Courage

What Courage means in leadership

You coordinate a design contest. A popular colleague proposes letting the sponsor’s entry skip the published first round. Several teammates welcome the shortcut; the sponsor may be disappointed by a refusal. You say that its entry should go through the same round and explain the decision yourself. The ceremonial winner’s ribbon is already on your desk. For the moment, you are less concerned with tying a beautiful bow than keeping the contest worth entering.

Here the fear concerns support and belonging, and the purpose concerns entrants who relied on the terms. You consider the consequences and take responsibility for the decision within your role. Courage does not make the objection correct by itself: the ethical reason must withstand examination too.

Physical Courage

Physical Courage faces bodily danger for a worthy purpose, with judgment about consequences, competence and available help. An illustrated act involving danger is not an assignment to attempt a rescue or intervention.

Moral Courage

Moral Courage faces social, reputational, professional or relational costs. The contest scene emphasizes this expression. Such costs can be serious and can overlap with bodily danger; a less confrontational route can still be courageous.

Courage gives…

Owning the difficult choice can spare less powerful colleagues from having to enforce a decision you quietly arranged and publicly disowned. It also gives people a reason they can question, even if they remain unhappy with it.

Finding the balance

The ethical reason, the social cost and your responsibility belong in the same decision; applause and defiance are unreliable substitutes.

In ordinary life

A necessary no

You decline an attractive proposal whose foreseeable cost falls unfairly on someone else.

Naming the decision-maker

You explain a choice you made rather than attributing it vaguely to the team.

Nearby virtues, different work

Integrity

Integrity keeps the decision faithful to the principle. Courage concerns facing the fear involved in doing so.

Prudence

Prudence weighs consequences and possible routes; Courage sustains a considered choice when fear remains.

Recognizing a counterfeit

Provocation is a counterfeit of Courage when the pleasure of looking fearless supplies the reason for confrontation. Courage faces a relevant risk for a defensible purpose.

How to cultivate Courage

• State the ethical reason before deciding how to raise it.
• Consider who else would bear the consequences and what support is available.
• Own the part of the decision that is actually yours.

Try it today

Recall a small decision that belongs to you and affects a trusted group. Practice explaining its ethical reason in a situation without a known retaliation threat. Choose another situation if the consequences could threaten safety or essential support.

Questions worth returning to

• Whose approval am I afraid of losing?
• Does the purpose justify the risk I am considering?

Choose your practice

These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.

1. However we must avoid too much timidity and fear of censure, since many have played the coward, and abandoned noble ventures, more from fear of a bad name than of the dangers to be undergone, not being able to bear a bad reputation.

   Plutarch, Morals: Ethical Essays
   ON SHYNESS.636; section I

   Plutarch names fear of a bad reputation as a reason people abandon worthwhile action. The contest decision has a social cost even before any material loss.

2. Thus the virtue of fortitude or courage lies in the middle between the opposite vices of cowardice and of presumptuous rashness, of which the one offends from being too much, and the other from being too little affected by the objects of fear.

   Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
   SECTION II. Of the different accounts which have been given of the nature of virtue.; CHAP. I. Of those systems which make virtue consist in propriety.; section II

   Smith is reporting Aristotle’s account of courage between cowardice and rashness. Risk needs judgment; merely taking more of it does not establish the virtue.

3. I should be more fainthearted than they make me, if, through fear of idle reproaches, I should abandon my own convictions.

   Fabius, as represented by Plutarch, in Plutarch, Lives
   Life of Fabius; response to pressure for battle

   Fabius refuses to let accusations of cowardice determine a decision for which he is responsible. His reasons must withstand examination as well as public disapproval.

4. Caution, circumspection, prudence, desire to foresee future events so as to avert what is harmful, these desirable traits are as much a product of calling the impulse of fear into play as is cowardice and abject submission.

   John Dewey, Democracy and Education
   Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education; section I

   Dewey notes that fear can prompt foresight as well as submission. Courage need not begin by eliminating the feeling.

5. Did I only consider myself, I should rather choose to be exposed to the weapons of Hannibal than once more to the suffrages of my fellow-citizens, who are urgent for what you disapprove; yet since the cause of Rome is at stake, I will rather seek in my conduct to please and obey Fabius than all the world besides.

   Aemilius Paulus, as represented by Plutarch, in Plutarch, Lives
   Life of Fabius; reply attributed to Aemilius Paulus

   Paulus names public disapproval as a fear competing with his judgment of the common cause. This reported military speech illustrates the force of social pressure.

6. In our fear of abuse of power there has been no one to use power; we must change this if we are to have administrative efficiency.

   Mary Parker Follett, The New State
   Part II THE TRADITIONAL DEMOCRACY; XXI AFTER DIRECT GOVERNMENT—WHAT?

   Follett insists that fear of abusing power must not leave necessary work undone. A leader still has decisions to make and own.

7. The mind must be strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it by halves.

   Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
   CHAPTER 1.; THE RIGHTS AND INVOLVED DUTIES OF MANKIND CONSIDERED.

   Wollstonecraft locates one form of courage in examining the principles one will act on. Borrowing the group’s conviction can be easier than owning a reason.

Continue through the catalog