Courageous Leadership Research Articles

Women leaders' lived experiences of bravery in leadership

PurposeThe research aims to understand the stories of women leaders who have demonstrated bravery in leadership. By analyzing their lived experiences through storytelling and narratives, it seeks to shed light on the challenges and motivations behind their brave actions, contributing to a deeper understanding of bravery in leadership within gender and organizational contexts.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a qualitative multiple case study approach, focusing on the autobiographical accounts of three women leaders to explore their experiences of bravery in leadership. Utilizing narrative analysis (NA), it is grounded in ethical leadership theory and narrative identity theory. The research method involves cross-analyzing these narratives to unearth themes that depict a multifaceted view of bravery, including moral courage and ethical decision-making.FindingsThe study reveals various themes of bravery in leadership, such as moral courage, authenticity, resilience and ethical decision-making. These findings enhance the understanding of bravery's role in ethical conduct and transformative change, highlighting the complex manifestations of bravery in women's leadership practices.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to the broader discourse on bravery in leadership, especially for women. It offers insights into how bravery is integral to ethical conduct and transformative leadership and sheds light on the influence of gender dynamics on leadership experiences. This study significantly enriches the discourse on bravery in leadership, with a particular focus on women's experiences. It delves into how bravery, encompassing moral courage and authenticity, is crucial for ethical conduct and transformative leadership. By highlighting the stories of women leaders, the research underscores the complex interplay between bravery and gender dynamics within organizational contexts. It challenges traditional perceptions of leadership and bravery, advocating for a more nuanced understanding that recognizes the unique challenges and strengths of women leaders. Furthermore, this study paves the way for future research to explore diverse dimensions of bravery in leadership, encouraging a more inclusive approach that values different perspectives and experiences.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study advocate for empowering leadership practices and guide the development of a courageous leadership landscape. Current events show evidence that many organizations lack the integration of bravery as a core leadership trait. These narratives of bravery in women's leadership can serve as a powerful catalyst for inspiring all leaders These stories can guide leaders across various levels to embrace bravery in their decision-making and leadership styles. The integration of these insights into organizational policies and leadership development programs can lead to a more courageous, ethical and transformative leadership landscape.Social implicationsThe research emphasizes the need for inclusive approaches to leadership and bravery, challenging dominant gender norms. It underscores the importance of acknowledging and valuing women leaders' stories, thereby empowering their narratives.Originality/valueThe study adds value to the field by unveiling the often untold narratives around bravery in leadership. Findings can assist in fostering environments where diverse expressions of bravery are recognized and valued. Findings have the potential to inspire a new generation of leaders, across all genders, to embrace bravery in their roles, thereby enriching the leadership landscape with diverse, ethical and courageous practices. This research not only contributes to academic discourse but also has real-world implications, encouraging organizations to reevaluate and evolve their leadership models to be more inclusive and effective in today's dynamic and diverse global environment.

Leadership, Courage, and Ethical Behavior: An Executive Approach

Organizations constitute morally complex environments, requiring organization members to possess levels of moral courage sufficient to promote their ethical action, while refraining from unethical actions when faced with temptations or pressures. Courageous leadership requires a true understanding of organizational structure and pressures. In terms of methodology, this study will examine the moderating and mediating variables of courage, leadership and ethics on leadership in contemporary organizations. This study will be a qualitative study utilizing the 2007 Woodard and Pury Courage Scale, a 23-item survey measuring two dimensions, courage as the ability to act and the fear factor involved with the action. The sample will consist of graduate students working in global corporations located in the South and Central Florida region of the USA. Relevance of the professions of the participants studied will be considered. The importance of this study is that preconceived notions of whether a leader is perceived ethical and trustworthy may be as important as the outcomes that can be observed. This study seeks to examine the moderating and mediating variable of courage, leadership and ethics in contemporary organizations. Recognizing the courageous and ethical leadership traits that inspire trust may assist organization searching for new leadership. Only few research studies have tried to empirically derive types or categorizations of courage, but scholars have shown renewed interest in the construct of courage.

