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Today, I want to talk about courage. I think courage is the most important aspect of leadership.

Courage is important for a number of reasons. It takes courage to go after your dreams. The interesting thing that I find is that even some of the people that I work with who are doing big things in the world lack courage in certain areas.

I think courage is the small hinge that swings the big door, as far as results and transformation and impact. I bet you have examples in your own life where courage has really made the difference for you.

I believe that leadership is important in a business context. And it cannot exist in a silo, meaning your leadership should be applied to every aspect of your life, which means that your courage should be applied to every aspect of your life.

Sometimes you have employees, that you need to have difficult conversations with. I know lots of leaders that don't have the courage to let people go. I know leaders that have hired people and the moment that they hired them, they had this little gut feeling that they were not a good fit.

They said yes anyway and they kept that person on board for six months, a year, two years or more because they didn't have the courage to fire them. Then there is the courage as far as being a leader in what your movement is and what it is that you really stand for.

The reason that people typically skirt their courage is because of fear. It usually is related to a couple of different aspects of fear. Usually, it's a fear of someone's opinion. It's amazing to me how many leaders want to do big things in the world and they create these amazing businesses and they rally these people behind their vision, and yet they're afraid of what people think.

The more you value other people's opinions, the less courage you will have. And the reason is simple: because most likely when you are courageous, it also requires a certain level of honesty. And sometimes that honesty does not go over well.

I want you to imagine what life would be like if courage was at the forefront of how you operated. If you constantly seek out things that required high levels of courage, imagine what that would create for you on a regular basis.

There's usually a belief system. There's usually a story we're telling ourselves about ourselves. It's about how we feel about ourselves or about how other people are gonna feel about us. We don't want to feel rejected by other people.

That’s actually a very fundamental human desire that we have is to be accepted by other people. How many times have we ever seen that a little kid learns how to do something and they want their parents to watch? Why? Because they want their approval. Desiring approval is not a bad thing. However, it becomes a bad thing if it prevents us from growing.

What I mean by that is we begin to create what's called a performance-based identity, where our value and our significance purely or mostly comes as a function of other people's opinions.

That becomes very dangerous because we decide to play it safe for the most part, and we begin to manipulate ourselves, and how we show up in order to get the recognition and the significance of other people that we desire.

That becomes the recipe for disaster because you're manipulating their perception of you rather than just showing up as your authentic, bold, courageous self.

Most people who don't believe in themselves have what's called negative expectancy. They go, “Well if I try that, it probably won't work,” or “What if it doesn't work?”, or “What if I fail and then everyone leaves and I'm abandoned?”

Here's what I'd like you to do right now from a standpoint of courage. I want you to think about in your own life, where have you been hiding from your courage? What are some areas that may be professionally or personally that you've been hiding from your courage?

I'm here to tell you that your company, your organization, your family, your community is always a reflection of you. If you have a company and you see that your people aren't trusting themselves, they're not communicating, they’re not performing at a high level, that's on you.

The greatest opportunity you have as a leader is to take responsibility, to engage with the courage that it takes to be the change in your organization, and not to delegate it. Commit to courage because everything you want is on the other side of it.

If you are a visionary leader who wants to quantum leap your impact and leave a legacy of achieving the impossible, I am here and the world is waiting. Email me at shannon@shannongraham.com