Courageous Leadership
Courageous leadership is something that most people attach to daring to do things other will not do. However there is another way we can look at courage and courageous leadership.
Did you ever have a day, when anything you touched fell or broke?
A day when you truly believed that Murphy’s first law “If anything can go wrong, it willâ€? is your only reality?
A day that when it was over, you wished you didn’t bother to get up in the morning?
I’m sure you had a day like that. We all did.
For me - the last 2 weeks felt as if they were full of these days.
We gave 2 long trainings, while moving our office to a new building, emptying our training center and trying hard to keep our sanity. And although we thought we were prepared for everything… it still looked as if everything that could go wrong – actually DID:
1. We didn’t get the new office’s keys on time – which meant no new floor and painting of the new office, while emptying the old office and needing to store it all in a temporary storage.
2. Moving companies that preferred to follow their own internal, mysterious ways – instead of our mutual clear agreements – resulting in time wasted, stuff again in temporary storage and again delaying our entrance to the new office.
3. KPN took its time installing our phones and internet connection – which made our house look like a computer store. Computers, screens, laser printers, scanner, cables… trying to keep in touch with the world.
4. One of our internet servers in Arizona “died� and disabled essential functions of our websites. Many of you who wished to register to our events, order our products, download our e-books, or contact us… were faced with disturbing error messages.
This list goes on and on…
To be honest – there were a few nights last week, I lied in bed dreading what might go wrong tomorrow…
And then everything changed…
I asked myself simple questions: “what is the message?� and everything started to make sense. A pattern emerged.
I could see that some of my actions and decisions were wrong. I assumed too many things about people and took them for granted. I wasn’t listening close enough to what they were saying. The Universe was giving me clear messages that what I was doing is wrong, but I kept on refusing to listen. The Universe was kind to me and did not give me mighty notices before I realized the pattern, which I am grateful.
Sometimes the greatest leadership skill we need to develop is the courage to admit we were wrong. Courageous leadership means that we have the courage to take actions others are not willing to take. It also means willing to admit that we might have taken the wrong actions. The next step demands even higher courageous leadership and that is - willing to correct.
People would rather stay in a miserable situation than change and correct. They rather blame, complain and give a lot of excuses for the situation than take a different action and correct what is needed to correct.
Leadership means showing the way to people. Leadership means inspiring people to become the best they can by demonstrating it. Courageous leadership means that I am willing to show that “even” I can take the wrong decisions and once I am aware of it - correct it and take a different direction and change it.
So when you have one of those days - have the courage to stop, listen to the message, become aware of the pattern… and be courageous enough to CHANGE!
Have a great day!
