CHAPTER 12

THE CALL FOR COURAGE

Every day, I’m out there speaking to leadership development executives and hearing about the behaviors leaders need to move their companies forward. Leadership development professionals have the tough job of aligning the company’s goals with the skills that leaders must develop to be successful at those goals. It’s not enough to roll out a corporate plan to innovate, for example. Leaders have to behave in ways that drive innovation.

Increasingly, courage is a topic in these conversations. I hear how leaders need the wherewithal to make tough calls, have uncomfortable conversations, and exhibit the courage of their convictions. Terms like “leadership courage” or “managerial courage” come up. There’s a loud and clear desire—even a hunger—for leaders who can withstand the rigors of the job and show the kind of character that engenders followership.

We all want people we can believe in—even more so in times of uncertainty.

As we wrap up this section on purpose, and an entire book on inspiration, courage seems like just the right anchor topic. Many behaviors found in inspiring leadership require courage. Inspiring leaders have to go off the worn path, which takes courage. Inspiring conversations require much more of us intellectually and emotionally. They too take courage. We admire courage in others. We know it’s the harder path. We can see the effort required. We get that it takes guts.

Being willing to be in conversations around purpose, both with others and within ourselves, requires us to make courageous choices. Leading a purpose-driven life doesn’t happen by accident. We have to make decisions and act in ways that support our purpose. This brings to mind the adage, if you stand for nothing you’ll fall for anything. While we need openmindedness in our leaders, we don’t want to see them act like a reed in the wind. These two concepts work in concert. Opening our minds allows us to determine what really matters. There’s a time when standing firm shows others, and even ourselves, what we care about. Our choices bring our purpose in sharp relief.

COURAGE IN ALL ITS FORMS

No matter what kind of organization you work for, it’s not hard to conjure up a number of scenarios that take courage. Some jobs are defined by it. Consider leaders driving change or turning a company around. It can feel as if there are battles at every turn—from the culture, the market, investors, or stubborn individuals with heels dug deep.

Courage can seem like a lofty concept, or even a platitude. But it’s conveyed by small, everyday choices. Even large courageous moves typically begin as discrete, defined decisions. Think of any major courageous figure in history. Now think of that person’s most notable act. You can map that action back to a series of smaller decisions. Rosa Parks became a Civil Rights figure because she made a decision at the end of a long day to refuse to give up her seat. Malala Yousafzai is now bravely inspiring an effort for girls’ education, but she first chose to board a bus to attend school, despite the risks.

Now I’m not trying to suggest that to be courageous we have to rise to the level of cultural heroes! But I do want to make the point that courage isn’t an abstraction. It’s a series of decisions that we believe are right, even if they’re tough. These decisions underscore our individual purpose or a greater purpose.

Consider a client of mine, a CEO who was relatively new to his position. He was deciding if he should alert his board to a potential risk he’d discovered around product development. At the time, it was only a possibility, and one that he hoped to head off through management changes. The situation didn’t rise to the level of fiduciary responsibility that required disclosure. He was still establishing himself, and raising red flags felt like a dicey proposition that could undermine his credibility as a problem solver. In the end, his higher value was around transparency and he decided to give the board a heads-up. The issue never came to pass, but he still believed it was the right move. As he put it, “I needed to be able to look at myself in the mirror.”

Courageous actions are rarely comfortable and our instincts may tell us to resist. In fact, courage and comfort are often in direct conflict. An insightful workshop participant once quipped to me, “Just because something is uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It simply means it’s uncomfortable.”

It can be helpful to break down the different kinds of courageous behaviors—leadership or otherwise—that we may show. On any given day, we can find opportunities for most of these actions. Bill Treasurer, author of Courage Goes to Work, outlines three different types of courage.

Try Courage: the courage to take the initiative, attempt new things, take risks.

Trust Courage: the courage to have faith in others, let go of the need to overly control situations, be open to change.

Tell Courage: the courage to voice concerns, provide tough feedback, assert an unpopular viewpoint, speak truth to power.¹

As you can see, many of the themes in the book fall within these categories of courage. Certainly deciding to have an Inspire Path conversation can require some serious TRY courage. Hey, just turning off your phone to be completely present can require it!

YOUR LEADERSHIP SHADOW IS SHOWING

In leadership circles, there’s a concept called a leadership shadow. It’s the idea that the leader’s values, style, and actions cast a large shadow of influence on those around him. A leader’s shadow can be broad, with influence felt throughout the organization. You could argue that the higher a leader sits, the wider her shadow.

