12 Steps For Courageous Leadership

INTRODUCTION Being a leader is not easy. It takes a real demonstration of living courageously. After observing many leaders who have come through PeopleTek programs, I noticed that the ones who are successful both in life and work have a set of characteristics and behaviors. I saw a pattern so clearly I created a term to describe them and call it “CourageAbility”™. CourageAbility is the ability to live both your dreams and professional life the way you want, while achieving your goals and exceeding in your life’s ambitions and objectives. It is taking and empowering yourself and others to go where you or they have never gone before. For the past 22 years I’ve been on a quest to be a great leader. Working with businesses and teams, and observing as a consultant, coach, trainer, and leader, I experienced both great achievements and disappointments. PeopleTek’s Leadership Journey has graduated over 1500 leaders from a wide variety of companies. Together with Jan and with PeopleTek coaches, I’ve had the opportunity to observe many leaders, styles, skills, traits and actions and have come to a conclusion: Courage is the single most important attribute any leader must have in order to be effective and successful. We all have the ability to demonstrate courage and we need to master the skill to activate it “on command”. As a result we have coined the term CourageAbility as a tool and trigger for all of us to use to remind us of the actions we can take to make vast improvements as leaders. Please share with us your feedback, stories and responses to your use of CourageAbility and its practice in your quest to be a great leader. Enjoy your Journey! Author’s Note With all my experience, study, and achievements, it wasn’t until recently that I was able to improve my skills as a leader a small amount. In 1988 I was told that I was “wishy-washy”, unfocused, and didn’t hold my staff accountable to behavior. While this hurt, through various coaches and self discovery I was able to learn where these perceptions were coming from and made many adjustments to my style and skills. Despite the opportunity to develop many successful teams, including PeopleTek, it was not enough. It is only recently where I’ve noticed improvement in my leadership skills and I credit a majority of that change as a result of my experience with a network marketing business. Before this experience I felt I was lacking something in my behavior and confidence level. I can now impart a set of techniques that have been proven to be not only effective when practiced but enduring and everlasting. Many of you may have cringed at the title CourageAbility: The 12 Steps to Leadership Success. You may have even associated it with another 12 step program, Alcoholics Anonymous. Well yes, it is a term related to using 12 steps, and yes, I am taking a chance that everyone won’t like me or it because of it. I am proud to say with confidence “I don’t give a DAMN”! That is one demonstration of what CourageAbility is. You don’t have to have everyone like you. The ability to live your passion and business life the way you want in order to achieve your career desires, goals, and objectives takes courage. While these 12 techniques seem simple and basic I can assure you they are easy to say and harder to do. With dedication and practice they can be implemented and your confidence as a leader will continually grow. Sincerely, Mike Chapter 1 CourageAbility What is it and how can it help us? ”To succeed, one must possess an effective combination of ability, ambition, courage, drive, hard work, integrity, and loyalty.” -- Harry F. Banks It’s not easy being a leader. It takes courage and commitment, the willingness to step out of our comfort zone, the need to readily adapt to change, and the obligation to develop our skill set and the skills within our organization. To some this is fearful. Dealing with the unknown or facing a known weakness creates discomfort. Another way to look at it is that courage and commitment are required to become a stronger leader. Embracing both the fear and courage emotions we feel can actually be inspirational! We have identified 12 areas that can de-rail our ability to be successful. This can be due to fear, or lacking the courage to: 1. Passion- Have and live your dream. 2. Document your goals. 3. Commit to your goals. 4. Understand your strengths and the strengths of others. 5. Communicate with confidence and clarity. 6. Understand and manage conflict with a purpose. 7. Develop others. 8. Delegate. 9. Develop a skill. 10. Remain controlled. 11. Reward and Recognize. 12. Succeed and learn from failure. You may say we are missing some such as risk taking. I’ve thought about this long and hard and if you have the courage and commitment to have and live your dream you will demonstrate enough risk for a lifetime. While working with individuals who are in either Corporate America or who work for others, I ask them a question with the intent to determine what they’re passionate about: “If you could do anything you wanted in your career and life what would it be?” With the follow-up question “What are you willing to do to live that dream”? Many of us would say we will do anything, work unlimited hours, and be willing to encounter failures to have our dream come true. I will tell you that even I have had a tough time living to what it is I said I want.