Courage is the Fuel of Leadership

A former boss once compared me to a turtle. It was 2011, right before I moved from the U.S. to Singapore to take a new role, and I was questioning whether I was the right person for the job, and what I would do to make an impact.

“Kelly is like a turtle, and the turtle only makes progress when it sticks its neck out,” Hubert Joly said. At the time he was the CEO of my organization’s parent company and today remains a mentor, role model and dear friend.

After his statement, I had no idea what was coming next. Looking back on it, he was very insightful, and it's something that has served me well in my three decades of leadership. The Singapore job represented being bold, taking a risk and showing courage; I had to stick my neck out to make progress.

You see, I’m convinced you simply can’t be a leader without demonstrating courage in big and small ways, every single day. Some of the most memorable moments as a leader have come from mustering up the courage to do hard things. In fact, when I look back on my career, the most rewarding results have come from some of the most challenging moments – those times when I needed to dig deep, stand strong, and follow my intuition.

Today I’m sharing my thoughts on some of the qualities the most courageous leaders possess. Each of us can cultivate these as we progress on our own leadership journeys.

Courageous leaders take risks and learn from their mistakes

Good leaders make difficult decisions every day. My best advice is to listen to your gut. In my career, my biggest mistakes have come when I’ve ignored my intuition, using my mind to rationalize or justify something that I knew in my heart wasn’t working. I remember a time early in my career when I hesitated in making personnel changes, despite knowing they were necessary. Once I finally acted, employee engagement and business results improved. That taught me to trust my gut, which I’ve tried to be brave about doing ever since.

It all comes down to the fact that no one wants to feel unsuccessful in their role – so as leaders, when we see someone isn’t in the right seat at the right time for any number of reasons, it’s our job to help them on their way to finding what will be the right seat.

Courageous leaders act with integrity

Courageous leaders will tell you the truth in good times and bad, and they won’t back down from conflict when it comes to what they believe is right and wrong. Leaders who demonstrate this level of consistency have teams that believe what they say and understand they’re acting in the group’s best interests – not in service of their own personal agenda. Their bosses also trust them, because they can see the leader is acting in the company’s best interests.

Integrity isn’t just about being honest and willing to do hard things. It’s also about being respectful and empathetic – actively listening to people and really hearing their concerns. By demonstrating integrity, you not only illustrate how important it is to do what’s right; you’ll inspire others to want to be like you, creating a virtuous cycle within the team and the organization. Doing right is never wrong.

Courageous leaders show they’re human

Courage isn’t actually the same as being fearless – courageous leaders may be afraid, but they forge ahead anyway. I can’t tell you the number of times in my career I’ve gone into a meeting with palms sweating and knees shaking, but kept going because I was surrounded by my team and strongly believed in what we were doing.

One of the most important qualities of a courageous leader is a willingness to be genuine and real. You’re an imperfect human being with flaws and shortcomings just like anyone else. You’re also a well-rounded, complex person with interests and a life outside of work (and if you’re not, then you’ve fallen into a common leadership trap of making your career your entire identity – a subject for another blog post). By showing your team and your employees your authentic self, you’ll build true connections with others and show by example that people can bring their full selves to work. There’s really no greater gift you can give your team.

Courageous leaders look forward more than they look back

Looking forward, no matter how uncertain the future is, takes real courage. That’s truer this past year than it’s ever been. When I’m facing uncertainty as a leader, I go back to one of the things my 90-year-old father always says: “There’s a reason rearview mirrors are small and windshields are big. There simply is no reason or value in looking backward—only forward.” Yes, be sure to learn from the past, but be sure to focus more on what you can do today and tomorrow.

Aspiring business leaders: Lead from the front. Be brave. And be prepared to stick your neck out.

This blog post originally appeared on LinkedIn.

Leadership is a privilege: My top five inspirational leadership quotes

As a business leader who has run operations on six continents, and global teams from bases on three of those in my career to date, I am constantly amazed by people who ask if I would like to speak about women in leadership, or from a woman’s perspective.

Leadership has nothing to do with gender. It is about leading. Period. However, I am passionately committed to ensuring that everyone who should, and can, does get a fair chance to demonstrate their leadership capabilities and, to use their voice.

And as I enjoy another development in my working life, and I embrace the position of independent advisor and mentor to business teams, I reflected over the weekend that there is no real difference in this and my previous roles. I am still wholly responsible for the advice I give. My input is designed to help others achieve their true potential. And, bottom line, it is still all making sure people succeed in life.

So, as I have taken heart from many wise sayings over the years, I wanted to share my top five – which are not only always close to my heart, but they also shape the key traits that I believe all leaders need to have.

The first of which I picked up at an early age, when growing up on a farm in Kansas - where I was fortunate to be put on my yellow brick road to leadership, by having a father who’s quips and witticisms were as insightful as they were deceptively simple.

One of his favorites, still in regular use in his one-hundredth decade, reminds me to always look forward. “There is a reason,” he regularly says, “that rear view mirrors are small and windshields are big.” And that has always been top of my five standards in life as a leader.

Second is that collaboration is the key to success – and that nothing worth doing is worth doing alone. You have to be a team to successfully deliver and here I was inspired by an early Lee Iacocca saying: “The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.”

As my career in sales developed, I realized that you have to protect what you have, and you have to make it good enough for people to want more. As learning is a core part of understanding that concept I realized the need for getting stuck in and a saying from the thriller writer Agatha Christie perfectly captures the essence of this: “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

And, having started and learned to protect what you have, you need to be relentless in the pursuit of goals, and here no-one sums it up better that tennis legend, Rafa Nadal who, despite his longevity in the game still says: “I play each point like my life depends on it.”

And, in these extraordinary times, it has never been more appropriate to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Always be thinking about how to improve things. Seek opinions from your team. Be ready to try new things. And, while Eleanor Roosevelt is famed for saying: “Do one thing every day that scares you,” for me it is best it is best summed up by a quote someone had typed up and stuck on a notice board in my first office, which simply said: “When was the last time you did something for the first time?”

Leadership is a privilege not to be squandered.

This post originally appeared on mycwt.com.