Exercise Courage

The word courage takes its roots in the Latin word cor, which means the “heart.” It should be no surprise that calling upon your courage to overcome whatever challenges you must face, whether in your personal life or leadership journey, will require heart, steadfast bravery, and sheer guts—and not just on occasion. Depending on the habit you’re trying to break, the practice you’re aiming to implement, or the change you’re trying to drive within yourself, invoking your courage may become a regular, even daily practice for you.

Without courage, you may struggle to remain focused on The Vital Few. You will struggle to overcome difficult challenges. Courage is a requirement for facing your fears, doing things differently, and applying any new habits that align with and support your goals.

That said, fear is a natural emotion—we all have it to some degree or another. In fact, many MAP clients struggle with fears of failing. What we help them understand is that having no failures is evidence that someone is too cautious and not taking enough healthy risks in business. But as you’ll come to find, great leadership isn’t just about facing fears but taking positive action in spite of your fears. As you experience success, your confidence will grow, and those fears simply won’t be so frightful anymore.

Here are a few ways to find your courage:

Look the fear in its face. There’s nothing magical about how to conquer what’s causing your anxiety. The best way is to stand up to it, look at it, and take it head on. For example, after one of MAP’s 2.5 day executive workshops, one attendee had a clear realization about the seriousness of the problem she had. In a follow-up meeting, this CEO confided to her MAP consultant that she had a fear of presenting to her board of directors. She had a bona fide phobia of public speaking. It was particularly elevated in stressful situations, such as during monthly meetings in which she had to provide company performance updates. The board members sometimes asked tough questions, and she didn’t always have answers—something that made her feel insecure and weak. Through coaching, she discovered how big a barrier her fear was. She also came to understand how important it was to face her fear around public speaking and feeling she always needed to have the right answer. Simply acknowledging the fear was a big step. But the even bigger step was her decision to discipline herself to act against it. It was also her only option if she ever hoped to mitigate, if not eliminate, her fear altogether.

Create a plan of attack. Sometimes working a fear over and over in your mind can make it feel larger than life. That’s what happened with this particular CEO—the more she thought about presenting in front of her board of directors, the bigger her fear grew. After deciding to face it, she worked with her MAP consultant on how she would fight it. She built a plan and implemented a process for managing public-speaking situations with greater calm and ease. She received training in public speaking, learned tools and tricks to help her improve, and invested more time into planning for her presentations. Most important, however, she learned and embraced a very freeing and important truth: to admit you do not always have the answers is more a sign of strength than weakness. So in dry runs with her MAP coach, this CEO learned to confidently say, “I don’t have the answer, but I am willing to get back to you in ‘x’ amount of time.” In essence, she took action against what she feared specifically by using a plan that gave her direction and a way to deal with it. This solution washed away a lot of worry. Speaking to the board of directors became something she could confidently manage.

Acknowledge when you succeed. Like this CEO who, despite her fears, had a lot of talent and accomplishments, you have probably done a lot more right than you’ve done wrong in life. You may be in the habit of taking such past success and accomplishments for granted—but don’t. Part of sustaining your confidence is choosing to think more about your successes and less about your failures. Therefore, think about your personal success stories, the goals you have achieved, or anything else you’ve mastered. Scrutinize how your actions played a role in these big wins. This understanding can empower you to feel more confident and capable in general. Use this perspective to confirm, inspire, and grow your courage. Only you can cultivate and harvest your own courage, a required resource for your job as a leader.

In Summary: No one is without fears. The Disciplined Leader manages fears by first acknowledging them, analyzing them, and dissecting them. Doing what you fear will minimize the power fear has over you, boost confidence, and enable you to move beyond it. Create a plan to face your fears, one by one, and celebrate successes along the way, one by one.