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Author: Giorgos Sioutzos

4 Tips to Increase Leadership Bravery

The modern business environment is full of challenges and fluctuations. The high level of everyday uncertainty and the difficult situations you’ll experience as a leader requires courage. Courage is one of the most significant leadership traits that can effectively deal with the everyday issues that arise in your professional life.

Plato considers courage as a type of salvation and Thucydides as the secret of human freedom as he returns to make choices and implement based on values ​​and goals on an individual and collective level.

A project manager who has to make tough decisions and discussions in order to keep the project on track or a program manager who has to balance the needs of different stakeholders and make unpopular decisions for some projects needs courage as those decision may annoy, anger or hurt some people

Although some people believe that courage is an innate characteristic of character, the truth is that progressively and experiencing various events in the course of life with a critical eye can contribute to the forging of courage.

The following ideas for developing courage as a trait may help you in your leadership role:

1. Fear and courage can co-exist

As a leader, it’s normal to feel fear – it’s also an alarm that you can exploit to prepare better and to have different alternatives and contingency plans. The goal is not to allow fear to paralyze you and prevent you from taking action but to use it to your advantage. You can recall past similar situations that you have managed to cope with fear and try reframing negative thoughts into more positive ones. Instead of saying – This meeting will go wrong you can say – I will try my best and i will evaluate the outcome at the end in order to take corrective actions.

A strong leader can face stakeholders and make them understand the project’s milestones without letting their fear overwhelm them even if what he has to say is not popular and may cause dissatisfaction. Meanwhile, a weak leader will tell the stakeholders what they want to hear even if it doesn’t benefit the project.

2. Don’t run away from your fears

As a project manager you may be afraid to communicate the hard truths concerning the status or risks to a steering committee. To overcome this, you could gradually try to expose yourself to uncomfortable situations in order to gain more confidence and feel less nervous in these situations.

3. Gain the necessary knowledge

Sometimes the main reason we feel scared is because we don’t have the necessary skills and knowledge to deal with our professional life. As a leader, you’ll find that you’ll need to broaden your knowledge and your understanding on specific items in order to lead effectively. Taking into account the dynamics of the stakeholders and the environment is also necessary. If you develop the right mindset of being open to acquiring new knowledge and expand upon your skill set, you’ll be more effective in your everyday tasks and you’ll feel less fear.

4. Develop your emotional control

Recognizing your emotions and treating them accordingly is vital for your success as a leader. Think carefully about what situations trigger certain emotions and how beneficial these emotions are to your leadership role. However, emotional control is not equal to ignoring your feelings. It has to do with recognizing your feelings and filtering them in order to focus on the ones that can be beneficial to your effectiveness and your leadership role.

To succeed in your professional life as a leader, you’ll have to take many risks and without courage, fear will control you and will stop you from using your full potential. Fear is only useful when it’s used as an alarm that helps you to minimize risks and deters you from taking the wrong action. As a leader, its fine to feel fear but don’t let it overwhelm you and paralyze you.