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Coupled with humility the courageous leader is foundationally prepared with the moral authority to lead others. You cannot be a principled leader if you are not both courageous and humble. Universal principles will not permit it. Humility is paramount because it requires the principled leader to understand and accept his proper place in the universe. It requires of him to accept the truth that there are universal principles and standards that are beyond his control or power to change or manipulate. Without this humility and wisdom, courage could serve as our enemy as well as our friend. History is full of examples where courage has been used by leaders for good and evil or a combination of both. “Courage becomes a virtue only when it serves others.” Humility is what enables the practice of servant leadership. Courage and humility are the support structure of principled leadership.
When we as leaders accept the fact that there is a consequence for each decision we make, are we able to use the virtue of courage as our ally to manifest great achievements in our organizations. It mandates that the leader understand he has been given free moral agency to make decisions, but the consequences of those decisions are controlled by universal principles. Moral laws are just as constant and reliable as all the other laws of nature. The law of gravity is no different than law of honest relationships. If you throw a ball into the air it is going to come back down. If you decide to cut corners on a business deal, treat your co-workers badly, or cheat your competitors, it too will have fixed results. The end is fixed by nature, but the choice of the means to those ends is freely made. The immediate consequence of your choices is the quality of your moral self-worth and over time, your true character will be revealed as others are affected, for good or bad, by your behavior.
It is humility and wisdom that teaches us that the consequences of our decisions are beyond our control. It is courage that strengthens our will and reason to obey the higher and immutable principles, knowing that good decisions will produce good outcomes and wrong decisions will produce bad outcomes. It takes courage to make these tough decisions that are principally based, all the while knowing that the short-term results will hurt more than we would like. Knowing that a principled decision may cost the company thousands of dollars or that the decision may cost you your job, requires great courage to make. Based upon this premise, courage could then be defined as the inner quality of making principled decisions even when the cost to us is greater than we would like to pay. Courage is that virtue that gives us the fortitude to forego the pain or pleasure of the moment so as to remain true to principled conduct and reap the good that is inevitable when decisions are made from right reasoning.
It is because of pleasure we do things that are contrary to principled virtues and to avoid pain we refuse to do those noble things. Socrates explains to us that courage is that virtue that whether the spirit is pressured by pleasure or pain, the individual still maintains command of reason about what he should fear or should not fear and makes decisions that are principled. Courage, according to Thomas Aquinas is a “condition of every virtue” and Aristotle believed courage is “…a requisite for every virtue to act firmly and immovable.”
The principled leader should feel trepidation, regarding both pain and pleasure, if it leads to the violation of principled conduct. As Aristotle explains it, our actions determine our character and it is a common principle that we must conduct ourselves according to what is good and right. We must love what is good and right and hate that which is bad and wrong, and through the development of habitual courage conduct ourselves according to principled virtues.
It is through right reasoning that determines right conduct. Right conduct repeated time and again creates moral habit which in turn determines our integrity. Integrity maintained by habituation of rightful conduct over the long haul determines our character. This is true with all the virtues including courage. Aristotle tells us that we learn to be courageous by acting courageous. Just as “men become builders by building and lyre players by playing the lyre; we too become just by doing just acts…brave by doing brave acts”.
Character is derived from the Greek word that means to stamp or engrave upon. Principled leaders wear the stamp of principled character as a badge of honor. We often hear the statement that someone has a good reputation, but rarely do we hear that one is of good character. Is there a difference and does it matter when we uses the terms interchangeably? I think it does. The difference between character and reputation is really quite simple. Your character is who you really are and your reputation is who others think you are. The stamp of character is the cumulative from birth to date. It is a stamp upon your forehead for everyone to see. It is placed there by you and is based upon your true and objective adherence to principled virtues. The stamp of reputation is at best the subjective and temporary stamp placed upon your forehead by others which is based upon your perceived adherence to their values.
It takes courage to habitually execute the good and forego the bad. Aristotle tells us that, “It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another…it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference.” Courage is indispensable to developing a principled based character, without which, no person is worthy to lead, or to be honored with the noble title of leader.
Sources:
Mortimer J. Adler, ed., Great Books Of The Western World: The Syntopicon: An Index To the Great Ideas, Book 1 (Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 198.
Comte-Sponville, 50.
Mortimer J. Adler, 348-349.
Ibid, 349
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