Creating a Courageous Culture
If you’re a growth-oriented and innovative company then courage should definitely be a part of your culture. It takes guts to be different, to challenge the status quo and to set BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) for your company!
To execute and navigate through unknown territory takes courage and it’s not enough for the leader to be courageous. Courage needs to be woven through the organization.
Show Courage as a Leader
Like most things, courage will require you as a leader setting an example for your team. My old coach Lindsay used to always say “Leaders get the behaviours they display or tolerate.” So how can you be an example of courage? Courage as a leader isn’t necessarily about control or leading the charge. In fact, courage as a leader shows up when you push yourself outside of your comfort zone. When you’re vulnerable by putting yourself out there on social media for example. It’s being courageous enough to admit to the team when you’ve made the wrong strategic move or when you’ve jumped the gun and made assumptions about behaviour that was incorrect. It takes courage to stand by your core values even when it means taking a financial hit! I can tell you from personal experience that it takes courage to terminate an employee who was a million-dollar producer because they were no longer the right culture fit for our organization!
Define How it Shows Up & How it Doesn’t
I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on this. It’s important to give your teams examples of how courage shows up in your culture. What it looks like and what it doesn’t look like.
For example, you could say that courage shows up by:
- Stepping up and taking on a role outside of your comfort zone.
- Speaking your truth if a client, colleague, or boss says something that is immoral.
- Consistently showing up to conquer your sales activities during COVID each week.
- Having a courageous conversation with a client, colleague, or boss that may be uncomfortable but is done so with the intention of improving the situation.
- Accepting coaching and direction.
- Saying “I’m sorry.”
Here’s what it doesn’t look like:
- Telling someone off because you’re upset and want to give them a piece of your mind.
- Steamrolling over everyone in a meeting to get your point across.
- Saying whatever is on your mind regardless of what others may think.
You get the idea! When you ask your team to show up in a courageous way, you must set them up for success with what that means. Ask the team for their input on what courage looks like and, better yet, develop the ways you want it to show up and don’t want it to show up as a team!
As leaders, we build confidence in our team members by providing boundaries as well as ways for them to stretch outside of the norm and develop that courage muscle. When they do show courage, be sure to celebrate it!
Celebrating Courage
So you’ve instilled a courageous culture and people are stepping up to the plate - awesome! Now be sure to celebrate this as a win. How do you go about that?
- Give verbal kudos at your weekly meeting. Make sure that you honour that team member who displayed courage and briefly describe what they did.
- Give written kudos in your monthly leadership letter or as a team memo. Make sure it’s clear to the team why the person is being honoured and what they did that supported the organization for the better by displaying courage.
- Give them praise privately and explain to them why you’re so proud of them for being courageous.
We’ve been encouraging our team members to challenge the status quo. If we’re meeting and 9 out of 10 people love an idea and you don’t, then speak up! We recently had a team member challenge a tactical move that seemed like a terrific idea until she voiced her opinion. When we saw her side and rationalization, it made a whole lot of sense and saved us from derailing our success! As leaders, we need to be brave enough to stay open and ask other people “What am I not seeing here?”
When we honour our team for being courageous, we reinforce courage and it becomes the fabric of our being! Courageous teams get ahead!
How will you display courage as a leader today?
