Where does Courage come from?
when the proverbial hits the fan and we’re in difficult times….
Last week in We Activate The Future’s newsletter I spoke of a company Director who said plaintively during our discussion on becoming a truly purpose-led organisation — “Why can’t we just be a good company making good clothing for women from 20–50 that they love?”.
It clearly resonated with my subscribers because I got a lot of feedback (ok, some of that was from brand specialists who said his target audience was too broad!) but most was from people have had to confront the challenge of ‘hard’ — hard decisions, hard choices, hard words, hard work. And that’s most of us, right?
His comment was the slightly despairing remark of many in senior leadership when confronted with a challenge to act with greater social and environmental purpose. It’s still seen as a cost you’ve got to squeeze in; a ‘business case’ argument you’ve got to make; discussions you’ve got to have with suppliers; a challenge to your annual bonus which pays for your kids school fees; less money on the bottom line to add to the value of the brand when it’s ripe for sale. It’s seen as hard.
There’s almost a latent despair that asks ‘do we have to?’ ‘Does it have to be us?” ‘Can’t someone else just stand forth?’ combined with a retraction from the impact on the wider world to the survival instinct of the scared and selfish gene. “Can’t we just look after ourselves, our business? We’re generating employment after all.” ‘What’s wrong with profit?’.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with profit. Fair profit. Reasonable profit. Profit reinvested into better business is brilliant. But that’s not really the question. What’s behind the question is often ‘we want to keep extracting maximum profit for shareholders — us — while giving the appearance of doing good. What’s at the root of the question is ‘how do I find the courage to be a conscious leader in the 21st century?’.
Social and environmental purpose in business — outside of a growing enlightened minority — is seen as just about everything but what it is; a moral and existential imperative. OK, my view I know. But look around you. 60 years left in our soils, 3 out of 9 planetary boundaries breached, oceans full of plastic, mental health challenges rising, governments retrenching into populism, climate turbulence accelerating, 40 million displaced refugees in the world.
Trouble is that moral and existential imperatives require that you pull your head out of the sand, become Aware and act with Courage. Of course it’s much easier to ‘just’ be a good company making nice stuff — and to be fair even that’s tough in current market conditions. But is it the ‘right’ thing to do?
Where does that Courage come from? Why do some leaders like Paul Polman of Unilever find it and act on it and how can each of us find more of it?
Courage : the root of the word courage is cor — the Latin word for heart
In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.” Over time, this definition has changed, and today we tend to associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. We think of courage as willingness to confront risk, pain, danger, uncertainty, or bullying. Physical courage is bravery in the face of physical pain, hardship, death or threat of death, while moral courage is the ability to act rightly in the face of opposition, shame, scandal, discouragement, personal loss — and social media.
If we look again at its original definition, then we know that courage has also something to do with being connected to your innermost feelings and being, and then feeling free and able to speak them out loud without fear and with clarity.
While I was interviewing business leaders for my book Activation (still not published because my ‘courage’ is failing me!), several different sources of courage emerged from their stories:
- A deep sense of service to people and planet
- Exposure to good role models early in life — parents, teachers, bosses, business leaders — whose principles they modelled themselves on
- Deep personal awareness, understanding of their own values and an ability to operate with clear boundaries
- A deep belief set and faith — not always religious — often simple faith in the goodness of human nature
- A commitment to community building — connecting to and supporting others with similar values and visions.
How can we find more courage to act in difficult times?
At the root of developing a sense of service in organisations is organisational purpose. Having a goal that’s greater than the organisation itself. Knowing that you are acting in the service of greater good, a planetary imperative, does much to energise the source of courage. I remember hearing Yvon Chouinard the founder of Patagonia often say he wished he didn’t have so much commitment to being a ‘good’ company and an exemplar of activism for the environment because sometimes ‘its just so damn hard’.
An easier way to start to bring experience of service into an organisation is through volunteering. The spirit of service is ignited through small collaborative acts at first which often raise morale and productvity, sometimes opening the minds and courage of leadership. Timberland was one of the first companies I worked with who put volunteering into the corporate agenda in the early 90s. It became a work habit for employees to individually take volunteering hours, eventually reflected in their annual serv-a-palooza. The culture of service did much to raise the individual and corporate courage of the brand when it took on greater challenges. As did its leader of the time, Jeffrey Swartz.
So ask:-
What greater purpose does your organisation serve?
Does it align with your personal values and sense of service?
How can you increase the sense of service to your community (customers) in your organisation?
What stand are you prepared to take?
Whose shoulders do you stand on?
Almost all of us can think of someone we know who has inspired us with their courage or behaviour and been a role model. I find it helps to have a little ‘book of courageous examples’ in my brain to draw on.
