Be brave!
If only it were that simple.
Courage is considered a key skill on the way to more agile and flexible forms of work. In the past, too, courage was a necessity in working life: addressing conflicts, disagreeing with superiors, courageously approaching neighboring departments that were defensive - every form of organization had its own special features where courage is helpful. This article deals with what courage actually is and how courage can be developed.
What is courage?
Courage is more than just "leaving your comfort zone". Whoever is courageous dares something, goes beyond himself. To dare something is an undertaking that takes place beyond the usual and accepted boundaries. To move outside of boundaries, can refer to 2 dimensions:
- to try something that I have not yet succeeded in doing
- to try something that I have not done yet
The psychology of courage
To move in one of these dimensions or even in both dimensions is courageous. In our brain and the associated nervous system, all our experiences are stored according to the scheme: negative-avoid or positive-reinforce. According to this evaluation, the experiences condense into beliefs and views about ourselves and the world. These make us feel, think and act almost automatically and reflexively. Demanding situations or even changes in the organization of work, trigger bodily sensations and feelings. Everybody knows such reactions, e.g. a physical tightness in the chest before a critical conversation or the faltering breath and an uncertain feeling at a bad result. In such moments, we are often identified with a sense of insecurity and inhibiting bodily sensations - we then recall learned patterns that have formed as a result of our experiences. These patterns often have a protective character - "Look, this has often not been a good idea" or "Your opinion is not needed". This is exactly why we then prefer to remain silent, justify ourselves or avoid confrontation.
An example: Ms. Schwarz is in her early 30s, a team leader in application development at a medium-sized mechanical engineering company. She already tended to focus on STEM subjects in school and decided to study technical computer science. On the job, her technical brilliance, accuracy and reliability helped her become a team leader for a team of 12 developers after just a few years. Now, in her company's agile transformation, she faces some personal challenges: developing her people, fostering an experimental attitude, and not interfering everywhere. This puts tremendous pressure on her, she sometimes feels both redundant and overwhelmed. The new work context requires courage to let go of control and micromanagement, to nurture team relationships and ensure stakeholder engagement, and to create helpful frameworks.
Ways to develop courage
Being courageous means entering new territory. This can succeed if I make myself aware of my beliefs or views. Because what I can not clearly name, I can not change. Because our feelings are always faster than our mind, we cannot simply "switch over" and behave against our automatic impulses from now on. It needs an experimental attitude and an experimental approach to make new experiences. In doing so, it is important to regulate oneself on the emotional level, especially to weigh the emotional risks in order not to behave overbearingly, but still to dare something.
In our example, it will be necessary for Ms. Schwarz to recognize that her professional, accurate eye and forward-looking planning skills are wonderful skills in many ways. On the other hand, however, it will be necessary for her to recognize in her work environment how she can develop a confident approach at the relational level. She might develop awareness that the perfect, planner in her can also be a hurdle to the interpersonal. Helping employees to be more experimental is a big challenge for her. A feeling of inner security is helpful for her to be able to decide again and again to trust in the employees. Developing a feeling of inner security at this point requires, in addition to awareness of the relationship level, a careful and emotional learning process in which Ms. Schwarz can make new, strengthening experiences.
Conclusion
Developing courage is individual personality development and can be supported by suitable processes in seminars or also in coaching. Learning makes it possible to understand individual as well as organizational obstacles. New experiences help to expand the individual scope of action and to increase personal effectiveness.
Companies can support the development of courage by specifically influencing inhibiting, collective behaviors, such as a cover-up approach to mistakes, a perfectionist approach to decisions or a hierarchical approach to responsibility.
