Great Work Only: The Courage to Raise the Standard

Intro

Your level of courage will dictate the level of leadership you’re able to attain. Over time, the politics, the skills, experience, and even the quality of work fades out, what’s left? Your willingness to step up, step out, and take risks. You’re willingness to go against the grain to call shit out. To not accept the everyday work some pass off as good enough.

It takes courage to crush mediocrity, weed out bad apples, and to intentionally inject a little bit of chaos into the system, in order to improve the system. Once you put a lot of work in with improving your firm and you still see things are just not where they need to be, sometimes it could be that you’re not doing enough of the right stuff. You’re not doing it right, but there’s also the element that you’re doing a lot right, and you’re finding different challenges the deeper you go—and it’s just not working. 

The Story

Surface level changes are something many can do, spot them, implement them, lead them, it’s the underneath where the next level leaders really step up. Underneath the obvious is where you find the real change. You must dig a little deeper, ask the additional questions, uncover the additional context or baggage, dive into the data, or have the level of conversations to find real challenges, questions, and clarity.

How?

By unleashing curiosity. There is almost an uncomfortable cadence with you asking why, when, how, or who. To have the team walk you through the context of the background for the logic, the decision-making, digging to the root of the status quo, validating if it even makes sense at this point in time.

This is all only possible with the right culture with either having it, or building it, so that self-protection does not block progress. Self-protection of kingdoms or queendoms doesn’t allow for flushing out the status quo that is holding your business back, with the mediocrity, the acceptance of okay, and the acceptance of good enough.

This isn’t about perfection. Perfection is unattainable, but the pursuit of excellence, the pursuit of perfection. In the right areas of your business, this will transform how you operate and grow. 

It’s not accepting that perfection is not attainable, and therefore settling, but it’s worth pursuing excellence as a step towards leadership courage.

Without some base level of courage or an increasing aptitude for courage, leadership is ineffective at best, even worse, it could be damaging your firm by injecting disease into your organization. 

Closing

How can you establish a culture of this nature? By letting go of the fear that is unhealthy, while taking healthy risks and empowering others to make qualified decisions to run their department their group and ultimately do their job to support the business. 

Unleashed courage through unleashing potential.

Grow a culture of courage by growing your people who will grow your business.   

Lead10x OS | Building the Organizational Leadership Framework of the future

Supporting Content - For More to the Story

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"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

- Mark Twain

About the Author, Graham Peelle