Often today we’re encouraged to think of courageous people as cut from some special and different cloth. They’re held up as icons that most people feel they can’t really aspire to. Everyone I know would cite Nelson Mandela as an icon of moral courage, and yet most of us can’t hope to have that level of global impact. Whereas I think if we look at courage as the sum total of leading a ‘good life’, by small acts of courage done every day in the living of life, we might find we possess more courage than we know — and activate it
So rather than global icons that I can’t get to know personally, I’ve always looked for people I’ve worked with for inspiration. When I think of Jos de Blok of Buurtzorg in the Netherlands, I see a courageous individual who spent his life trying to reform the health service from within and finally called deep on his courage and formed a new self-managed company to serve ageing people in their homes in the way they needed and wanted — and still make a profit.
When I worked for Levi’s there was a very calm, collected Marketing Director in the EU office who was always composed in difficult board meetings and often managed to say what needed to be said — with courage. The team developed a little acronym WWSD — what would Sue do? to help bolster their own courage and integrity.
Early on in running my communications agency, a client was Wrangler Jeans. The then Managing Director Frank Dimech was someone who taught me an enormous amount about humanity — long before Daniel Goldman has appeared. He has risen to his position the hard way, through the ranks, no qualifications that are so prized today. He always put people first; his level of emotional intelligence and understanding of what moved people to act with courage encouraged people to be bolder and braver with their actions to chase the market leaders.
Once, after a huge launch event my then company had designed, the first response of the Marketing Director was to tell us what hadn’t worked — which was one single tv screen that didn’t play. Frank — the CEO — was on the phone to me faster than you can say knife when he heard what happened to pick me and my team up off the floor. I’ve always remembered that and taken my own natural instinct to say ‘what could we do better’ out of the equation until I’ve remember to thank everyone for their contribution.
Perhaps the most important legacy we can leave behind is not buildings, or programmes, or projects that bear our name — the obsession of many well intentioned philanthropists — but just this. To be one of the people on whose shoulders others can stand — even if you never know it. To always bear in mind the role model who helped shape your values and ask the question quietly in your mind ‘am I living up to the values I’ve set myself here?’. So ask yourself — as Margaret Wheatley challenges us to do in her great book Who Do You Choose to Be?
Who are the people on who you rely as ground and support in your life?
Who were/are the warriors who inspire you?
Knowing Who You Are is the Deep Ground on which to stand
It’s difficult to do that if you haven’t done the work that falls under the infamous banner ‘Know Thyself’. One of the greatest barriers to courage is just simply not having any positive values; not knowing who you are and what you stand for. I stress positive values because values can be negative too — aka ‘greed is good’. If you know you’re here to protect wildlife, then you can fearlessly step forwards and speak up for wildlife — even in the most antagonistic of surroundings with calm confidene. If you know you believe that bullying is an unacceptable human behaviour in the workplace, then you can stand up and say so when you encounter it.
Somehow knowing who I am is at the root of the times when I believe I’ve acted with courage. Often in those times there was an absence of hope. Hope that someone else would stand up and step in. Hope that ‘it’ would stop or get better without me having to do anything. There was also a moment when I was without fear — however much stomach-churning, vomit-inducing terror had gripped me in the previous moments — when, all options being void — I stepped forwards. Knowing I could be hurt - physically, in my career, in my income, in my friends — but a moment where without hope or fear, I was free to just ‘do’. It’s the place Margaret Wheatley expresses that as ‘the place between hope and fear’.
One of the best ways to do a deep dive into values that I have found is Richard Barrett’s Values Model. When we let our positive values drive our decision-making, we build connection, enable bonding and create loyalty and trust. We feel at ease with ourselves and others, and we feel comfortable in our physical and social environment. Positive values promote personal growth and create internal cohesion.
The smallest actions by courageous leaders can represent the values and stands they are prepared to take. I work for a CEO who has been brought in to try to ‘humanise’ an organisation that has a reputation for being anything but humane. He put some ground rules down in collaboration with his HR department from day one. They include always having a woman and a candidate from an ethnic minority in the interview mix for any job. You would think that’s normal in corporate life wouldn’t you? Not always. He introduced meditation and reflective practices into the organisation and provided training and coaching for departmental heads to support their team to engage with the process. In a difficult culture, it met with a lot of derision and cynicism. 12 months on there is an air of much greater deliberation and calm in decision-making.
Google’s study on building teams and designing psychological safety into the workplace has broken new ground in business. Designing psychological safety into an organisation is one of the strongest ways to encourage people to stand forwards with the values they know they have.
So ask yourself:
Do you know the deep values in your life to which you commit?
Does your organisation support you and others to live our your values at work?
What practices can you introduce in your place of work or life to support and encourage people to speak with courage?
Jenny Andersson is founder of We Activate The Future, a collective of individuals and organisations dedicated to supporting those businesses and leaders who want to play a part in a regenerative future for people and planet through helping to embed regenerative practices and culture. Regenerating the human spirit and the finite environment.
