Principled Leadership Requires Courage
This is the seventh of ten postings on attributes that build leadership trust. This post is about courage. Since it is a little lengthy, I will post it in two parts. If you have been following the previous postings, then you know that this series of postings is based upon the 14th chapter of the book titled, Leadership Lessons from West Point (2007). The chapter is authored by Colonel Patrick Sweeney.
Courage is that single virtue that everyone desires for themselves and most respects in others. Courage, arguable, is the single most universally admired virtue known to man. It is the stuff of heroes, and we all love the hero. Simply, courage is the moral and mental strength to act principally when faced with difficult situations. Courage is not the absence of fear but the moral power to overcome fear and act principally. It is that virtue we so often doubt we possess in ourselves during times of great need.
Like Henry in The Red Badge of Courage, most all combat soldier wonder if they will fight or flee in the heat of the battle. We wonder if we will have the courage to face death eye to eye like Mike Durant did when his Blackhawk helicopter crashed in Operation Gothic Serpent in Mogadishu in 1993. Painfully we wonder if we would have the courage of heroes like Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart, posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, for their heroic acts while under fire in Mogadishu. We ask ourselves would we, like Gordon and Shughart, volunteer to rope down to Durant’s crashed Blackhawk to save him and the crew knowing fully the incredible odds against survival as hundreds of the enemy was approaching. After September 11, 2001 we searched our souls trying to determine if we would have had the courage, like Todd Beamer and the other Flight 93 passengers, to retake the plane from the terrorist to prevent it from being crashed into the White House or U.S. Capitol building.
Fortunately most of us in leadership positions will not have face those life and death decisions where courage is so much needed. Still today’s leaders are faced with monumental decisions every day that requires courage to meet them head on. The young leader, who has not experience the demands of leadership, may be wondering if he has the courage to make the right business decision, much like those of us do when considering the life and death decisions of heroes as shown in the preceding paragraph. Where we have not ventured, we all have doubts whether we have the courage to make the journey. Courage, then, in its truest sense, is thus exhibited by those who make the choice to go equipped only with hope and faith but knowing that the only personal gain is having the knowledge that the noble deed was done.
When considering the question of courage, the paramount question for all leaders to ask is why courage is such an important virtue to have and one worthy of developing. It has been said that courage is that virtue that makes all others possible. C. S. Lewis tells us in Mere Christianity that you cannot adhere to other virtues very long without the cardinal virtue of courage. Courage is that single virtue, according to Aristotle, that all the other virtues “pivot or hinge” upon. Thomas Aquinas taught that courage is “a condition of every virtue”. It is from the wisdom of these great and influential teacher-philosophers that we, at least partially, understand why we should develop personal courage and to exercise it daily. To live a principled and virtuous life, and to contribute to a noble cause, there is no substitute for courage.
Sources:
1. Andre’ Comte-Sponville, A Small Treaties On The Great Virtues (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996), 44.
2. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York, Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1952), 62.
Esse Quam Videri
Carpe Diem
Arête
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