Are you a high striver as well as a super-doer and high achiever? Do you see what’s possible, not just what can be done a little better? Are you raising capital to scale faster, drive adoption, deliver bold new solutions, transform the standard of care? Are you putting your career on a play-to-win joy and fulfilment trajectory, rather than playing not to lose?
If so, congratulations. You’ve already got courage. But what happens when your boldness, vision and board commitments take others out of their comfort zones? How do you find contributors with the courage to follow where you lead? How do you lead from the middle, so you bring your board recommendations, rather than just seek permission? And continue to lift your colleagues’ and partners’ courage, imagination, skill and teamwork, when you’re asking them to stretch beyond their comfort zones? That’s where we come in.
The higher we ask others to reach, the more we need to Make Courage Contagious – for contributors to believe in what’s possible, mobilize support and make doing better a higher priority than hunkering down. If we enable investors, customers, colleagues, partners, board members to be driven by fear of failure or fear of success, we settle for risk-averse compromises. With Courage, we engage diverse perspectives. We profit from conflict, uncertainty, bold aspirations. We fight against the problems we’re solving and for the opportunities we create, not against each other.
Courage is the antidote that lifts your supporters out of risk-averse compromises. That’s why we equip leaders to Make Courage Contagious. So they are trusted welcome advisors when they step up, speak out, make their case, challenge old biases and assumptions. With 360° inside-out/outside-in perspectives, when they say, “Here’s a better alternative. Follow me and let’s make it happen together. Can we count on your support?”
With courage, antagonists say, “Bring it on!” and “Sharpen me up!” They ask diverse personalities, professions, lifestyles and neurodiverse talents to step up, lean in and speak out, not shut down. And consider risk-assessments and contradictory evidence that can help, even when it’s hard to hear. That’s why high-potential leaders need to Make Courage Contagious, so teams benefit from diverse insight and initiative. And so we act expeditiously, when we see what more is possible.
The 5A Courage formula – East, North, South, West, Deep – equips leaders to encode courage into their reflexes and into the reflexes of the partners, teams, boards and investors they mobilize to get traction. The 5As equip leaders to step up and intervene as trusted advisors, challenge each other to do better, and lift partners out of risk-averse traps. With the 5As, teams create better alternatives – when what got you here (to your past success level) won’t be all you need to get there (to your next success level and the ones after that).
Click here >> To see how your Online Courage Leadership Quest sets you on a path to Make Courage Contagious. Bring your imagination, hunger to make a difference and your CEO’s bold call to action – and see where Courage can take you (and a cohort of high-potential leaders), with a step-by-step Action Learning Journey.
With Courage Quests, high-potential leaders encode the 5As into their reflexes – to AROUSE passion, AIM high, ASK openly, ALIGN interests, ADHERE to plans. To get traction, mobilize support, drive growth, accelerate adoption and profit through the turbulence that opens new opportunities.
Your Courage Leadership Journey starts here>>
