10 Elements of Leadership - Element 9: Courage & Boldness

Courage and boldness are essential to being a leadership warrior. In this video, Executive Coach Tom Tischhauser covers the top 3 questions to ask yourself to ensure you're displaying enough courage and boldness to be a great leader.

In our video series, we're covering the 10 elements of leadership that leaders display consistently. We've covered 8 out of the 10, and each of those requires that we do something. Whether it's to set up a vision and a strategy, develop talent, set the bar for ethics and integrity. We push, we drive, and at times we even fight.

We're warriors. We're actually leadership warriors.

Today I'm going to talk about courage and boldness, which are essential to being a leadership warrior. Now there are many things you should be thinking about, but I'm going to cover the top three questions that you should be asking yourself constantly to ensure that you're displaying the right level of courage and boldness to be a great leader.

Question 1: Are you comfortable pushing back and managing up?

So the first question is: are you comfortable pushing back and managing up?

When your boss gives you a direction or maybe asks you to cut the budget or has a timing requirement, are you comfortable pushing back when it's not the right things to do? It takes courage to do that, but it's your group. You know more about your operation than anybody else, and it's your job to push back.

It's not being difficult -- your boss doesn't expect you to obey. They expect you to advise. So, do you have the courage and boldness to push back, fight, manage up when it's required for the successful outcome that everybody wants?

If you take one thing away from this question, it's the following: you're paid to have an opinion. You earned your seat at the table. Use it!

Question 2: Are you comfortable changing your mind given better information?

Question number two: are you comfortable changing your mind given better information?

Now some leaders think it's a badge of honor to make decisions quickly and then stick to them. They're typically the people that like to have their desk cleared off all the time and get their inbox emptied and those kinds of things just to get things done.

But the fact of the matter is, the longer you wait, the more information you know.

In his book Nonsense, Jamie Holmes encourages us all to leverage ambiguity as a powerful tool because the longer you can wait -- which takes a lot of courage -- the more information you'll have about the scenario. Now I'm not talking about changing your mind every five minutes or anything like that. But I think you get the point that you can wait a little bit longer and know a lot more, and as long as you're comfortable changing your mind if things change again, you'll be fine.

My hostage negotiation colleague leverages this all the time. He said you have to be comfortable with the unknown in a hostage situation because you literally know nothing. You have to talk to the subject, learn about them, learn about their families, learn what's put them in this situation. And this comfort with the unknown and then the courage to make decisions usually yields a much more successful outcome.

So, courage and boldness to change your mind given better information is a powerful leadership tool.

Question 3: Are you bold enough to challenge the status quo?

The third question is: are you bold enough to challenge the status quo?

We've all heard everybody say, "Oh, but that's the way we've always done it."

Well just because we've done it for the last 10 to 15 years doesn't necessarily make it relevant for today.

One of the most exciting things I have my clients do is sit with their teams and brainstorm about what can we stop doing. Oh, the energy in the room is amazing because everybody has an idea of work they're doing that they're not really sure adds a whole lot of value.

One of the most exciting and interesting things one of my clients did was in a finance group, right? So finance generates reports on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly basis, and they really don't know firsthand what reports are relevant to running the business. They just issue these reports, they go into everybody's inbox, and they go onto the next one, right?

Well, my client wasn't sure how to deal with this, but then he had a bold and courageous idea:

shut everything off and see what happens.

So that's what he did. And he waited until people came and asked for reports. That way, he knew what reports were actually relevant to running the business. At the end of the day, it was less than 40 percent of the reports the group had been generating were actually necessary. And look at the headcount he saved and was able to put into other areas.

I think you'd agree it was pretty bold and courageous to shut everything off and then wait for people to come and ask for reports.

Be a leadership warrior.

These are just 3 areas where boldness and courage are necessary for success. I'm sure you can think of many others. But always remember: leaders are warriors, and warriors require courage and boldness.

Thanks for taking the time to watch the video! The next video will be the final video in our leadership series and will cover self-awareness.

If you missed any videos or would like more leadership thoughts, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, visit us on LinkedIn, or visit the website wynstonepartners.com.

But always remember: better leaders, better business.