The Courageous Leader

Tap into everyday courage for extraordinary results The Courageous Leader presents a much-needed reminder for leaders everywhere: it takes courage. Courage is not just about heroic acts in grandiose situations—it's about everyday, solid-as-a-rock support and leadership that motivates, inspires, and delivers. It's about taking a risk on a great idea, and it's about seeing opportunities in the day-to-day. Courageous leaders aren't necessarily the bold "Navy SEALS" of the workplace; they're the everyday people who lead steadily through rough waters. They don't seek out discomfort, but accept it as part of the process when it occurs, and still deliver exceptional results. This book shows you how to tap into your courage reserves and build your steel. Real stories of everyday leaders show you how it's done, and provide a new lens for seeing real strength in adversity—and practicing it yourself. Tough situations do arise, but great leaders show courage every day. Keeping your strength in reserve for the big problems leaves you operating at less-than-full capacity the rest of the time—and your people deserve better. This book shows you how to exercise courage every day in small situations to build the unshakeable foundation of a great leader. Move beyond your comfort zone Develop your ability to focus through tough times Tap into your natural courage and hone your leadership ability Leverage your strength in situations large and small The more you exercise courage, the stronger it gets; this book shows you how to use it every day to more effectively navigate small challenges—when the big problems arise, you'll face them with The Courageous Leader.

The book you hold resonates with this conviction: that leaders such as you have the potential to be the most influential forces on planet Earth. Yours is the staggering responsibility and the matchless privilege of rallying believers and mobilizing their spiritual gifts in order to help people who are far from God become fully devoted followers of Christ. Life transformation and the eternal destinies of real people depend on the redemptive message entrusted to the local church. Are you willing to do whatever it takes to lead your church effectively so God’s message of hope can change the world? Then this book is for you. Courageous Leadership is Bill Hybels’ magnum opus, a book far too important to be written before its time. Only now, after nearly thirty years leading his own church from a handful of people with a burning vision into a globe-spanning kingdom force—only after almost three decades of victories and setbacks, of praying hard and risking big—is Hybels ready at last to share the lessons he has learned, and continues to learn, about Christian leadership. Too much is at stake for you not to maximize your spiritual gift of leadership, insists Hybels. In this passionate, powerful book, he unpacks the tools, tasks, and challenges of your calling. You’ll discover the power of vision and how to turn it into action. You’ll gain frontline insights for developing a kingdom dream team, discovering your leadership style, developing other leaders, making decisions, walking with God, embracing change, staying your God-given course, and much, much more. Drawing on his own richly varied life experiences, Hybels fleshes out vital principles with riveting firsthand stories. This is far more than another book on leadership strategies and techniques. You’ll find those topics in here, to be sure. But beyond them, you’ll find the very essence of one of today’s foremost Christian leaders—his fervent commitment to evangelism and discipleship and his zeal to inspire fellow church leaders even as he seeks to keep growing as a leader himself. If unchurched people matter to you . . . if you love seeing believers serve passionately with their spiritual gifts . . . if God’s heartbeat for the church is your heartbeat as well . . . then this book is a must. Courageous Leadership will convince you to lead with all your might, all your skill, and all your faith. And it will give you the tools to do just that.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead. Don’t miss the five-part HBO Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart! NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential. When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work. But daring leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires skill-building around traits that are deeply and uniquely human. The irony is that we’re choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the exact same time as we’re scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines and AI can’t do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage, to start. Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question: How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture? In this new book, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BS style that millions of readers have come to expect and love. Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100 percent teachable, observable, and measurable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.” Whether you’ve read Daring Greatly and Rising Strong or you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, this book is for anyone who wants to step up and into brave leadership.

Its not easy being a leader. It takes courage and commitment, the willingness to step out of our comfort zone, the need to readily adapt to change, and the obligation to develop our skill set and the skills within our organization. To some this is fearful. Dealing with the unknown or facing a known weakness creates discomfort. Another way to look at it is that courage and commitment are required to become a stronger leader. Embracing both the fear and courage emotions we feel can actually be inspirational! After observing many leaders who have come through PeopleTek programs, we noticed that the ones who are successful both in life and work have a specific set of characteristics and behaviors. Living your life with courage is how it all begins! Courage is the single most important attribute any leader must have in order to be effective and successful. We call this CourageAbility. CourageAbility is the ability to live both your dreams and professional life the way you want, while achieving your goals and exceeding in your lifes ambitions and objectives. It is taking and empowering yourself and others to go where you or they have never gone before. The 12 CourageAbility factors include: 1. Passion - Having and living your dream. 2. Documenting your goals. 3. Committing to your goals. 4. Understanding your strengths and the strengths of others. 5. Communicating with confidence and clarity. 6. Understanding and managing conflict with a purpose. 7. Developing others. 8. Delegating. 9. Developing a skill. 10. Remaining controlled. 11. Rewarding and recognizing. 12. Succeeding and learning from failure. A CourageAbility self assessment is provided; identify your high and low scores and determine how closely your behaviors align with your beliefs!

