Season 3 of The Courage Hotline Podcast is here!

Does Your Organization Have a Courage-Ready Culture?

Mark had been on my team for about a year before he got word his position in Nashville was being eliminated. Mark was initially offered a similar position in Chicago, which would put him in a great city, but would remove him from my team. Mark resisted. For weeks, he came up with different scenarios that would *fingers crossed* allow him to continue working we me. He loved that our team — a work community that expected and celebrated risk-taking. Our team had a strong focus on giving constructive feedback, elevating each others’ ideas, testing the reliability of our skills...
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Courage is Disruptive. Here’s why.

I recently worked with a coaching client who wanted the courage to break up with perfectionism — a drive toward flawlessness that has increased among young adults by 32% over the last three decades. Throughout her career, perfectionism led her to pull long hours, second guess her judgement, work through vacations and say yes to every request. She produced amazing results … that came with knots in her shoulders, an exhausting believe that she had to prove herself and a constant thought loop about what people would think of her if she failed. She made a personal commitment to live...
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4 reasons why professionals aren’t acting courageously at work

I can almost recite word for word a familiar question I get during Q&A sessions after I present. “How do I get my team to come out of their shells to be more courageous at work?” There’s no doubt that professionals want to take worthwhile risks in the workplace. Part one of this series explored specific actions they want to pursue. But if you ask some managers, they’ll likely tell you that they can’t crack the code on getting these team members to move past go. Managers have more pressure on them than ever to produce efficient results, show value...
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4 Courageous Actions Professionals Want to Take

The cat’s out of the bag. Employees are not working … … to their full potential. They’re not challenging half-baked ideas that they know won’t deliver anticipated results. They’re not raising concerns about gender or racial exclusion in the newest campaign. And, they’re not asking for help, giving critical feedback or raising their hand to take the lead. What’s clear is that their professional growth and development isn’t the only thing taking a hit … so is the company’s bottom line. Recent headlines from the pandemic suggest “Quiet Quitting” — the act of performing bare necessities of a job —...
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Confidence-Building is not Romantic. Sorry.

I meet professionals from all over who want to know, “how do I build up my confidence … to become a better speaker, negotiate my salary, advocate for my ideas …?” Their curiosity is good, but they’re often a bit surprised when I politely tell them that there’s a better question to ask about confidence. The reality is they already know how to build confidence (and you do, too) — just like they know how to tie their shoes. In fact, strategies used to figure out how to loop shoelaces together are the same strategies you can use to build...
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3 Fears to Manage for Professional Growth

I recently chatted with my friend Heather Hansen on her podcast, Elegant Warrior. Midway through our conversation, she asked if there was a common challenge I observed among coaching clients that kept them from flexing their courage muscle to own and demonstrate their brilliance at work. After a brief pause, I answered, in so many words, “fear of failure.” Upon further reflection, I realized I covered only part of the answer. There are, I believe, three common actions professionals often need courage for — speaking up, showing up authentically and stepping up. And, interestingly, I’ve found three big fears to...
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3 Daily Workplace Goals To Set For Professional Development

There are several reasonable workplace goals you could set to fuel professional progress. You could focus your ambition on managing a new project, expanding your influence or improving time management. The goals that deserve critical attention, though, are the ones that will help you consistently develop into a courageous leader — a leader who effectively guides themself or others to willingly direct their gifts and skills to the organization’s mission in the face of challenges and risks. Now more than ever, organizations need leaders who have the adaptive and cognitive skills that can help position their businesses for the future....
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Want courage? Adopt an Experimenter’s Mindset

One day in 2018, I walked the streets of Kuala Lumpur and stumbled upon a vendor with a sign on his cart. It read, “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better you are.” He was selling create-your-own snow cones and may or may not have offered me one. I can’t recall because the quote commanded most of my attention. I had never considered life as an experiment … maybe an adventure or, at times, a struggle. But, experiment? I grabbed a photo of the sign because I knew it was meaningful but hadn’t figured out...
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