Blog page 33

Whether you believe Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is right or not in releasing the material he has, you cannot doubt his courage in doing so. But is this what you want for your organisation?

Can organisations survive if their employees simply follow orders? Do we believe that our leaders know it all?

Courage in the workplace is an action, the difference between intention and implementation where the desired action is new, untried or in some way has previously been rejected. But what are the benefits of implementing a courageous workplace?

Workplace courage is a form of social courage (as opposed to physical courage) where individuals who display such courage risk social exclusion or ridicule (as opposed to physical hurt or even death) for a ‘greater’ good.

There is no one set of traits of effective courageous leaders. However, research has shown that the following characteristics are common in most such leaders.

Courageousness starts with self leadership. Self leadership is an ongoing personal journey with successes and failures, learning and adapting to new situations.

If you want to be a courageous leader, you first need to look inside yourself and learn to be courageous in your own behaviour.