Fueling the fire: Courage

“Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism. In human beings courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.” May, R (1975:13) The Courage to Create

TIPS FOR GOOD PRACTICE

  1. Nourish a culture where it is ok to fail, as long as you put in your best effort. Celebrate original contributions, bold propositions, and big plans, in the sense that you pick out and show their best qualities – even if the customer rejects them. A few critical experiences of how failing is handled in the organization will influence how courageous people are.
  2. Dare to make uncertainty and disagreement within the team visible to the customer or client, in cases where the risks are high and the situation is ambiguous.
  3. Creativity is in the encounter: Have the courage to engage with and be absorbed in the problem you want to solve.
  4. Share stories about what has worked in the past.
  5. Reinforce work forms that cultivate a language of possibility and supportive action, like allowing the team to investigate a task in many different ways or confront limitations of the task.
  6. Promote a team culture where everyone, seniors and juniors, are expected and encouraged to contribute and speak their voice. The role of the team leader and other de facto leaders are important in such processes.

Readings for inspiration
Bandura, A. (1989) Human Agency in Social Cognitive Theory. Harvard Business School Press.
May, R. (1975) The Courage to Create. New York: W.W.Norton & Co.
Carlsen, A., Hagen, A.L. and Mortensen, T.F. (2011) “Imagining Hope in Organizations: From Individual Goal-Attainment to Horizons of Relational Possiblity”. In Cameron, K. and Spreitzer,G. (Eds.) Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship. Oxford University Press.
Sternberg, R. J. (2005) ”A Model of Positive Educational Leadership Comprising Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized”. Educational Psychology Review, Vol. 17, No. 3