In Courage, Gus Lee captures the essential component of leadership in measurable behaviors. Using actual stories from Whirlpool, Kaiser Permanente, IntegWare, WorldCom and other organizations, Lee shows how highly successful executives face and overcome their fears to develop moral intelligence. These real-world examples offer practical lessons for rooting out unethical practices and behaviors by Assessing them for rightness and integrity Addressing moral failures Following through with dialogue and direct action

Develop and enhance Leadership Courage to lead every day with equity and excellence! Have you ever wondered how or where you find the inner strength and determination to stand up and lead fellow administrators, teachers, or students to meet ever-changing expectations? Courage is a "must have" for effective leadership. Everyday Courage guides readers to develop Leadership Courage from within and become exceptional and resilient. In addition to expanding instructional leadership, practical elements and features include: • How to Take Action: make specific plans to activate moral courage, intellectual courage, empathetic courage, and disciplined courage • Daily Practices: exercises in accountability, trust, and risk-taking maintain courageous leadership for equity, excellence, and inclusion • Courage Quotient: assess and consider your areas of strength and opportunities for growth through deliberate practice Whether you are new to leadership or seeking revitalization, Cathy Lassiter’s experience in all levels of educational management will focus you toward leading from a courageous mindset. "Leadership is about fostering growth, building capacity, and collaboratively working with stakeholders to create new ideas - this takes a great deal of courage. Cathy Lassiter creates a pathway for leaders to develop that courage, and shows them how to do it with empathy. Everyday Courage for School Leaders is an outstanding read for anyone new to leadership and those who need to revitalize their thinking." - Peter DeWitt, Author/Consultant "A great resource to support leaders as they revise, reflect, and reassure staff, students, and community of the possibilities through their leadership as we embrace the courage to accomplish goals to achieve success." - Brenda Yoho, Director of Educational Support Programs

Courageous Leadership: The Missing Link to Creating a Lean Culture of Excellence is one of the firsts of its kind to wade through the confusion among leaders on selecting the type of change approach that will get the best results in their organization. It educates the senior executive leaders and organizational excellence practitioners on the different characteristics of change and answers why the approach to incremental and transitional change cannot deliver the results expected from a transformational change. The author shares his experiences from leading several small and large scale organization transformations in multiple industries across different countries on how to establish a robust foundation for an excellence journey and integrate strategy into daily operations. This book elaborates on the types of courage and what it means to be a courageous leader while leading change in difficult situations, and what leaders do differently for putting the organization on a path to excellence and culture transformation. This book shares an innovative design, a methodology and an approach that combines best practices and principles from Malcolm Baldrige, Shingo, Lean, Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecard, accreditation, change management, patient and family-centered care, the Competing Values Framework, the LEADS framework, and the project management body of knowledge. The implementation of this model at a hospital in Canada propelled the organization further ahead on their transformational journey compared to other organizations that started much earlier. Sensei in Japanese means Teacher and Gyaan in Sanskrit means Knowledge. Brief sections on ‘Sensei Gyaan’ have been interspersed throughout the book to provide valuable tips to the readers based on author’s experiential learnings over the past two decades. This book serves as a practical guide for senior executive leaders and organizational excellence practitioners, who wish to embark or are in various stages of their organizational excellence and culture transformation journey. Readers will be guided through 26 elements necessary for establishing a robust foundation and an additional set of 22 Management System elements required to create and sustain a culture of quality across the organization. For leaders in healthcare, the book provides a framework, guiding principles, and associated practices that support the implementation of the 4 core concepts of patient and family centered care namely, dignity and respect, information sharing, participation and collaboration. Included in the book are several examples with creative visuals, ready-to-use templates and standard works, models, guiding principles, and strategies based on best practices to assist leaders in their organization excellence journey.

For every person in every organization, there comes a moment when he of she must have the courage to step forward and meet the needs of the time. Regardless of whether your time is now or in the future, you must be prepared and willing to seize that moment as a courageous leader.