportunities more frequently, whether that means taking “stretch assignments” that might increase your impact and satisfaction or pursuing work in a different organization that better fits your talents and values, this book is for you. Likewise, this book is for you if you want to be the person bold enough to lead your organization into new markets or new lines of business or to make other decisions that allow your organization to better fulfill its mission.
And if you want to get better at innovating, whether that be conducting and implementing small experiments in parts of an organization, developing and launching new products, or creating new processes that allow your organization to radically improve, this book is for you.
We know that we desperately need more of these behaviors. When we don’t step up to protect others, we allow continued abuse and discrimination toward our colleagues and harm to our customers (think of Wells Fargo or Volkswagen).4 When we don’t step up to solve problems or pursue opportunities, we contribute to the likelihood of organizational failures and the statistics showing that only about one-third of American employees are highly engaged at work.5 And when we don’t have the courage to innovate, we increase the odds that we and our organizations will join the millions that have been leapfrogged by nimbler upstarts and those more prepared to thrive in a rapidly evolving digital world. Thus, the question isn’t whether these everyday opportunities for courage are important. The question is whether you’ll embrace more of them.
But to be clear, this book is not a call to organizational martyrdom. I’m not encouraging everyone who reads it to be prepared to lose their job, their friends, or their health every time they spot a problem or an opportunity at work. It’s not a call to shoot from the hip or make yourself vulnerable the second you have a strong emotion or an idea. Instead, I’m encouraging you to consider courageous action as something that can be done more or less competently, where competence means you increase the chances of actually accomplishing something positive and decrease the likelihood of negative personal consequences.
The people whose stories I share throughout this book have chosen courage. Their accounts provide inspiration, but also clarify that competent courage is about perspiration. To choose competent courage is to accept not just the responsibility to act, but the obligation to learn and continuously practice the skills that increase your chance of creating positive outcomes for yourself and others.
If you’re ready to choose that path and be inspired along the way by the incredible people you’ll meet, then this book is for you.