The shadow is something that’s more felt than forced. A leader wouldn’t say, “Speak like I do.” But you see workers adopt the language of their leaders all the time. People within the same organization tend to communicate in a like manner, use the same buzzwords, run meetings and negotiate similarly, and value the same behaviors. We talked about the impact of role models in Chapter 11. Role modeling plays a significant role in setting any organization’s culture. And the role models with the greatest influence are, by far, the leaders.

Leaders can eloquently say what they care about, but the shadow is determined more by the choices they make. People throughout the organization are paying attention to what the leader prioritizes: the decisions made, the actions taken, the discussions elevated. All too often, the actions are undertaken haphazardly or accidentally. But when a leader’s actions can be made in alignment with her purpose, the message sent is exquisitely clear. The actions are made with conviction, and with eyes wide open.

Even the most courageous actions gain certitude the closer they get to our purpose.

SAYING NO AND SAYING YES

In 2015, the outdoor sporting goods retailer REI did something crazy: it closed for Black Friday. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is one of the most lucrative shopping days of the year for U.S. retailers. We’ve all seen the videos of people lining up at 3:00 a.m. to elbow one another out of the way as they charge into stores for holiday deals. Black Friday is a critical day for REI, clocking in as one of its ten biggest sales day of the year.

But instead of gearing up, the 12,000 REI employees got the day off, and the stores went dark. The company encouraged its employees to #OptOutside and spend the day outdoors enjoying nature.

“What?” cried retail analysts. This seemed to most retail industry insiders to be a lunatic move. But the President and CEO of REI, Jerry Stritzke, explained it this way: “It’s an act where we’re really making a very clear statement about a set of values.”² REI’s purpose is to encourage healthy lifestyles. Black Friday, with its growing creep into the Thanksgiving holiday and promotion of mass consumerism, was the opposite.

Stritzke was honest to say that the decision wasn’t easy. To a retailer, closing on Black Friday is anathema to good business principles. But Stritzke was clear that this was a decision that the company believed in. REI publicized its decision and encouraged others to join in the #OptOutside movement. REI closed again for Black Friday 2016—and according to several media reports, while #OptOutside cost REI its Black Friday revenues, overall, profits have been up.

This example shows a truism about purpose: we can’t have it all. If we want to be for certain things, we will have to say “no” to certain other things. In the case of REI, saying no meant losing a significant revenue opportunity. But it was a way to say yes to the company’s—and leadership’s—purpose.

This is one reason that purpose and courage are so closely linked. To be purposeful, we need to make courageous choices. We have to say no to some things—like comfort, certainty, and other opportunities. Our purpose is defined as much by what we say no to as what we say yes to.

Have you ever been offered a job that, while seemingly great from a career standpoint, didn’t fit with your larger purpose for yourself? If so, you know how heavy that word no can feel to deliver. You realize you are giving something up to get something else. I’m reminded of a client who was on track to become the next CFO of his company. He decided instead to take his career on an operational path, requiring him to decline a promotion in finance in order to take a lateral position in operations to switch functional areas. The decision was hard. It was uncomfortable. It required courage. He was helped, however, by the smaller decisions he’d made in the prior year to test out his operational chops by getting more involved in that side of the business.

But of course, courage can also be about what we say yes to, and how we carry our purpose through our presence. Atif Rafiq is the first Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of McDonald’s, and among the first CDOs in the Fortune 500.³ In joining McDonald’s, Atif took on a big mandate: to transform the global giant into a leader in using technology to enhance the customer experience. Atif came to the traditional business of McDonald’s from the anything-but-traditional Silicon Valley, with a career built in companies like Amazon, Yahoo, and AOL.

To make such a dramatic move, knowing the passion and fortitude it would take to reinvent how customers interacted with an icon like McDonald’s, required a big personal yes. The opportunity felt like a contrarian bet—few would consider a company like McDonald’s as a place where technology could become central to growth strategy. Yet that’s exactly what Atif believed. Having seen disruptors like Uber and Airbnb demonstrate how quickly the world could change, he could see McDonald’s leadership around one of its core value propositions—convenience—being challenged and redefined by trends in mobile, location awareness, and big data.

Atif jumped on board, considering it a “smart risk to blaze a new trail.” He explains: “Original thinking requires focus on what will be, not just what things have been.”⁴

Once he entered the company, he quickly realized that he needed to apply his deep tech experience to open the sixty-year-old company to new ways to say yes—even to things no one had even imagined. Embracing this role, Atif showed others what he knew to be possible. To do this, he needed to believe in his purpose so greatly, even when met with resistance, that he embodied change.

Atif began by encouraging new thinking, supplementing his team with digital natives who had a bias for action and a “why not?” perspective. He structured his team to move quickly. Intentionally using his presence to embody change, even in small ways, Atif dressed in jeans, and asked his team to do the same, eventually helping to incite a companywide relaxation of the dress code.

