How to achieve your dreams by being brave at work
It takes guts to be courageous in the workplace, but it will help you achieve your goals and progress in your career.
Recently I had a conversation with a client who I have been working with since 2013.
They are running a development programme for their emerging, female talent. Their question to me was: “What is our programme missing?”
My answer: “You are not discussing the need for courage in career progression.”
So, what is courage? Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear”.
We all have courage when our backs are to the wall, but what about when our backs aren’t against the wall?
Courage is having a progressive career conversation with your boss, it is returning to work after an extended period of leave, or standing up to someone who is being offensive in the workplace.
Courage will mean different things to different people. It is often a gradual journey, with individuals gaining in experience and knowledge and nudging into new territory along the way.
Everyone has courage and it is likely that you have all done courageous things in your lifetime. Let’s look at two ways that you can stretch your “courage muscle” in your working life.
Dream big
What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? Being courageous starts with dreaming about what you want – is it a promotion, a bigger salary, flexible working or to work on that dream project?
Do you want to own a yacht, spend your retirement in St Tropez or own a rehoming centre for abandoned animals?
Take a notepad and jot down what you want for your life. Be big, be bold and look far into the future.
Now, get real – how are you going to get there? Don’t see your goal as one huge goal, but break it down into smaller, manageable steps with timelines set against them.
Start small, but stretch
Like a newborn baby, you cannot start walking and talking within a day. We can become inspired by our ultimate goal but then push ourselves too far out of our comfort zone and “fail” (although I believe there is no such thing as failure).
Take small actions to achieve your goal. On my road to public speaking, I started with online product demonstrations, then moved on to introducing speakers at conferences and webinars, and now I speak at full-day training sessions.
I didn’t do it all in a day, or even in a year. I have a perfectionist lens and I struggled so much with wanting to be that brave person, but I didn’t realise that it was all in the baby steps.
Once you learn that, it will free you.
You will learn your own lessons along the way to achieving your dreams, but these should get you started. Now go and be courageous!
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