Transcript
[00:00:02]
You're listening to the Her Leadership Coach podcast for the quietly determined career woman who's looking to step up into her first or next level leadership role. If you're looking to make a bigger, more positive difference in your organization, you've come to the right place. Well, hello. Welcome in. It's Rochelle.
[00:00:24]
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of Her Leadership Coach, where we are jumping in with both feet to talk about courage. I am a big advocate for courage. In fact, one of my mantras ever since this into a Brene Brown's Debtor lead podcast episode some time back is courage over comfort. And I use that to guide me quite a lot because I know courage is where my growth happens. So what is courage?
[00:00:59]
The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as the ability to control your fear in a dangerous or difficult situation. We had a good discussion in the Facebook group this week about what courage meant, and there are a number of really exciting examples for me. So Tanya said courage is having those difficult conversations with staff. She said it's super hard to overcome that fear of hurting someone's feelings, which it so is. But if you don't have courage to do it, then you're not helping that person or yourself.
[00:01:36]
And I would add, you're also not helping the team. Beverly talked about courage for leadership around making decisions and then sticking to them. One of the things she noted was how hard it is for employees to experience that decision whiplash, where a boss will make a decision and then the next day has completely changed their mind. Or sometimes employees fear that they'll be the scapegoat for a decision that a leader didn't really commit to. And I noted with this one that there is definitely courage in sticking to decisions.
[00:02:13]
There's also courage in changing those decisions when new information comes to light, because that can be just as difficult. I think what's important in both of those cases is to be as transparent as possible around how and why you came to your decision and as a leader, to be really mindful about speaking those decisions out loud and not saying them on the fly. I also mentioned that if people fear being a scapegoat, that's a big problem, and there definitely needs to be a conversation around psychological safety. Tracey added that she thinks every step and act in life takes some level of courage. She mentioned that while a manager might not behave in ways that align with her values, and we've all got managers that have done that in the past, or if not now, she thinks it still takes courage for them to stay their course.
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To me, courage has always been about taking action in spite of fear. So it's not taking action without fear. It's not getting rid of the fear and then being able to take action. I believe that it is taking action while the fear is still there. And that is what courage is.
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I heard someone the other day, and I cannot remember where I heard this, sorry. So I can't credit it to anyone, but they said courage is speaking up for others, speaking up for yourself, and taking action on hard things. And I really like that. That really sang to me. I feel that if you're full of confidence in what you're doing, then you don't need courage.
[00:03:57]
That's not a courageous act. When you're quite confident in what you're going ahead and doing, where you have no fear about it, even if to others, it might look courageous for them, it might be for them that action might in fact be courageous. But if you're full of confidence doing it, then I don't call that courage. I remember the first time I went to Sharp Live on video within the Facebook group. This was soon after I'd first started up the Women Leadership Facebook group.
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I went to a room, we were staying in a different house at the time, and I went to a room that wasn't attached to the house. I sat on the couch, I had my phone in my hand, ready to go live. I had my mic on and I sat there and I thought and I was thinking about, what am I going to say? And my hands were almost shaking. Every time I went to push the button to go live, I would like, hover my finger, my thumb over the button and then pull it away again as more thoughts went through my head.
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And I was like, I'm not ready, I'm not ready, I'm not ready. I would be thinking, oh, I've got to get this perfect. I'm going to sound silly. And then I'd be thinking, why am I doing this? Why would someone care what I have to say?
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Basically, I had this big fat fear of being judged, and I still have that on some occasions. Finally, after I would say at least 20 minutes, if not longer, of sitting there, I pushed the button to go live. I spoke for all of five minutes. I fumbled my words, I finished it off. And I'm glad to say I'm still alive to tell the tale.
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But that to me, felt courageous. Now, though, I don't feel like I need courage to go live on Facebook. Not saying I'm full of confidence in doing it, I'm just practiced at it. So I don't have any fear around it anymore. It no longer feels like a big deal, and I don't need the courage to push that button.
[00:06:02]
I even managed to do a Facebook Live walking through a shopping center one day. That's how little courage I feel like I need in that space. One of the things I hear again and again from my clients when they first start with me is the thing holding them back from a leadership role is because they don't have enough confidence. And what I've learned is that the real thing that's missing is not confidence so much as it is courage. Because confidence is actually the end point.
