To achieve courage, you must be knowledgeable, have faith, and take action. This new definition of courage leads us to our working definition of a Courage Brand: A Courage Brand willingly addresses its business fears by gathering enough knowledge, building faith, and taking swift action. When senior management teams adopt this new approach to courage, they can evolve and transform their companies. This new definition is one you can rely on and turn to during real-time moments when you need it most.
Behind every thriving, courageous brand is a courageous group of internal believers who willingly commit to their belief system, even when it’s hard, for the greater good of the company. In almost every circumstance, these brave believers value the four principles of courage. If you’re going to embark on a courageous business adventure or create a Courage Brand, consider what type of person you want on your raft with you.
What collection of diverse skills do you hope they have that perhaps you don’t? Will your raft mates have a hopeful, positive attitude? Are they strong communicators? What type of preparation will you and your floating troupe take part in before your journey? These answers will become clear as we examine the four principles of competent and courageous decision making:
The Four Principles of Courage
1. Talent
What separates your very best people from the rest? Their ability to consistently be counted on to get the job done. What’s the most beautiful thing about the most talented people? They never think they are talented enough, so they keep pushing, working, and stretching themselves to be better. They have a constant desire to continue to grow their talents. They set a high bar for themselves, and they work hard until they reach that goal. They are driven, and they can be relied on to succeed time and time again.
2. Team
Courage is a team sport. You want your team to be bonded by bright, strong, and valuable members. Having your senior leaders function like a desirable, transparent, and precious diamond is one way to make an admired, harmonious work culture. The structure, tightness, and rigid conviction exuded by a unified team can be the difference between success and failure. The right people put the team first. They fit because they not only have undeniable talent, but they also have that “it takes a village” mindset—they are collaborative and cooperative.
A Courage Brand willingly addresses its business fears by gathering enough knowledge, building faith, and taking swift action.
3. Tenacity
Tenacity is persistence plus resilience. Truth be told, almost every decision made on the business battlefield is out of your control. Most of us don’t have a say when it comes to picking our officemates. We don’t get to make the call when our boss needs us to work a weekend. There’s not much we can do when a client cancels a meeting or a coworker on a deadline takes a sick day. One thing we can always control is our attitude. You get to decide every day how you show up, and good things usually happen when you show up with a good attitude. Even if you fail, if you have tenacity, you can learn from those failures and turn them into positives. Over time, if you keep trying and learning and continuing on your path, you will succeed.
4. Training
When training transforms into instinct, the idea of courage fades. Skilled teams that have been properly trained don’t believe that they’re courageous. The training has fully taken over, and muscle memory is at work. This isn’t simply describing people who willingly took on the challenge of courageous training. It also describes those who weren’t expecting to opt in on courage. For many in business, the lack of rigorous workplace training is a big problem. We are not good at providing our employees with the proper tools and tips they need to be effective in the office. Either the training time is too short, or the programming is not as potent or repetitive as it needs to be.
I believe that being courageous is our ultimate competitive advantage.
If 95% of our competition is stuck in freeze or flight and we can train our teams to be in that 5% that learns how to fight, then this is a liberating differentiator from the rest of the competitive pack. I envision a world where courageous leaders are creating courageous cultures. Those courageous cultures are accepting of courageous ideas and innovation. In essence, any willing being, business or brand can return on courage. And when you do, you’ll feel it permeating in your people, products and corporate purpose. The only way to properly goal set is to have the skill set working in tandem with the right mind set; that’s the power of courage.
Work With Ryan
Learn more about Ryan Berman keynoting or leading one of his Courage workshops at your organization. We look forward to connecting with you!
