Courage in Leadership

For me one of the core characteristics of Leadership is courage that is linked to the main one of decision making.

Courage is present since the very first moment we start using our leadership skills in our life because to be upfront leading people, or moments, require courage to face those responsibilities.

Even a leader who chose to lead from behind requires courage to take that decision and let others the visible face.

Being a natural-born-leader make me take in my hands many situations in my life that required to have courage, sometimes lots of courage.

Among them undoubtedly it is the moment when I decided to leave behind everything I was doing, my own country and customs, in order to follow my dream of serving the underprivileged people around the world.

That was a bold decision that required a lot of courage to lead my own life into the unknown, the uncertainty of the humanitarian world, and then also use this courage to lead the teams with whom I worked providing relief and humanitarian aid for more than 14 years.

Sometimes I didn’t want to lead, only to serve the needy people, but always ended up in a leadership role and this was also a good lesson learned for me: no to try to escape from my skills and strengths despite that a more calmer, less front-face position would have been more enjoyable.

Another moment I remember now, is when I felt it was time for me to step down of my leadership position of a humanitarian mission because I started to feel I was becoming less creative and less open for new idea as consequence probably that I was in that position for several years.

The mission needed some freshness therefore took the courage to step down and allow a transition in the leadership role despite the fact that this would mean been jobless. I knew it was the best for the health of the projects we were running there, therefore it would benefit more the people we served.

one of the core characteristics of Leadership is courage

This article is my first contribution to the initiative called Purpose Leadership Journal and can be found here https://medium.com/@purposeleaderjournal/decision-making-bf227777457a