When Apple was preparing to release Apple Pay, the McDonald’s digital team spearheaded an effort to be founding partners, bringing various groups together within days to finalize details. Atif and his team were just getting started, driving exploration of everything from drones to virtual reality. At SXSW, the annual gathering that highlights the newest and hippest of entertainment, interactive media and film, McDonald’s made a big splash showcasing a virtual reality–based Happy Meal experience.

At every opportunity, Atif showed McDonald’s how technology would enhance the business, putting tools into the hands of decision-makers to expand their view of the sheer possibilities of digital. He did this all with a clear guiding purpose, describing it this way: “I look at my job as an instigator of new thinking, because that’s where all new actions begin. It’s easy to say something can’t be done, especially at a large company like McDonald’s. My job is to produce a customer experience that’s more convenient and fun than anyone had thought possible. I have to believe in this purpose—and show that belief—in every interaction.”⁵

Whatever courageous actions we take—saying yes, no, or staying put—we shouldn’t forget that what might feel like a solitary decision to us can impact others. We might not know we’re inspiring at the time when we’re doing it. Remember mood contagion: We are transmitting energy that others are tuning into. Eyes are watching. If we’re in a leadership position, lots of eyes. We’re revealing data about our own purpose, and inspiring others to consider their own.

There’s a quirky, grainy smartphone video on the Internet that made the rounds a few years ago. It’s of a single guy dancing at an outdoor music festival. He’s dancing alone, eyes closed, entranced, and looks a bit crazy or at least aided by serious pharmacology. You can hear people laughing at him in the background. Then another person joins him, and then a couple more. Finally, he’s dancing with the crowd, all sharing the moment, freely enjoying the music. That one crazy guy inspired a movement.

This is what inspirational courage can feel like. Someone makes a decision based on individual purpose, and takes a bold move, even if it’s hard. Others see it. Inspiration catches. One leader’s shadow provides room for many people to, so to speak, join the dance.

COURAGE TO HAVE HONEST CONVERSATIONS

Situational and experiential courage is a complex topic to turn into actionable behaviors. In this section, rather than offer a courage prescription, I’ll outline the courageous moves that come up repeatedly in coaching conversations, in feedback sessions for leaders, and in discussions with companies about core competencies they want to develop. My guess is they will be similar to what you’ve experienced because they are nearly universal. Are these courageous moves you would like to see more of in your leaders—professional, community, political? How about in yourself?

Few of us like to have difficult conversations. They require so much more of us than the typical banter that drives our days: “How are you?” “Fine.” Yet, we yearn for them across many settings in our lives. As we discussed in Chapter 1, we are hungry for honest, straightforward connection. That can only happen in conversation, when we’re saying what we mean.

Leaders who don’t have honest conversations wreak havoc on those around them. Conflicts go unaddressed. Problems fester. Disenchantment sets in. I hear frequent laments about how a leader can’t handle conflict. When I press further, it usually comes down to an unwillingness to have honest conversations. Many people would rather spend months plotting a passive-aggressive counteroffensive than having one straightforward discussion.

When we have honest conversations, whether to inspire, guide, or reprimand, we show that courageous communication is prioritized. We encourage open talk around us, where support, candor, and productive disagreement are valued. We role model how to push through personal discomfort for a greater benefit.

COURAGE TO PRIORITIZE PURPOSE

There’s a growing movement within organizations to be more than a place to labor for eight or more hours each day. This is deeper and more meaningful than the 2000s-era concept of providing catered meals and Foosball tables to make work seem less like work. People want their work to have personal meaning, and younger workers especially have shown that they are willing to move around to find it.

We see it in the fact that every large company now has a sustainability executive. Talent development staffs are building programs that address the whole person. After a loud public discussion around work/life balance, we’ve moved into one about growth and well-being.

In too many companies, however, there’s more talking than doing. Workers need their leaders to show how to prioritize their own sense of purpose. They want to see courageous moves from those at the top. When Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg announced that she was leaving at 5:00 p.m. every day to have dinner with her family, she was overwhelmed by the gratitude of others who valued her openly displayed priorities. I’ve heard many parents, outside of Facebook and in very traditional industries, say that Sandberg’s outspokenness has empowered them to do the same.

When we see people around us openly prioritizing their higher callings in their lives, their careers, or their passions, it opens our own minds about what’s possible for ourselves.

COURAGE TO BE REAL

As we’ve discussed, people have an intense desire to know their leaders on a personal level. We are comforted when we’re addressed as real people, in an authentic manner. Companies set up various methods to make leaders feel more accessible—blogs, video chats, town hall meetings, and social media accounts. But what really makes the message land is how real the leader is when speaking.