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Confidence is what you get to after you've had courage, right? So when I did my Facebook Live, okay, I'm not super confident in it, but I am confident in pushing that button and being able to go live. And I'm confident that nothing is going to kill me at the end of it, that I'm going to live, right? So what I first think we all need is courage. In fact, I've put a whole course together to take people through this, which I gift those that want it when they join the Women in Leadership Facebook group.
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So if you're interested in getting that, make sure you join the group. And if you don't have that yet and you're in the Facebook group, yell out, I can definitely send you the links. You get that it's not just confidence that starts with courage. I think almost everything to do with leadership, whether that's leading yourself, leading with others, leading your team. Every facet of leadership is underpinned by courage.
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But often what happens is leaders hide the fact that they need courage to do things because they fear that in itself makes them look weak. Okay, no one says humans make sense, right? But it takes courage to show that what you're doing takes courage. And I would love to see us as leaders. Whether you're in a leadership role right now or not, I would love to see us as leaders.
[00:08:22]
Normalizing courage, sharing with others that, for example, it can take courage to give feedback to people, like Tanya did earlier, letting people know. It can take courage to run a virtual presentation or to send an email to that senior leader in the organization that doesn't take prisoners. No prisoners. It can take courage for some just to show up in the office again after working from home for so long, like we all have, and yet we hide it. What if we admitted that upfront?
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I think once we realize how much everyone is really relying on courage to do so many things, maybe it is only for the first time or the first few times, or maybe it's every single time we do it, we might start to realize as a collective that just because someone makes something look easy doesn't mean it is right. And then that allows us to understand that just because something isn't easy doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. I hope that makes sense. I'm wondering what it would feel like for you if you saw your leaders admitting that what they just did took courage. I took the step to do this the other day at work.
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I already share with my team quite often when things are scary for me, because actually I'll get into that later on. But when I need courage to do something, I let them know that it took me courage to do it. This time, however, I shared more widely on Yammer. And for those of you that don't know, Yama is like I don't want to say social media for work. It's not really that, but it's a work based collaboration platform.
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If you post in there, the whole organization can see it. It's not a private place. Yammers brought out a new component that they've called storylines. They are basically copying stories on Facebook but within the work environment. And I'm quite practiced at using Yama to post in particular communities.
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So we have a digital community. My job is all around digital. I posted there quite often. But for some reason, this idea of posting something that was simply tied to me, so storylines are tied to the person rather than the community, that seemed really scary to me. Now, I've got pretty practice at doing things that take me out of my comfort zone, that take courage.
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So normally I would have felt that fear and post it anyway. This time, though, I decided I'd work out loud, which is something I often encourage others to do. And I decided I would own my fear and talk about it in my first storyline post, talking about how it was taking courage for me to post, and talking about how if I could help one person, then it was all worth it. And you know what happened from that post? I really want to tell you how many people commented and how many shared with me that they too felt fair when it came to posting on Yama, and that people thanked me for having the courage.
[00:11:54]
But actually, I pretty much got crickets. And I could make that mean so many things about me, right? I could say, See, people don't want to hear from you. Or oh my goodness, you've made such a fool of yourself posting that. Or I could make it mean that no one cares what I think.
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Who do I think I am telling them the stuff when no one cares? Or I can see that it means nothing about me. The fact that I posted and no one commented means nothing about me. I could think of it as well, the organization is just not ready for that kind of post yet. Or I can think of people probably haven't had a chance to read it, or people have read it and they loved it, and they still haven't quite worked up the courage to reply out in public yet.
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Because at the end of the day, all of those thoughts are just as true, right? I don't know what anyone else is thinking about that post. I don't even know if anyone else has seen the post. So why not choose the thoughts that make me feel good rather than bad? Because they're all just as true.
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What's the point of me feeling bad about it? So I used that example not because it's a happy ending because life is not full of happy ending, no matter what Disney says. But really to highlight that having courage doesn't guarantee that things are going to turn out perfectly. Because if that was the case, you really don't need courage, right? But should I say end?
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Courage gives you the chance to learn and it gives you the chance to reflect on what just happened and to grow and to show yourself that you can do hard things.