Leadership and cooperation in growing teams

AbstractWe study how the growth of teams affects leadership effectiveness and intragroup cooperation. We put experimental participants in two teams. In each team, the members voluntarily contribute to a club good. In one of the two teams, the members observe the contribution of a randomly chosen leader before they decide themselves. Two treatments allow for migration between the teams. In one of them, participants control access to their team with a voting process. By design, participants can achieve the efficient outcome only if they all move into one team. We compare the results with a leaderless setting as well as with four treatments which vary team size exogenously. The results show that high contributions of leaders encourage higher per‐capita contributions of their followers which foster migration into their teams. In turn, larger teams experience even more courageous leadership and higher contributions, but the coordination effect diminishes. Nevertheless, the dismissal of potential newcomers in the treatment with voting suggests that team members see a trade‐off between team size and contributions. They sacrifice economic benefits from potential entrants to maintain intrateam cooperation.

Courageous Leadership: Paul Polman’s Insights for the Next Generation of Business Managers

In 2021, John Pontillo, Celia Bravard, and Andrew Hoffman conducted a series of interviews with Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever. They discussed how business managers and leaders can build a new model of capitalism that serves the needs of society. Here’s what they learned.

Courageous leadership for a culture of emotional safety.

In Brief Addressing the leadership imperative to create a culture of emotional safety in healthcare organizations, the authors distinguish emotional safety from psychological safety, share leadership strategies to promote emotional safety by building a culture of ownership, and suggest areas needed for further research.

Leadership Courage: Embracing Change to Rebuild

The nurse leaders’ role in facilitating the creation of healthy work environments continues considering the unprecedented challenges created by the COVID pandemic. Rebuilding an energized, thriving workforce requires courageous leadership. Tackling human resource issues, disrupting silos, and discarding nonproductive processes necessitate a profound commitment to positive change. The nurse leader finds ways to connect with other leadership and staff to regain trust, handling each situation with empathic concern and thoughtful communication. A positive example of disrupting to rebuild is provided.

Courageous Leadership

As the world watches war unfolding in Ukraine, leadership under the most extreme pressures is on full display. Health care and practice environments are not being bombed, but similar extreme events from the pandemic to workforce shortages to workplace safety to worsening equity outcomes are converging to challenge leaders in their roles. The daily pressures of solving and responding can drain the reserves of any leader. What can courageous leadership do for teams and those who lead them? [J Contin Educ Nurs. 2022;53(5):198-199.].

A case study: Enacting courage and collaboration in equity and justice-oriented educational leadership

In spring 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic collided with a national reckoning on racial injustice and ruptured our country’s core. The effects of this collision necessitated something other than business as usual in school leadership: it called for the kind of courageous leadership rooted in equity and justice we describe in this paper. In this qualitative case study, we draw on nine months of data collected at a Title I middle school in the southeast to describe how the administration leaned into vulnerability and courageous leadership by naming and acknowledging uncomfortable realities and inviting collaborative engagement with the school community about these realities.

Managing physician conflict

Conflict is an intrinsic part of human experience. This article explores the distinction between cognitive disagreement and the emotional experience of conflict. It discusses the sensitivity of physicians to the perception of shame and the impact that shame can have on conflict behaviour. It offers a framework for conversations to navigate conflict and a number of simple strategies physician leaders may employ to work through conflict themselves and within their teams. Although some conflicts require the help of a skilled specialist, most can be facilitated with thoughtful and courageous leadership.

Using diversity, equity and inclusion to drive outcomes at CareerStaff unlimited

Study level/applicability This case was designed not only for MBA and executive education but also undergraduate courses in human resources (HR), leadership development, HR metrics and change management. It is ideal for introducing the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I), the balanced scorecard and talent retention. Subject area The case deals with initiating and integrating DE&I programs into a company. It highlights how and when to start, change management issues during roll-out and convincing senior leadership why a program such as the one the protagonist started adds value to an organization. Case Overview In early 2018, Kate McKinnon, AVP of HR for CareerStaff Unlimited (CSU), a temporary staffing company and division of Genesis HealthCare, reflected on the late 2016 decision to develop women for leadership roles at the company. With a rather unconventional implementation of the Women’s Leadership Group (WLG), Kate successfully developed fifteen female individual contributors, many of whom were promoted to leadership roles by early 2018. Kate was concerned about maintaining the momentum necessary to continue (and expand) the program of identifying, developing, promoting, and retaining women and other diverse employees across the company. She also wanted to measure a clear correlation between the WLG and CSU’s financial and customer outcomes. It was time to plan phase two of the program, including further improvement of the DE&I efforts at CSU. Expected learning outcomes The learning outcome of this paper are as follows: focused programs, led by courageous and committed leaders, improve gender equity. DE&I is a business imperative, as much as a legal/risk challenge. To be understood, approved and communicated, HR Initiatives must add value and be aligned with the company strategy along with financial and customer outcomes. People development and growth contribute to top talent retention. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Social implications Given the issues the USA is encountering after the George Floyd death and protests, this is a good way to demonstrate how courageous leadership can start to facilitate change in organizations. Subject code CSS 6: Human Resources.