There are opportunities for all of us, every day, to choose to be real or not. When we admit our mistakes, show vulnerability, use emotion, or talk to others from the heart, we’re making that choice. Inspire Path conversations require authenticity. And authenticity takes courage.

People want less artifice and watertight polish. The more of ourselves we can show, the greater our chance of connecting.

COURAGE TO LEAD BY VALUES

I’ll often hear a frustration that workers don’t know what their leader stands for. She seems to be subject to board whims, or takes the path of least resistance. Some people lament that a leader appeases so many divergent personalities that it’s impossible to know what’s real and what’s spin. Many workers have been numbed by years spent in organizations that prioritize financial results over any other measure, and they view themselves as dispensable cogs.

On the other hand, I’ve seen value-driven leaders create a bubble of inspiration in the toughest companies. In touch with their own purpose and values, they are willing to have the hard conversations and make the tough calls. People always know what they stand for—even if they disagree. These leaders’ values are the true north to which others align.

Being this kind of leader requires the courage to understand what our values are. (Determining a Personal Presence Brand using the exercise in Chapter 4 is a good start.) But much harder, we need the guts to share them and act according to them. What we state aloud grows more real and actionable. We become accountable. I once worked with a leader who started each job by putting his top personal values up for his team so everyone knew them. Then he encouraged everyone to call him out any time he acted against those values. Talk about courage.

COURAGE TO JUMP

Remember VUCA from this book’s introduction? We live in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous times. Movement is imperative. Some leaders are adept at bobbing and weaving with agility, while others—fearful that any move will be wrong—have a rough time changing. Organizations crave leaders who have the courage to take risks, even when they aren’t 100 percent sure of the outcome. Yet, this may go against our very nature. We’ve learned to limit our risk to ensure success. That’s why courage is required.

One situation I see all the time: Everyone around the leader knows that a jump is required. They are waiting, waiting, waiting—dying for any change that will take the organization forward. The stasis is deadening. Eventually, the executive team peters out, one by one, all because the CEO won’t make a bold step that moves the organization ahead.

Organizations need leaders who can notice their own fear, manage it, and jump anyway.

COURAGE TO LET GO

Finally, we get to the courage to let go. This is related to the trust type of courage mentioned earlier. The work that so many of us do, with loose-knit groups of people across geographies and functions, requires an element of trust. We can guide, but we can’t control. We can inspire, but we can’t direct.

We could cite many examples of what it looks like to be scared or reluctant to let go. On a tactical level, you see this play out with flexible work arrangements. Many organizations can’t make them work because the leaders can’t let go of hands-on, in-the-office management. At a strategic level, you can see it with corporate change initiatives. Senior leadership announces the change, but cannot personally let go of business as usual, and so it fails.

Remember, for everything we say yes to, we are letting something else go to make room. That can feel in conflict to our very identity. We may equate letting go with giving up or with a lack of resolve. But don’t. Being able to trust, loosen the reins, or totally let go can be the height of bravery.

THE COURAGE TO WRITE THIS BOOK

Courageous moves can be necessary in some surprising places—even in the midst of positive opportunities. Here’s an honest admission: I had to marshal the courage to write this book. I marinated on the idea for years before deciding to put pen to paper, researching and circling around it. After I wrote a proposal and my agent shopped it to publishers, I was still not sure. It took me three days to return my agent’s voice mail saying she had good news. The book was literally calling to me but I had to force myself to answer.

More honesty: This book felt risky. It required vulnerability from me. It was different from my last book, which was written with a go-go-go energy that tapped into the popular notion of influence. It would have been easiest and safest to follow that book up with a similar message. But that flew in the face of what I consistently heard was desired and needed from our leaders. The ideas in this book had to venture outside the muscular ideal of a powerful, take-charge professional demeanor. This book needed to be written through a gentler, less transactional lens. I worried that would seem naïvely optimistic when there’s so much frustration and cynicism in our workplaces.

And I wrote it anyway.

It took all the types of courage just described: to be in honest conversations, to prioritize purpose, to lead by values, to be real, to jump, and to let go. I don’t know what will happen after people read it—only that, like any inspiration, it can’t be forced. Some may love it. Others may reject it. I believe that my purpose is to use what I see and hear in service to others. I know that we need more inspiration and that people are craving it within their organizations and in their lives. I hoped to demystify what it takes to be an inspirational person, guiding others along Inspire Path conversations. If I’m able to do that for a few people, then the courage was well spent.

For most of us, this is what courage looks like. We lean toward purpose, one decision at a time. We don’t have to inspire legions; we can do it more personally, singularly. We can’t know how far our shadow will encourage courageous actions in others. And that’s all okay.

We’re here, ourselves, with only what we possess.

Yet, we have everything we need.