Courageous Leadership

Back in April 2020 I wrote a piece called Embrace the Curve in which I unpacked the classic change curve and how it might apply to the pandemic. Five years later we are unsurprisingly still wrestling with a crazy world but my parting thought in that blog is now more important than ever – to get through this we need courage.

Courageous leadership is desperately needed across the globe and no one understands courage better than Dr Brené Brown.

Having spent two decades doing empirical research on courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy she is not just another bestselling self-help author, she is the real deal and her findings on what it takes to be a courageous leader are enormously important right now.

In a nutshell, she found that courageous leadership is a collection of four skills that are teachable, observable and measurable. The foundational skill set of courage-building is what she calls “rumbling with vulnerability” – in other words, we cannot be courageous unless we can be vulnerable.

And herein lies the problem… we are conditioned from childhood to believe that showing vulnerability is a risk and a weakness. So, we all armour up.

The sad reality is that until we drop that armour and are able to work with vulnerability - defined as that emotion we all experience during times of uncertainty, risk or emotional exposure - we cannot give our families, our colleagues or our world the kind of brave, empathetic and courageous leadership we might want to – and that we desperately need right now.

Find Your Brave - Purpose and Values Leadership Workshops

I suggest you watch her TEDTalk on the Power of Vulnerability and read her book Dare to Lead. And if you’re ready to build a C-Suite or executive team grounded on true connection then get in touch to find out more about our powerful purpose and values leadership workshops.