{"id":22724,"date":"2019-04-14T04:16:31","date_gmt":"2019-04-14T11:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=22724"},"modified":"2019-04-14T04:30:44","modified_gmt":"2019-04-14T11:30:44","slug":"courage-is-not-the-absence-of-fear-rather-it-the-triumph-over-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/courage-is-not-the-absence-of-fear-rather-it-the-triumph-over-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Courage Is Not The Absence of Fear, Rather It The Triumph Over It."},"content":{"rendered":"

Nelson Mandela is famously quoted as saying that courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over fear. I found the quote relevant to the Brene Brown\u2019s book, Dare to Lead and her emphasis on courage as key to leading successfully. I believe courage is the one competence that distinguishes great achievers and the average men and women and the research by Brene Brown is a confirmation. The one thing that seems so akin to men and women and which we cannot avoid is fear, yet its one of, if not the worst enemy of mankind. We have to master courage if we are to overcome fear and achieve our objectives in life which is essentially leadership. I say this to underscore that fact that courage is a key competence of leadership. Brown clearly shows that courage is about accepting or daring to be vulnerable and says:
\n\u201cif you choose courage, you will absolutely know failure, disappointment, setback, even heartbreak. That\u2019s why we call it courage. That\u2019s why its so rare\u201d
\nBrown states clearly that courage is a collection of four skill sets that can be taught, observed, and measured, which skills are: Rumbling with vulnerability, Living into our Values, Braving Trust and Learning to Rise. This serves to alienate courage as a core competence of leadership which can be learnt and measured. This an interesting aspect of the results of her research since courage has always been seen as an abstract attribute that cannot be measured and raised a lot of interest in her book and other of her books. It takes courage to achieve anything significant since we are faced with a lot of barriers and I believe that research is a great contribution to the area of developing leaders. I have no doubt as to the dire need of leaders in every sphere of life, and especially in my context in the developing world. It\u2019s the lack of leadership and more so courage that informs the level of underdevelopment and its associated myriads of problems that abound in developing countries. I am so grateful that I get to be exposed to this kind of research work as I pursue my doctoral program.
\nIt is so clear that courage can only be expressed in part by the degree of one\u2019s willingness to be vulnerable and Brown states that our ability to be daring leaders will never be greater than our capacity for vulnerability, which for me is affirming of my experience in leadership. Taking any initiative in my leadership experience, elicits opposition from different quarters and one has to have the courage and readiness to overcome opposition. These barriers take the form of internal fears, doubts and hesitations, and external barriers of all kinds. When we ventured to start the ministry Missions of Hope International, back in 2000, that was one of our most lonely moments as all manner of opposition, accusations and outright condemnations confronted us. I realise that our capacity for vulnerability at that point was low but our readiness to face up to the challenge, helped to increase that capacity and this has helped me to be more courageous over the years. I treasure those opportunities when I have to master enough courage to be vulnerable as great growth opportunities for my leadership abilities. This particular book by Brown will definitely be added to my toolbox as I continue to develop more leaders in the work of ministry.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nelson Mandela is famously quoted as saying that courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over fear. I found the quote relevant to the Brene Brown\u2019s book, Dare to Lead and her emphasis on courage as key to leading successfully. I believe courage is the one competence that distinguishes great achievers and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":13156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[241,1516,1340,35],"class_list":["post-22724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brene-brown","tag-dare-to-lead","tag-dminlgp-9","tag-leadership","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22724"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22730,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22724\/revisions\/22730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}