Being liked isn’t required for leaders, but courage is.
I got my first shot at professional leadership fifteen years ago, and I made myself a quiet promise: I was going to be the leader everyone liked and admired for my kindness. No ruffled feathers, and harmony across the group.
So I agreed with people I should have challenged. I nodded along with work that wasn’t good enough. I talked a big game about growing the business, but I never wanted to be the reason anyone felt uncomfortable getting there.
I thought that made me a strong leader, but really it made me a weak one. Here’s why. It didn’t have courage in it.
What I know now is leadership without courage is just a title. It’s a chair, a paycheck, and a line on an org chart. It provides authority for decision-making but no impact. As the wise William Wallace in Braveheart said,
People don’t follow titles, they follow courage.
Two hundred fifty years ago this week, a room full of ordinary men reminded the world what real leadership actually requires.
On July 2, 1776, delegates to the Second Continental Congress voted to declare the American colonies independent from Great Britain. John Adams was certain that date, not July 4th, would be the one future generations celebrated with bonfires and fireworks. He was off by two days, but he was not wrong about what the moment demanded.
Signing that declaration was a courageous decision because it was treason against the most powerful empire on Earth, and treason was punishable by death. Every man who eventually put his name on that page knew exactly what he was risking.
John Hancock signed first. Legend has it he signed so large that King George could read it without his spectacles. Benjamin Franklin turned to the men beside him and said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Signing the Declaration of Independence wasn’t a joke. That was leadership delivered under the threat of a rope.
More than likely, you or I will never be asked to pledge our lives for a cause. But real leadership requires courage. And while today courage doesn’t require a revolution. It does require a decision.
You don’t need a war to prove it. You need the hard conversation you’ve been avoiding. The decision you keep delaying. Small as they are next to a fight for independence, those moments run on the same fuel. They ask you to act while you’re afraid.
You’re already facing a moment like that right now. Here’s how to meet it.
Write down the worst possible outcome. Name it specifically. Not the vague dread, the actual sentence you’re afraid of hearing or saying. Most of the time, written down in plain words, it’s survivable. That’s what the fear didn’t want you to notice.
Quantify the best possible outcome. Your brain is wired to weigh pain against gain, so give it something to weigh. Put a number or a name on it. Make the upside as specific as the fear.
Act differently than you feel. Feelings are real, but they aren’t instructions. Fear tells you to stand down and remain in safety. However, fear doesn’t get a vote once you’ve decided; courage does.
I know exactly how I would lead differently if I could go back in time. I would recognize that leadership requires courage. And while I didn’t feel like being courageous, if I was unable or unwilling to act differently than I felt, someone else needed to be leading.
So the question isn’t whether you’re facing a moment that requires courage right now. You already are. The question is whether you’ll sign your name to it.
Use your gifts,
John Eades
Founder of LearnLoft | The Sales Infrastructure
P.S. I hope you have a safe and wonderful July 4th holiday if you're in the United States. And if you’re not, use that date to make one courageous act of leadership.
And finally, Go USA Soccer!
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