Politicians often declare themselves to be courageous leaders.  Saying you are courageous and being courageous are two different things.

I define courage as willingness to move toward the mess.  The courageous soldier runs toward the mess of battle; the courageous parent has the conversation with their drunk, underage son or daughter; the courageous business leader rejects profit for principle; and the courageous pastor leads a church to face the messiness of reality.

Courage is not picking an insignificant issue and making it a hill on which to die; courage keeps the main thing the main thing.  Courage is not overcoming fear; courage is moving toward your fear, recognizing a mess that must be confronted.  Courage is not following the cheers of the crowd; courage in action is often greeted with silence.

Courage means speaking the last ten percent.  How often do we stop just short of the plain truth that needs to be heard for fear of hurting people’s feelings?  Yet it is in the last ten percent that truth necessary for change emerges.

Why aren’t more people courageous?  We want people to like us, to approve of us.  To be courageous is to know disapproval will come.  If you lead, you cannot make everyone happy.  Courage means you must be dedicated to the mission.  You will incur losses, or as one leader called them, casualties. In church world, casualties are people who leave your church because they cannot accommodate the change required to fix the messiness.  If you are a leader who cares about people, it hurts to lose people you invest in and have done life with. 

Many leaders fear setting up a group who will fight and oppose them.  They believe if they appease instead of lead, these people will eventually drop their opposition.  This never happens.  Never.  When Churchill was in the darkest days of World War II, he faced opposition from members of his own party.  Churchill courageously stuck to his mission: defeat Nazi Germany in the face of internal opposition. 

Leaders face five common issues that require courage.  The first is the courage to address leaders or volunteers under them who are not performing, who are no longer effective, or who were bad hires.  Many leaders hope poor performers will improve over time.  They do not.  In my years of supervising and developing dozens of leaders, poor performers never get better on their own.  Often an employee is with an organization for years and has a constituency of his or her own.  You may need to build alliances and devise a strategy to help that person find a better setting to serve, but have the courage to move toward the messiness, not away from it.

The second common issue leaders face is to have the courage to define reality.  Many businesses and churches are in denial about their reality.  As Lyle Schaller famously said, many churches are perfectly positioned in the event time reverses and it becomes 1950 again.  I knew of one church that was frustrated by their inability to grow.  When I consulted with the pastor, I pointed out the obvious: They had a worship space for 400 and parking for 250.  Their average attendance was - you guessed it – 250.  Have the courage to define reality.

A third common issue leaders face is the courage to call for change.  Healthy organizations grow and change.  I do not run the family ranch the way my stepfather did.  In the twenty years since he ran things, the world changed.  We can’t just throw fertilizer and oil on the trees.  Now, we have to be much wiser about how to apply nutrients and sprays.  Leaders must have the courage to make the compelling case of why the organization can no longer stay where it is and must relocate to where it should be.

A fourth common issue that calls for courage is admitting your mistakes.  As Craig Groeschel says, “People would rather follow a leader who is always real, than a leader that is always right.”  Nobody gets it right all the time.  Be courageous enough to quickly own your mistakes.  Admit to your leadership you made a wrong hire.  Admit an initiative failed.  Admitting failure increases trust instead of diminishing it.

A final common issue that calls for courage is to hold to your mission, values, and vision when you are pressured to modify or abandon them.  People both inside and outside your organization will want to add to or take away from your mission.  It takes courage to face the opposition and say, “No.  We have agreed this is what we are committed to; this is what we value; this is our preferred vision of the future.”  Rick Warren said, “Never surrender your church to the whiners.”  I would modify that to say, “Never surrender your mission, values, and vision to someone else’s agenda.”

Without the courage of the leader, organizations do not thrive.  Maybe that is why God repeatedly says, “Do not be afraid and do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in me.”  Faith feeds courage.