Medical educators' reflection on how technology sustained medical education in the most critical times and the lessons learnt: Insights from an African medical school.

Stakeholders in the field of medical education globally would generally agree that sustaining medical education through the dark times of the covid-19 pandemic is worth celebrating. In the midst of the difficulties that were created generally by the covid-19 pandemic, sustaining medical education required persistence, strategy, courageous leadership, and innovative adaptations both on the part of the educators, administrators and the students. The implications of continuing medical education during the covid-9 pandemic goes beyond just keeping medical schools open. It has an affective advantage, by impressing on the mind of trainees the importance of strategic adaptation, courage, and resilience. Should anything shut down, it must not be healthcare, and as such medical education should demonstrate such a level of commitment and character. Thankfully, this was what happened in many instances, including ours. One significant factor that made this possible was the integration of technology and innovation. It might not be out of place to say that technology and innovations literally saved medical education amidst the covid-19 pandemic. We also know that the level and quality of integration of technology and innovations varied from place to place. These might be described as heterogeneity of integration, which was further a reflection of inequity in development and advancements in medical education in different parts of the world. This piece includes our reflections on how technology sustained medical education in the most critical times and the lessons learned.

Organization Development Values From a Future-Oriented Perspective: An International Delphi Study

This study sought to identify Organization Development (OD) values to guide OD practitioners using a future-oriented perspective to differentiate OD from related fields. Employing six guiding principles, a Delphi study with three rounds was conducted with 42 international OD practitioners and researchers who practice in 58 countries collectively. As a result, this study identified nine OD values ( awareness of self and system, continuous learning and innovation, integrity, courageous leadership, trust and respect, diversity, collaborative engagement, strategic practicality, and client growth and development) along with 71 corresponding behavioral indicators. This article compares the identified values with OD values featured in the existing literature, adding temporal external validity and highlighting the consistency of OD values over time. Also discussed are the implications of this research for OD practitioners, the OD field, OD researchers, and other groups.

Coffee, Courage, and Cannabis: Leading Change in the Regulated Marijuana Market

As Washington approaches another anniversary of marijuana regulation, lessons learned serve as a reminder that courageous leadership is a critical component in successful forward movement in a complex, unstable authorizing environment. What does leadership look like in this context, and how is it experienced? Offered from the perspective of a pracademic and regulatory leader in the nascent marijuana industry in Washington State, this paper explores the underpinnings and practical application of complexity theory in both the public administration and leadership contexts, going beyond theoretical, metaphorical application, and actually engaging scholarship and complexity through the emerging theory of engaged complexity.

Transforming Servant Leadership, Organizational Culture, Change, Sustainability, and Courageous Leadership

Transforming Servant Leadership, Organizational Culture, Change, Sustainability, and Courageous Leadership

The 3 C’s of courageous leadership: how to connect to your body, connect to your creativity, connect to your inner revolutionary

The 3 C’s of courageous leadership: how to connect to your body, connect to your creativity, connect to your inner revolutionary

Courageous Leadership: Walking Your Talk from Wherever You Are

ABSTRACT In a Vision Session at the 34th annual NASIG conference, DeEtta Jones related her belief that our profession needs leaders at every level, including those who do not see themselves in that role. Leaders must be culturally competent, able to engage and encourage new voices to speak out while taking courageous action in the service of shared value. Today’s leaders need more than the traditional attributes of the past; mere passion and holding fast to values are not sufficient in the present time. To demonstrate how courageous leadership could be applied, Jones organized her talk around six themes and attributes: anchored to aspiration, values driven, in the service of, emotional intelligence and cultural competence, trustworthiness, and equity oriented.

