How to Fill Your Team with Courage
Courage is the willingness and resolve to act when outcomes are uncertain. Everyone needs courage because we live in turbulent, changing times.
Nothing good gets done without courage.
Powerful leaders encourage – fill with courage – so that others can press through their fears. Fear pulls back; courage pushes forward.
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” Anais Nin
Leaders who fill others with courage always go further than those who don’t. Any fool can make others afraid. It takes real leadership to fill others with courage.
Model courage by:
- Occasionally express concerns – frequently focus on opportunity, potential, and vision.
- Expressing confidence in the team’s talents, abilities, and performance.
- Standing with your team when it hits the fan.
Go beyond modeling courage to encouraging. Fill with courage by:
- Speaking calmly and clearly during tension and stress.
- Focusing on people before projects. Standing with not above encourages.
- Lifting up after a failure rather than beating down. Stand behind.
- Keeping the big picture front and center.
Developing your encouragement muscle by:
- Making their team your team. No one trusts you when you’re in it for yourself.
- Speaking to fears rather than symptoms. When others pull back – the symptom – look for root causes.
- Correcting less and coaching more.
- Stepping in when others pull back. Self-protective, cowardly leaders assign risks to others.
Bonus: Fill others with courage by having fun. Work-only-leaders don’t build up they drag down. Lift up by lightening up. Good humor powerfully expresses courage as long as it’s not perceived as being out of touch or hiding from the truth.
How can leaders fill others with courage?
What encourages you?
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Dear Dan,
Fear pulls back, courage pushes forward. What is powerful idea. Stand behind is even more powerful. Courageous leaders stand behind when everyone surrender. That is leadership. Courage shows hope even in hopeless situations. Courage is force with strong determination. Courage is like ship that surges against tide in the ocean. Leaders who take courage make scenario analysis. They calculate the situations and take risks. Others blindly take foolish step, and claim to have taken risk. I think, leaders can fill others with courage by their own journey, effort and being truthful. Leaders are examples for others. Actions with good intention encourages me. Fighting spirit against odd circumstances encourages me. Making effort with strong belief encourages me. Leadership is about belief. Stronger the belief, stronger the courage and vice versa. Leaders should concerned about others. Today, organizations suffer because of manipulators. They do everything to protect their position while doing almost everything unethical. Real and authentic leaders convey truth to people. They encourage to face and fight circumstances and they stand behind.
Dear Ajay,
Hidden away in the middle of your insightful comment is an essential component of courage that I let out — Analysis.
Courage without analysis is brash, foolish, egocentric, and dangerous. It takes courage to step back and evaluate the situation.
Thank you for extending the conversation.
Best to you,
Dan
Great post Dan.
I believe Courage is more than a flash of bravery or a heroic moment. It is the steady commitment to make it happen day after day. Courage is not always a matter of uncertanty. Sometmes we know what the outcome will be, and we push forward anyways because it is the right thing to do for ourselves, our team, or our values.
“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”
HARPER LEE, as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird
Thank you for you steady commitment to sharing with us every day.
Joan
Joan,
Thank you for an encouraging word! It’s always a delight to find you here.
Thank you for brining up the heroism of steady, consistent performance! It’s easy to cut and run. Courage is steady.
You have my best,
Dan, it is always a pleasure to pop into the Leadership Freak Site and catch a few workds of wisdom.
Thanks for all you do for all of us!
Dan, what a lovely post – thank you! I would add that the root of the word “courage” is the French “coeur,” or “heart.” To have courage is to have heart. To be courageous, brave, is to show up with an open heart. To be curious. And to act. To be willing to show up and be open, to ask, What happens next? To suspend judgment and really experience What’s happening now?
And so to encourage, to fill others with courage, is to make it safe for them to show up with open hearts.
Something I learn over and over again. 🙂
Hi Susan,
Your connection between courage and curiosity is powerful. It takes courage to be curious… because curiosity can make us look like we don’t know. It takes courage not to know.
Thank you for your insightful comment.
Best,
Dan
A good interesting post. Liked your bold statement,’Powerful leaders encourage- fill with courage’. The crux remains that good leaders always try to take the team along, support them during crisis/uncertainties and provide the right good motivation to focus on their goals with perseverance. The moral support is what gets liked by the team of followers and such act adds to the bonding of oneness with much needed loyalty during the difficult times.
For me, encouragement means the timely required support, good appreciation for the progress made, and overall guidance with positivity for me to excel with creativity and the team support.
Dr. Asher,
Thank you for sharing your insights and the things that encourage you…
1. support
2. appreciation
3. guidance w/positivity
The addition of positivity to guidance is profound. Anyone can correct, point out wrong, identify deficiencies… but those activities generally don’t encourage. It takes positivity.
You have my best,
Dan
Reblogged this on Jots & Thoughts and commented:
These statements struck hit a nerve for me: “Any fool can make others afraid. It takes real leadership to fill others with courage” and “Focusing on people before projects. Standing with not above encourages.”
Reblogged this on LEAD PRIDE and commented:
Teaching courage as a leadership skill can be tough. I found the following blog this morning that really gives a great synopsis of what we all should be doing when it comes to courage….teaching it and instilling it.
Reblogged this on my world my life (: and commented:
Good leaders are not easy to find. With a throat cutting society, survival is placed priority ! I have met many leaders, but there are not much leaders who want to see others succeed.
Singapore is a society where leaders are busy filling their pockets so that they stand the chance of surviving. But they forget the basic, if it was not because of their supporters, they would have not become leaders today!
Another terrific post, Dan!
Yes, even in the 18th Centruy, Addison and Steele argued that the “great Point of Honour in Men is Courage, and in Women Chastity.”
I don;’t know that much has changed in nearly 300 years, and agree that a team’s courage can be influenced by leadership that communicates a bold and inspiring vision instead of merely criticisms…
And it is not only in a leaders words, but in his or her actions that the team can find courage and emulate the courageous attitudes and acts they witness…