COURAGE" - It's a virtue that often reveals the great leaders in companies. If you look around, courage in the workplace is in short supply. Why? Because many corporate cultures of companies large and small are often driven by agendas that serve the few and miss the many. The cultures some companies foster today have clearly lost their focus and missed the concept that there can be win /win /win outcomes: win for the company, win for the customers, and a win for the employees and shareholders. When a new leader comes in to an organization, he or she sets the tone for how that company will run, sets the course and chooses the direction of the day-to-day philosophy. But as we have seen too often, the alignment of win/win/win concepts is often significantly off-balance. So how can courage bring companies back into a more balanced state? With courage comes the essential virtue of doing the right thing at the right place at the right time. It takes courage for a leader to revisit, revise and refocus the mission and vision of his/her company, a mission which will uphold the values and beliefs that are paramount to the success of the organization. Mission and vision statements are not static words, - they are constantly evolving and changing with a company's growth, and should be addressed more often than what might seem adequate. It takes courage to uphold what a company stands for and this is far easier said than done. Companies are made up of people who support these belief statements and effective leaders are always trying to reinforce these mantras. Ask yourself today - does my company attempt to live a belief system congruent to my own personal values and beliefs? If not, can you think of a time when you had a boss who or company which exemplified the following virtues: honesty, integrity, confidence, compassion and humility?If you answer 'more than three years ago' to this question, you could very well be on a fast track to feeling unfulfilled in your working life and it may be time to do something about it. So what can you do?
A. If you have the courage you can evaluate your workplace situation. Look at the culture of your company, your boss, your colleagues, and determine what is working and what is not. Then, ask yourself, how can I contribute to having more satisfying outcomes with my work day than frustrating ones?
B. If you have the courage you can get the help of mentors and map out a more optimal environment where you give yourself permission to uphold your beliefs more, allowing you to work optimally without compromising these values and beliefs on a daily basis.
C. If you have the courage you can choose to continue with this conscious way of thinking and share it with others. Helping your co-workers, your customers and even your boss do the right things at the right time can be rewarding and contagious, leading other people to do good.
When we live with courage, we also recognize failure and admit to it. And when we embrace our failures, we put all things good and bad on the table, we take lessons from the experiences, receive knowledge, and turn it into wisdom- if in fact we get the lesson! If we don't address our failures, fear sets in for the next time and the issue rears its ugly head over and over again. You have courage when you care about the outcomes that impact others, not just yourself.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "Try to do the thing you think you cannot do".
What if we all tried to do something that we feared and thought it was not possible? Imagine how many good outcomes might be experienced if we actually tried. Embracing our fears, our failures and our negative thinking allows us to go far and can take us to a better place. And what virtue is needed to start this change? None other than courage!
Having the courage to move forward can make so many other things right in your life and you can actually see the transformation begin. You become renewed in your thinking and see the opportunities arise. Then you may even impact the changing of your company environment and begin to shift the very culture with which you struggled.
What is courage? According to the Random House Dictionary courage is: "The quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain with firmness and without fear".
Look closely at the quality of your thinking, and what obstacle you need to overcome in your workplace today; and find the strength to face the pain, without fear. As you build your courage, you might find it was the very best thing you could ever commit to doing.
Pamela Ruebusch is Senior Partner, TSI Group (www.tsigroup.com), one of Canada's leading recruitment, training and development firms in supply chain management.