Courageous leadership – what defines it in the modern organisation

PurposeIt is important to challenge the popular image of courageous leadership, which in the public imagination is inextricably interlinked with the exercise of power and authority. People often paint a picture in their mind of somebody who knows all the answers and can drive and communicate decisions through their own sense of certainty and will. In nearly every case, especially in an HR context, that is a false picture.Design/methodology/approachThis paper looks to highlight that the best leaders are in fact often those that do not make all the decisions, do not have all the right answers and are prepared to admit that. It takes great strength to admit vulnerability and acknowledge that you do not know everything.FindingsThe paper highlights that it is important to have a vision and give direction, but it is genuinely courageous to turn to the intelligent teams you have within the organisation and draw on their help.Originality/valueThe paper takes a distinctive stance on the question of courageous leadership, arguing that good leadership is about acknowledging what you do not know and reaching out to your people to fill in the gaps, and it is also about learning when to move on. Being able to acknowledge when you can add little further value to the business and allow someone else to take the reins is perhaps, in senior leadership, the most courageous act of all.

Courageous leadership: delivering results in turbulent times

PurposeIn uncertain times, courageous leaders must be in place, stepping forward to take action to drive results. Because there is really no such thing as a natural-born leader, the organization must constantly develop current and new leaders. Leadership skills and leader behavior are shaped and molded over time, but also can be dramatically changed and improved with a variety of effective leadership development programs. The perplexing issue about leaders and leadership development is the negative press it often receives. The root cause of this problem is not necessarily the content of leadership development programs or even the way that they are delivered, it is the definition of leadership success and the success of leadership development.Design/methodology/approachThe purpose of this paper is to illustrate the success of a courageous leader does not occur until impact is achieved in the organization.FindingsThe courageous leader is one who can deliver on all levels of outcomes in the face of many difficulties, challenges and uncertainties in ambiguous environments.Originality/valueGreat leaders deliver great results, including the impact they have on their organizations or spheres of influence. Without impact, leaders are ineffective. To achieve success in these turbulent times requires leaders to be effective in delivering on five levels of outcomes, including impact and ROI. The courageous leader is one who can deliver on all levels of outcomes in the face of many difficulties, challenges and uncertainties in ambiguous environments.

Courageous leadership: Anita Krohn Traaseth, former CEO of Innovation Norway

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the leadership strategy of the publicly owned organisation, Innovation Norway, between 2014 and 2019, when it was under the leadership of former CEO Anita Krohn Traaseth.Design/methodology/approachThe author, Vlatka Hlupic, Professor of Leadership and Organisational Transformation at Hult Ashridge Executive Education and CEO of The Management Shift Consulting Ltd, looked at Anita’s examples of courageous leadership while in office. Anita drew upon the different “levels” of individual mindset and corresponding organisational culture in the Emergent Leadership Model, in Vlatka’s book: The Management Shift.FindingsVlatka’s leadership strategy allowed Anita to oversee a cultural change in Innovation Norway from a traditional bureaucratic set-up to one based on entrepreneurship. Through trust and transparency, Anita was open with her staff and the Norwegian society at large about the transitional work, sharing not only good results but also difficult times and resistance, publishing her personal working contract as well as the organisation’s goals. Anita found Vlatka’s Emergent Leadership model an effective and honest way of guiding an existing culture into another culture.Originality/valueReaders should come away with an understanding of how courageous leadership requires an acceptance that those in power cannot control everything. Delivering a process, a new way of thinking and working, can be an extremely challenging and risky transition, but effective leaders will believe in that process and follow it through, even if criticism and dissatisfaction occurs, in the knowledge that by being open and honest with their team throughout, they will reach business goals, unified and empowered.

Resolving complex community problems: Applying collective leadership and Kotter's change model to wicked problems within social system networks

AbstractHow does collective leadership within social networks resolve chronic and complex problems common to communities? Unfortunately, sometimes it does not, but when it does, the outcome may be truly extraordinary. We use a case study approach to explain how one Midwest community within the USA applied collective leadership within a community network to reduce teen births. It took ten years of what many identified as provocative media campaigns and comprehensive sex education programs to reduce teen births by 65%, significantly exceeding the stated goal. Using Kotter's change model as a backdrop, powerful strategies and provocative creativity reveal courageous leadership within a social network of diverse people and organizations focused on improving the social well being of their community.