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

Can you prepare to be courageous?

The textbook example is when Eugene Kranz said, "Failure is not an option" when bringing home Apollo 13. He was confident because he had enough experience. He knew the staffing down there in Houston; he knew all the moving parts. And by looking at his resources and relying on his prior mission directorships, he could draw the concrete assessment that the mission would successfully return to Earth.

The number-one way to prepare for future tough moments is to do what the military calls an "after-action review." Do it routinely, not only in your operation but for you personally. I've spoken with entrepreneurs who routinely sit down at the end of their week and look at the decisions they've made. It's almost meditative. They get rid of all other distractions and review what they did, what they might have done differently, and what lessons came out of that, for future reference.

The second thing to do is to put yourself in situations that get you out of your comfort zone, if you'll forgive the business-speak term. The more you can force yourself to do things 30% different from what you've already done, again and again, the better you'll be prepared to stretch under huge duress.

Michael Useem

Can guilt produce courage?

Being a coward is corrosive to your self-esteem. Ultimately, exercising guts is better than not doing so. You say to yourself, "I'm going to feel better about myself than if I agreed when I shouldn't have agreed. If I blinked." If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Michael Feiner

Can you fake it?

In a period of distress, your own outward display of courage is absolutely vital. The lack of it is going to unwind a lot of people around you.

But you can't fake anything in a leadership position. People sense it. They smell it. In about eight seconds, everyone knows it. If you're trying to look like George Patton, people think, "What a phony." And therefore your credibility is about zero.

Confidence and optimism are essential. It's not faking it. It's remaining optimistic through the most trying times, even when it looks pretty dark. Think about Nelson Mandela. Twenty-seven years of prison. I have to imagine he got a little discouraged, but from all accounts he never wavered in his confidence that one day South Africa would be a multiracial democracy. I am sure a few African National Congress people in prison with him said, "Nelson, you're full of it. This is ridiculous. Your optimism is misplaced here." And in his deepest inner moments, I am sure Mandela had doubts. But outwardly, it's critical to have that sense of optimism. As long as you believe it's true and can communicate that back to the people you lead, you overcome any inauthenticity.

Michael Useem

The only way faking it can work is if everyone loves you and they know you're trying to do it for their benefit: "The guy's killing himself trying to build up our courage." But usually, people see the inconsistency between words and reality, and it weakens relationships and increases cynicism.

John Kotter

Stress: Does it stimulate or stifle courage?

There's a famous graph in industrial psychology that depicts that under very low levels of stress for experienced folks, performance isn't as great as it is when there's a modest level of stress. But it's a parabolic curve. It goes up for a while -- more stress, better performance -- but it crests at a panic point. As stress goes beyond that panic point, performance tapers off. The calling of a leader is to ensure that each person who works for her doesn't reach that point and become paralyzed.

Michael Useem

Is courage an individual or a group activity?

Except at the margins, courage is not a product of individual behavior. In combat, I saw people do things that were just plain nuts. Our medic would crawl into harm's way to put a tourniquet on someone badly hurt. But he was doing it because he felt so much a part of the platoon. I think [Steven] Spielberg really got it with Band of Brothers. In episode 7, Lt. Dike looks like a coward because he withdrew on the eve of the Battle of the Bulge. He couldn't connect to a band of brothers.

Courage is a function of feeling part of a social fabric, of a network that's going to do something that has never been done before. People do gutsy things because they're in a group. This is "a mission from God," as Steve Jobs once said. They're going to make a dent in the universe. They're all in this together. Whether it's inventing the first PC or the way Clinton and Gore ran their '92 campaign, a group factor informed and fueled that collective definition of success. Leaders articulate those goals and incarnate the behavior through symbolic conduct to get people to follow. When Cicero spoke, people marveled; when Caesar spoke, people marched. Getting people to march behind your ideas takes courage.

Warren Bennis