Think of a hard conversation you know you should have with someone that you haven’t initiated. Now, consider why you haven’t had the conversation. Is it because you don’t know what you want to say? I’m betting you know exactly what you want to say. Is it because you haven’t had the opportunity to say it? I’m guessing you’ve already missed a few ripe opportunities to raise this uncomfortable issue. Is it because you don’t know how to say it? I’m sure you’re struggling with the perfect words. But why do you need perfect words? Adequate words should be enough. So, again… why haven’t you had the conversation? Because it’s scary. As you think about it, your heart rate quickens and your adrenaline flows. What if they lash back or get defensive or blame you? What if they simply stare at you and become passive-aggressive? Or maybe you’re afraid of your own response. What if you lose control and fly into a rage? That would be uncomfortable, to say the least. You would have to feel things you don’t want to feel. And that, it turns out, is what holds you back.
Any gap in emotional courage limits your freedom to act
What actually derails us from acting powerfully in our lives, in our relationships, at work or in the world, is discomfort – the discomfort of follow-through. On the surface, it seems like the key to follow-through is the courage to act. And it is. But what underlies the courage to act is the courage to feel – emotional courage. Any gap in emotional courage limits your freedom to act. When you avoid feeling, it’s a huge drain on your productivity and your organisational outcomes. By far and away the biggest block to contributing to your maximum potential is invariably self-imposed, the resistance to following through on uncomfortable actions. If you don’t follow through, if you don’t have that conversation, then you won’t have the hard feelings. More than anything, our collective lack of emotional courage is what prevents us and our teams from moving forward. The opposite is also true. If you are willing to feel and address difficult feelings, you can gain massive traction on your most important work. You can close the gap between strategy and execution.
Emotional courage is not a talent that some people are born with and others aren’t – it is entirely developable. We all feel things deeply. In fact, that’s why we let feelings stop us – we have learned, through experience, that some feelings – shame, embarrassment, rejection, to name a few – are painful. And we do our best to shut those feelings down, mostly by restricting our behaviour so that we don’t do things that might invite those feelings. But that strategy is flawed. It makes us much less powerful in the world. What I have learnt from our leadership work is that emotional courage is not just an idea, it’s a muscle, and, like all muscles, it grows with exercise. Every time you initiate a difficult conversation, take a risk, make a decision or influence others, you are growing your emotional courage. To get your most important work done you have to have hard conversations, create accountability and inspire action by attracting people to trust you and commit their effort to a larger purpose. You need to care about others and connect with them, and speak persuasively while listening with openness and compassion. In 25 years of working with leaders, I have found four essential elements that all great leaders demonstrate, four ways of showing up that predictably rally people to accomplish what’s important to them. They need to:
To inspire action you need to excel at all four simultaneously. If you’re confident in yourself, but disconnected from others, everything will be about you and you’ll alienate the people around you. If you’re connected to others, but lack confidence in yourself, you will betray your own needs and perspectives in order to please everyone else. If you’re not connected to a purpose, something bigger than yourself, and others, you’ll lose the respect of those around you as you act aimlessly, failing to make an impact on what matters most. And if you fail to act powerfully, decisively and boldly, your ideas will remain in your head and your goals will remain unfulfilled fantasies.
You will often hear people say it’s important to be confident, but that’s easier said than done. Knowing who you are; staying true to yourself – even when it risks disappointing others; and asking for and taking in feedback without becoming defensive are all measures of confidence and worth cultivating.
Your success in creating collective action is based on your ability to develop relationships with others. When people know that you trust them and listen to them even when you disagree; when people understand that you are genuinely curious about their views and approach tricky problems with curiosity; and when you energise people around you and don’t fail to initiate hard conversations – these are all measures of a good level of connection with others.
Inspiring people to act together requires a shared focus that supersedes individual interests. Some of the hallmarks of committed people and teams are: a willingness to prioritise shared projects over individual interests; involving others at an early stage of shared work; and being effective at helping others recover and perform following mistakes or struggles.
Developing a willingness to feel and acknowledge hard feelings and acting boldly are actions that help to develop emotional courage. Being able to identify emotion, not allowing discomfort to deter from what needs to be done, and routinely taking calculated and bold risks are all measures of emotional courage. With practice, emotional courage will become second nature and, though some things will feel daunting, many will be less so and you will have the courage to feel whatever it is you need to feel in order to move ahead.
Peter Bregman is the author of Leading with Emotional Courage (Wiley, 2018) and CEO of Bregman Partners