And if you want to call these “soft skills” after you’ve tried putting them into practice-go for it. We just haven’t had the courage for real talk about courage.

The skill sets that make up courage are not new they’ve been aspirational leadership skills for as long as there have been leaders.

We have to be vigilant about creating a culture in which people feel safe, seen, heard, and respected. To scale daring leadership and build courage in teams and organizations, we have to cultivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations, and whole hearts are the expectation, and armor is not necessary or rewarded. Our armor-the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that we use to protect ourselves when we aren’t willing and able to rumble with vulnerability-move us out of alignment with our values, corrode trust with our colleagues and teams, and prevent us from being our most courageous selves. The greatest barrier to courageous leadership is not fear-it’s how we respond to our fear.

Our ability to be daring leaders will never be greater than our capacity for vulnerability. The foundational skill set of courage-building is “rumbling with vulnerability.” Once we have built these rumbling skills, we can move on to the other three skill sets: Living into Our Values, Braving Trust, and Learning to Rise. Embrace the suck.ĭaring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100% teachable, observable, and measurable. You can’t get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability.Here are a few of the big ideas that emerged from this research: The goal of Dare to Lead is to share everything we’ve learned about taking off the armor and showing up as leaders in a skills-based and actionable playbook. I’ve spent twenty years studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy, and I recently completed a seven-year study on brave leadership.

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