Week 41: Face The Dragon – What Is Courage?

Welcome to Week 41 of the Authenticity@Work Leadership Tool-kit! My intention for this series is to share a quick tool each week to help you lead with more authenticity, adaptability and inspiration so we can together create workplaces where we bring the best of ourselves and inspire others. So grab a journal and an accountability partner to make these practices even more powerful for you!

In last week’s post we talked about The Audacious Dream and how to be in Audacious Mode when you’re dreaming big and fighting off saboteurs. Did you practice being in Audacious Mode? How did that feel?

What is courage? It’s not the absence of fear. It’s actually a quality of the spirit where we choose something more important to us than our fear. It could be our values, a sense of purpose, an in-the-moment impulse, a dream we want to fulfill, a part of ourselves we want to express. For many of us, it’s facing the dragon—looking fear right in the eye. And often we find that when we do that, the dragon goes poof and disappears—our fear stories are bigger in our minds than in reality.

Being authentic requires courage because it requires us to overcome our fears. Courage shows up when we choose to say “I’m sorry” or “I was wrong”,when we choose to reveal our weaknesses or failures, when we choose to voice something we believe even if others disagree, when we take a step outside our comfort zones.

We decide to stare all the imaginary fire-breathing dragons in the face. Then we realize that many of them are illusions we made up, anyway.

Remember the first time you decided you were ready to walk? Probably not, but let’s pretend you do. You decided to join the billions of others who came before you to take that first step into the unknown. You didn’t overthink it; you simply wanted it. It was the urge to grow, to evolve, to be places where you’d never been before, to reach for things you’d never reached for before. That’s you. That’s courage. You’ve got it. You just forgot you had it.

This Week’s Tool:

Questions to ask yourself: When have you already been courageous? Make a list of 20 situations where you’ve been courageous (having the courage to start walking, having the courage to get on a bike the first time, learn how to drive a car, learn anything new, etc.). What enabled you to be courageous?

Now bring this quality of courage to a situation you’re currently facing. Take a small courageous step. Courage doesn’t always need to be big leaps.

Get the latest resources for Authenticity@Work (this tab will get updated with all kinds of cool resources). Curious to know more about the book? Read the reviews about Wired for Authenticity here.

This article was written by Henna Inam, C-level executive coach, global speaker, and author of the book Wired for Disruption. She helps leaders grow their agility to be a force for good and thrive in times of change. They create organizations that drive breakthroughs in innovation, growth, and engagement. In roles including Head E-Innovation and Chief Innovation and Marketing Officer, Henna drove transformation throughout her 20-year corporate career as an executive with Fortune 500 companies. Join the thousands who follow her blog here. Connect on Linkedin.