Where courage comes from.

When I posted the article “When bravery outruns capacity”, about the immense challenges I have personally faced these last five months, I made a very deliberate choice. I made the choice to express my authenticity, to reveal my learning, my struggles, the rawness of my emotion and my empathy for others.

I have to admit that I was overwhelmed with gratitude by your responses and comments. I told my truth, and many of you helped me celebrate that vulnerability. Through these  encouraging and supportive comments, I felt seen in my intentions to help others and to lead, and boy do I appreciate it.

Amongst your comments four words kept coming up: empathy, vulnerability, resilience and courage. The one that really stood out to me was courage. It made me wonder, why is it that this post was seen as courageous? And where is it that courage comes from? 

When I think of courage I think of more grandiose examples of people standing up against the tide of popular opinion, the people who I see as speaking their truth to power. I think of people like Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Katherine Gun. 

There is however one example of courage that I am incredibly drawn to and that is the story of Sophia Scholl (inset in the image above) and her selfless bravery in the name of truth. We posted about Sophia back in February this year, a largely unknown German student driven by her moral cause to rise up against the tyranny of the Nazi Party. A fearless act of selfless bravery and courage that cost her her life at just 21 years of age.

I like telling her story because it's a story rarely told about a young woman who without a public life or a public voice, did everything she could to stir others into action, to bring power to her truth. Whilst it might be argued she played a small role in informing the German public about the genocide and murder of innocent civilians, she did so by risking her life, which was the enormous price to pay and a risk she accepted in the name of this truth. 

This is an important story because of its authenticity and intention. There was no fame or notoriety to be gained by her actions which were carried out with her friends in secret. There was just cause, truth and an awful lot of risk. To me, this is where courage is found, where it can exist free of ego and in the purity of its authentic intention.

So where does such courage come from? Interestingly the word courage comes from the latin root “cor” which means heart. I think Sophia is such a wonderful example of pure heart. I also found that Simon Sinek has some clarifying and slightly different perspectives on the topic. In this video, he says that courage is external, an external expression and a response to external circumstance. He talks about trust and gives an excellent example of how the Israeli Army keeps teams together in their reserve from the age of 18, a deliberate choice to ensure the bond and trust amongst these soldiers. It’s a way of ensuring their combined resilience to challenge, a strengthened resolve in their togetherness.

It would seem that this strength that comes from trust is the birthplace of brave acts. Many heroes Sinek has interviewed have remarked on their choice for courage and that the reason was often “because they would do the same for me”. The other thing that is said about courage is that when we want to speak our truth to power, we have to lean into the discomfort and fear of judgment of others and ensure that our message is right in its authentic intention. This is reinforced by the example of Sophia and the notion of heart. 

Being courageous isn't always enough. We need to maintain the resilience that fuels courage in the face of our obstacles. This does not mean being rigid, but instead our resilience provides us with a platform from which we can easily adapt to changing circumstances. After all, a pillow can be resilient to a wrecking ball.

Importantly, Sinek also highlights that when people do great things they are seldom or hardly ever alone and neither am I.

I find my own resilience and strength because I also do not work alone, nor do I publish without checking my content with my team. I completely trust my team. I trust that they care for me and I trust that they would not allow me to run risks that pose a danger to me or us. It is our bond, and our common understanding about our common capacity for reason, care and the outcomes we all seek that provides strength and allows the speaking of truth to power.

It is because of my team that I am becoming more and more able to share my authentic self, without shame or fear of judgment (well, less of it), that I am leaning into the incredible discomfort of speaking my truth and that I am doing it to be of service to others.

Of course I worry about what people think of me, I get concerned about how I am perceived  and I do a lot of thinking about my drivers; am I being authentic? Am I being egoic? Am I looking for acceptance? Or, am I genuinely trying to help others?

What's powerful and necessary is that I can ask these hard questions of myself but most importantly I can ask them of my team directly and I know what I will get back is their truth, their loving honesty and feedback. 

They fully understand my intentions, my values and what I am setting out to achieve and they have full license to correct me and challenge me. We have absolute collaborative clarity, strength and resilience because they know I want to hear what they have to say, I value their input and I actively seek it. (I know it drives them a little crazy at times, but I can own that).

So here is my view on where courage truly comes from. It comes from our heart, our passions, our purpose, our intentions, our truths, but rarely does our truth get to power without “our people”.

To me this feels like such an important question to ask ourselves in our businesses at this specific moment in time. Can we have direct conversations with our teams? Are we open to receiving the direct feedback and acting on it? And do we have the collective strength and resilience to weather the uncertainty of our time through our truth?

In this challenging and changing landscape the strength and resilience of any business and its ability to succeed must be built on such trust. Trust comes from speaking our truths and being open to each other's truths so that we can all grow in our capability to anticipate and respond to change. 

Courage then is found in the authenticity of our enquiry, the questions we ask of ourselves, we ask each other and our propensity to trust and act upon the feedback we give each other. 

At times of crisis and challenge, when the fear of judgement is heightened amongst our people we must lean in, ask the direct questions, invite the direct feedback, and take direction and action. What we must not do is demand and power over people when they are already vulnerable. This is cultural toxicity at the best of economic times, it destroys the necessary unity and weakens the collective resolve. It destroys businesses. 

I want to remind you in this exploration of courage, that strength of any nature, particularly collective strength, comes from the heart of our teams, their trust in each other and their leaders and their ability and permission to be seen, and authentically heard. Change is an inside job, it happens inside of us, and it turns out we are in fact better at it together.

If you subscribe to the view that what gets measured gets done, check out our Collective Resilience Monitor that helps you measure and put resilience to work.