When errors are made, show everyone how they can learn from them too. Remove ego and pride from your leadership style. Own up to your errors so that you can correct them. Demonstrate to your staff that you are strong enough to continue leading and turn errors into learning opportunities.
Businesses of all sizes need to be able to change direction on short notice. When you are faced with the need to change, you need to be courageous about taking the next step. You will be leading a workforce into unchartered territory, and you need to have the confidence to guide them. Weak leaders will doubt their choices, they will fear change, and they will worry.
Eventually, their employees will see this. If you cannot show your employees that you are fully behind your own changes, how can they get behind them? Courageous leaders establish higher standards for themselves and for their staff. As a leader, you need to set up personal standards for yourself to reach your full potential. By demonstrating this to your employees, you allow them to reach their full potential too. While you want to make sure that you leave your ego at the door, showcasing your ability is an important factor in becoming a courageous leader.
Employees want to know they are working with someone who is competent and capable of getting the job done. Showcasing your talents to your team energizes the workplace.
It shows people that they can trust in you and your work. It allows people to learn from your example and therefore be better at their roles as well. Sometimes, the most courageous thing a leader can do is to leave a toxic work environment. If you have done all that you can to lead a company to a better place, but still no one follows, it may be time to take your expertise elsewhere.
Courageous leadership sets the stage for progress and confidence. Get up to two months free on select dedicated workspace, plus a special offer on hybrid solutions. Nurturing strong and capable leaders is a top priority for organizations today. Research by the Center for Creative Leadership shows that firms committed to cultivating leadership talent experience:.
While there is a range of workplace competencies that characterize effective leadership , such as knowing how to give feedback and communicate organizational change , there are also key emotional traits and behaviors that professionals need to access and nurture in order to bring out the best in themselves and others. Among those traits is courage.
Courageous leaders are not cowed or intimidated. They realize that, in the midst of turbulence, there lies an extraordinary opportunity to grow and rise. If you want to guide your team with conviction and transform business challenges into opportunities for positive change, here are five characteristics of courageous leaders you should develop to unleash your potential and advance your career.
Authenticity is foundational to courageous leadership. Research also shows that organizations, which are comprised of leaders who are true to themselves, demonstrate improvements in both employee trust and performance. According to Koehn, the first step to becoming an authentic leader is to focus on self-improvement. Modic was not merely brash. She thought clearly about her goals and the circumstances surrounding her high-risk maneuver: the culture of the organization, her personal history and skills, and the points of view of others involved.
Modic decided that she could live with these odds: The upside for the bank was considerable, and for herself, she believed, even bad visibility was better than none. She took the plunge, and went on to an impressive career. Like many effective leaders, Modic succeeded by recognizing, early in her career, the advantages of careful risk calculation over impulsiveness.
The second component of the courage calculation addresses these questions: Just how important is it that you achieve your goal or goals? Will your career be derailed? Will you be able to look at yourself in the mirror? Does the situation call for immediate, high-profile action or something more nuanced and less risky?
Courage is not about squandering political capital on low-priority issues. To distinguish such squandering from constructive risk, John Hallenborg, a Los Angeles—based senior entertainment manager, assigns importance at three levels.
On the lowest rung of his risk-taking ladder are issues about which he does not feel strongly, though he may prefer a particular outcome and may say so in a low-risk situation. He perceives these as resting on morals or values for which he is willing to take a stand and fight. Spear-in-the-sand situations require that you weigh your belief in the cause against the risks involved.
Such situations are rare: They occur when negotiation is difficult or impossible, open minds are hard to find, and doing nothing is simply not an option. Peter Rost, a physician, formerly with Pfizer, drove his spear into the sand when he broke ranks with his employer by calling for legislation allowing the import of lower-priced medicines from Canada and elsewhere—a practice the U. He also put his job on the line in efforts to halt the sale of off-label drugs and the associated incentives for physicians.
Rost did not take on the pharmaceutical industry lightly, and the move cost him his career. But his convictions were too strong to ignore. People often assume that power in corporations is a simple matter of position on the organization chart.
In attempting to please those above them, many people choose never to take a stand. But in reality, even those in top management give power to anyone on whom they are dependent—whether for respect, advice, friendship, appreciation, or network affiliations. Seen this way, power is something over which we really do have considerable control.
By establishing relationships with and influencing those around you, for example, you gain sway over people who otherwise hold sway over you. This gives you a broader base from which to make bold moves. You can wisely form supportive power networks in advance, but building them takes time. In Jack Gallaway developed his power base as part of a courage calculation on behalf of Ramada. At the time, Gallaway was president of the Tropicana hotel and casino in Las Vegas, which Ramada owned.
But Gallaway believed that expansion in the booming Las Vegas market was critical. He decided to see what he could do by leveraging his external network: He contacted an executive with Mardian, a Phoenix-based real estate developer. Gallaway knew that Mardian was in the process of building a stadium in Las Vegas, and that the executive and other employees would need a place to stay while in town. When the Atlantic City operation opened in , Ramada was again in the black, and Gallaway made his move.
This component of the courage calculation focuses on trade-offs. Who stands to win? Who stands to lose? What are the chances that your reputation will be tarnished beyond repair if you go forward?
Will you lose respect or your job? Cause others to lose theirs? Delay your opportunity for promotion? Lieutenant General Claudia J.
Kennedy, the first female three-star general in the U. Army, went through a difficult risk-benefit assessment before reporting a fellow officer who had plagiarized a research paper at a professional army school. The decision was difficult: An instinct for self-protection, loyalty to her colleagues and to the institution, and her personal integrity all contended within her.
She discreetly reported the incident; her reputation remained intact and her career thrived. No one said this job of leadership would be easy. And your people need your courageous leadership more than ever. They need you to tell them and more important to believe that you can lead them through whatever will come your way between now and when life gets back to normal, whatever and whenever that normal will be.
They need you to have the courage to listen to feedback about your leadership performance. People will have the guts to tell you what they need from you as a leader, if you have the guts to ask for it, and to really listen with an open mind. They need you to have the courage to pivot your business as needed, to be of greater value to your clients and your prospects.
They need you to have the courage to improve your own leadership before you manage. They need you to have the courage to give, as mentioned previously, constructive feedback to help them bring their performance levels to where you need it to be for the organization, and where they need it to be for their career growth.
Most of all, they need you to have the courage to continue developing as a leader, for the rest of your career. His helps leaders, CEOs, agency owners, senior executives and managers in the communications space achieve their organizational, career, and personal goals, by becoming effective, inspired, and inspired leaders.
Courageous Leaders A handful of leaders I admire did just that. So understanding how to give constructive feedback effectively is critical to leadership success.
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