Everything You Wanted to Know About Courage... But Were Afraid to Ask.

What Is Courage?

The very word comes from the heart. Coeur is the French word for heart. It's important to remember that this isn't stuff that comes from the brain; it also comes from the gut. You don't work through a set of decision-tree steps to get to it.

Howard Schultz provides a good example. Recently, he wanted to move Starbucks into a particular international market. He was discouraged by all sorts of consulting studies and analysis, all the advice he could muster. He called me. Without telling me any details, he said, "I have something I want to do, but for the first time almost all of my direct reports are against the decision. What do I do?" I said, "Well, how far have you gotten on your instincts, your gut, your heart?" I could hear him smiling on the phone. So I said, "Why don't you just follow your heart?" Which is another way of making a brave decision.

However, I did counsel him to spend at least a couple of hours with his direct reports getting out all of their concerns. "Listen to them," I said. "You may change your mind. But if you don't, then tell them, 'Look, this is what I think is right, I want your support, and let's do it.' " That's what happened.

Schultz had spent over half a million dollars on consultants telling him not to go. But courage is giving people a direction that's unusual and then getting people to enroll and mobilize behind that decision. He listened to all the concerns. But he went on his heart.

Warren Bennis

What we label courage is a strong emotional commitment -- and the key word is emotional -- to some ideas. Those ideas could be called a vision for where we're trying to drive the enterprise, they could be called values for what we think is important in life, they could be called principles of what is right and wrong. When people don't just have an intellectual sense that these are logically good, but are deeply committed to them, they're developing courage. When you run up against barriers that keep you from those ideals, the stronger your commitment, the more likely you are to take action consistent with those ideals. Even if it's against your short-term best interests. And other people will look at that and say, "Wow, that's courageous."

The bigger the context, the greater the barriers, the more the snake pits -- pick your own overused metaphor -- the more there will be times for courageous acts. And the people who go down in history as great leaders always meet these tests.

John Kotter

The Cast

Warren Bennis
Distinguished professor of business, USC

Michael Feiner
Professor, Columbia Business School

John Kotter
Professor, Harvard Business School

Marian Krauskopf
Codirector, Research Center for Leadership in Action, NYU's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld
Associate dean and professor, Yale School of Management

Noel Tichy
Director, Global Leadership Program, University of Michigan Business School

Michael Useem
Director, Center for Leadership and Change Management, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

How do you decide what's bold and daring versus just damn stupid and reckless?

There's no book on that. Was launching D-Day on June 6 the right idea? Well, the weather was too bad on the 5th, but it wasn't great on the 6th either. How would one know if it's courageous or dumb until the dust settles?

There's no such thing as a safe risk. That's an oxymoron. All courage is a risk. None of it is safe. The only way to decide is through the shining ether of time.

Warren Bennis

Can bravery be learned? Or is it genetic?

How much leadership do you think is out there that's good? What percent of entrepreneurs and business folks could meet the test of being a good leader? How about half of 1%? This could be because of genetics, but I doubt it. It has to do with the experiences people have gone through and what they've been told and what they've been rewarded for. If you're a middle manager in some company, how often do you get the vibration that the people above you really want you to provide great leadership to your team?

And it flips the other way, too. Everyone is overworked. People aren't looking for new challenges, so it's easy to try to brush leadership off. If you talk to enough people, most of them will say, "Leadership isn't my job. It [belongs to] the guy above me or the guy above him."

We are where we've been. You don't suddenly burst out at age 50 speaking Mandarin if you haven't been living in a Mandarin world or taking Mandarin classes. If we don't think leadership is our job, if no one desperately wants leadership from us, and if society in general isn't beating on us about that, then what happens? We don't do much, leadership is not supported, and surprise, surprise, we don't develop much as leaders.

John Kotter