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So I think courage is worth it, even when it's not a happy ending. I guess the opposite of courage for me then is the idea of running away from fear. It's not doing anything that might even result in fear. So no risk taking at all, no speaking up for yourself, no speaking up for others, no doing hard things. And when we see that kind of behavior in our leaders, that's when we see things like micromanaging or not addressing poor behavior.
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And for most of us, that's not an organization or a leader that we want to work for, where there is no courage, where they're running away, where they're trying to stop fear in the first place. So if courage is a big deal as a leader, then you might be asking how do we get it? Fair question. There's a lot of different ways. Some of them are going to work for you, some won't.
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And that's fine. Life is a big experiment. I'm going to share a couple of ways with you today that I invite you to experiment with. And there are others in the stock waiting for Confidence course. Of course, I mentioned earlier on so again, join us in the Women and Leadership Facebook group if you want to have access to that course.
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One of the most compelling ways for me to have courage is to remember that I'm a role model. And it's my belief that we're all role models. People will watch what we do, not what we say, right? And a lot of people learn to shape their own behavior on what they see others doing. Which as a side comment, is part of the problem of why we still have bad leaders, even though we know better, because the only people they have to model their leadership of are the bad leaders.
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So this is why I really embrace this idea of being a role model, whether I'm in a leadership role or not. And you know by now that I believe we are all leaders, regardless of what our role is. And as parents, if you're a parent, you're obviously a role model to your kids. We're also role models for our colleagues, those we lead, and even our leaders. So I definitely learn things by watching my team and how they work and how they approach things.
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So they are role models to me. So when it comes to doing hard things, the things that I guess scare me, I spend some time reflecting on how I want to show up for others. So what difference can I make to others by doing this thing I'm scared of rather than running away from it? It's sort of about even when they're not there to see it, right. I know it gives me a story to go back and share with them about the action I took, about the behavior still in that service of role modeling, that if I can do hard things, so can they.
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There's this common thing with women where we will do more for others than we will for ourselves. Don't know if that sounds familiar to you at all, but it is definitely true for me. So sometimes to help ourselves, we can use that thought. We can turn it around and emphasize instead how it's going to help others. And it's kind of like instead of that, help me to help you, it's almost like to help you to help me.
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Yeah. So again, experiment with that one. See how that works for you, remembering that you're a role model. Another tool I use to find my courage is curiosity. And I love curiosity.
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I use curiosity for so many things. But when I'm trying to work my way up to doing something and I see myself procrastinating and I start to feel something, I start to get curious. I remember, okay, I'm going to get curious and I start thinking, what is this feeling? And it might be all right. I'm worried about something happening.
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What does this worry feel like? Where am I feeling it the most? Is it on my left side? Is it in my shoulders? Is it in my stomach?
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And I just let myself get curious around what's happening, what is happening in my body. I don't get into the why am I feeling like this? Because as soon as I get into the why, I tend to get stuck thinking about it all even further, right? So I work to stay out of the way and in the what now there's a whole process I go through for this that we work through in the Accelerator Leadership Academy. All I want you to know today is curiosity in itself will shift your thoughts and it will allow you to move through the fear to the point you can take action.
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So again, I want you to experiment with when you start feeling that fear or some feeling that's causing you to procrastinate dip into your curiosity instead of the thoughts, the overthinking around why, why, why? The other thing I want you to think about is what's helped you do something you were really afraid of doing in the past? What's helped you get your courage in the past? Because sometimes it's good when you're sitting in times of needing courage to take yourself back to that last time you successfully used courage and remember how you did it and remember how you felt at the end of it when it was all over when you'd finished, when you'd done it, and then use that feeling to propel you forward.
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Okay, that's it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me. If you want to talk more about courage, why not join us in the Women and Leadership Facebook group and get that Stop Waiting for Confidence course? While you're there, you will find the link in the show notes. I'm sure you'll find the courage to join in with the conversation.
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If you got value out of this episode, I would love it if you could share it with others. I really would appreciate that. And of course, if you've been listening to podcasts for any amount of time, you will know that rating the show and leaving a review will help others find the show as well. I wanted to give a special shout out this week to both Tracy and Naomi for rating the show five stars and letting me know they've done that. If you rate the show five stars, please send me a message and let me know so that I can give you a shout out as well because I really, really appreciate until next week, continue to lead the way her way.
