back to notes

Taking "Courage"​ From Empty Rhetoric To Actionable Wins

Published on January 27, 2020

Duena Blomstrom
Author, Keynote Speaker, Co-Founder and CEO of PeopleNotTech and Emotional Banking

The trouble with the topics we need to focus on so that we become human (and therefore #VUCA-competitive) at work is that they are easy to lyricise about and hard to put into practice.

These days, thanks to a myriad of voices who valiantly insist on the importance of “passion”, “purpose” and “bravery” - you’ll be hard-pressed to find execs that dismiss them and say their employees need none of that hullabaloo.

The focus has finally shifted from being exclusively concerned with academic knowledge, experience and skills to these - a series of human-centred qualities, attitudes and behaviours and that is extraordinary and certainly welcomed.

At the same time, what has started becoming glaringly obvious, is that we have no way of defining, measuring or bettering these other topics so the dialogue is, for now, frozen at a rhetorics level.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take people watching Ted talks and liking Linkedin posts about “soft skills” and “heart” any day over the silent and eye-rolling alternative, but if we have collectively brought business to the point where this is the theme we must urgently find ways to make the theme actionable because talk truly is cheap and ultimately useless.

From our perspective, for Psychological Safety to happen within a team, all of these have to be true, there is no chance they could be missing and the team would still be winning:

“We have to be passionate and deeply care”

“We have to be ourselves”

“We have to feel immensely connected to each other and like we have a safe bubble”

“We have to cultivate and practice empathy”

“We have to be flexible”

“We have to learn to experiment relentlessly and fail “growingly””

“We have to never be afraid of appearing negative, incompetent, ignorant or intrusive”

“We have to speak up”

And all of these, every single one of them have an underlying theme: they require us to be brave.

“We have to be courageous”
And isn’t that the hardest one… How do we allow and model it because let’s face it, motivation alone will fail to transform kittens into lions. We can see all of the amazing Brene Brown videos in the world and want it badly and still not manage it. We can dream ourselves valiant and daring and consistently not act that way.

And why should the awareness and energising vernacular it be enough when historically it was never really demanded of us? We showed up and did some things and that was all that was required of us to be a functional human being and even a model employee. Being brave was for movies and legends, every day did not require superheroes and the most we’d exercise putting ourselves out there would be on karaoke nights out after a few pints.

In general, as human beings, we need to strive to minimise risk. However, experimentation and progress imply it. This is a conflict less apparent in our personal lives, where we strive to have all of Maslow’s needs covered for at all times, and it is only on the brink of major life decisions that the value of our character as a valiant human being is tested, but one that is impossible to avoid in our VUCA world at work. Things change ultra-fast, stability and lack of risk are no longer possible. What is required of us is a collection of acts of courage from the small ones of raising an unconformable point to the major ones of attempting things that are new and unheard of. Constant challenge. Constant push.

A new paradigm where showing up and applying what we know is no longer sufficient, but where we are expected to show up and be wide open and ready to fail, learn and adapt every day.

With courage comes the dreaded vulnerability, which we have been predetermined to avoid in every management course. A true leader was measured by the size of their Achile’s heel apparently and therefore had to have a tough, impenetrable armour on, at all times. No one rewarded them for clinks and many have even forgotten how to take it off even for the annual dip in the sea with the kids, whereas now we tell everyone, leaders included, to rip it off and have their entire skin made of vulnerable heel-like material to allow their teams to do the same. This is because you ought to have nothing to protect against in a team that has the magic bubble, and when there’s no fear and protection what you have instead, is openness and the ability to experiment, learn and create together.

So vulnerability is not only allowed and desirable but deeply needed.

As with every of these “fluffy” goals - the only way to make them into a concerted effort is to think of them in all three ways that count: at an organisational level if we must, -the least important of these 3- and make cultivating courage and vulnerability a company-wide preoccupation; but more importantly at a team level where we should obsess about it and celebrate every instance where it shows (and tomorrow’s video episode talks about how we measure it in our software and how we differentiate between “courage” and “openness” and why) as well as at an individual level where we need to find ways to practice having b…..ravery every single day.

Practical suggestions? Here’s some we use: plaster the walls with Dr. Seuss and Wizard of Oz posters - corny but shockingly effective; model questioning - wonder why anything is the way it is and discuss it openly from operations times to process and vocabulary used; share an intimate thing in every meeting; put yourself out there and ask for anonymous feedback about something; speak up when it’s not in your best interest and make it a point you did; try something absolutely new or opposite your usual MO every week; come up with a measurement of courage that makes most sense to your own work and team; the list goes on.

And most of all - celebrate each of these. Laugh and learn, commiserate and communicate, share and grow. Every instance of daring.

We can’t let “courage” be rhetorical and fodder for demagoguery or it will hurt us all, it’s time we’re brave enough to “do”, not “say” and we’ll be grateful we did, so be sure you get fitted with your cape today.


last updated january 2020