Gus Lee - The Courage Playbook

Global poverty experts Brian Corbett and Steve Fikkert find there is little courage left in the world. 12 Courage has been asked to leave our cultural stage. But all has not yet gone. It remains the approved solution to undo our impulsive reliance on negativity, criticism, bias, and self‐harm. Long before handheld screens and the discovery of the coffee bean, we were prewired to be courageous and thereby free of self‐perpetuating fears.

But how do we go from a capacity for courage to becoming courageous?

We practice its behaviors.

Those who practice sing better than those who do not. If you exercise, you tend to be more fit and will feel and function better than when you only sit. When we practice honoring all persons we chip away at the monoliths of self‐centeredness and racism.

“String Bean,” said Coach Bonifacio, his nickname for my less than impressive physique. Coach B was a wing chun gong‐fu si fu , a martial arts master on a work visa from Manila.

“You think courage out of reach. You think you can't punch your way out of a wet paper bag. But courage made just for you, the weak of heart.”

Practicing courage with others makes us courageous leaders for others.

Singing well, boxing, acting rightly, reconciling conflicts, solving moral problems, and leading courageously when stressed are not inborn gifts or accidents of nature. They directly result from behavioral practice. Thus, the need for a courage playbook.

Living in our shape‐shifting, conflicted culture, we forget that we own a very real personal capacity for courage.

Courage is race and gender neutral, honors all faiths, and favors no party. It requires neither unique powers nor specific intelligence, unusual gifts, or a generation with a special name.

“Cowardice,” said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “seeks to suppress fear and is mastered by it. Courage faces fear and thereby masters it.” 13

How can you be like Dr. King? You practice the behaviors of courage, which you will soon own. The Playbook trains you to face fear and master it, to ascend the five practical and logical steps to courage.

Gangly and socially awkward, Sir Edmund Hillary was the first to reach the peak of Mount Everest. Suddenly a world sensation, he was asked about reaching that deadly summit.

“It is not the mountain we conquer,” he said, “but ourselves.” Conquering our fears is Tolkien's and Lucas's classic moral struggle. Can Frodo find the courage to give up the ring? Will Aragorn overcome the terrors of his painful past? Can Solo defeat his smugness, Leia her sarcasm, and C3PO his nervous frights? The great saga turns on the single, eternal issue of our heroic identity: Can Luke master his anger? Can you?

Our battle isn't against Sauron, Vader, or a virus. It's against fear and our worst reactions in an epic, personal struggle against our own weaknesses.

After 10 years of tutelage by my YMCA coaches, I lucked into West Point despite scoliosis, flat feet, and visual and pulmonary disqualifiers. In the Infantry and in Asia, with people of all colors, I worked to improve my Courage Quotient, 14 learn new tongues, and lead others while my knees knocked together. Many colleagues had also been poor, unfed, and unwanted by their families of origin. But we practiced and overcame our worst poverty—the lack of courage—to selflessly work toward what we can call the heroic moral ideal . 15 We were able to experience a new freedom by serving something greater than ourselves without hungering for personal honors or recognition. Those days of trust, camaraderie, and low pay remain the happiest among my many jobs.

In the earlier book, I described the importance of behaviors of courage. I got feedback asking for a practical step‐by‐step playbook to make acting courageously and defeating our fears as spontaneous as smiling at a beautiful sunset.

The Courage Playbook is that solution. It trains you in the key behaviors that we individually and collectively need most. Emerson might say that it gives you a plan, a goal, and a dominating thought process to possess the courage to do the right thing. The Playbook lets you move from the unseen to the seen, from the passive to the active, from the ordinary to the courageous. It is a precise distillate of our best understanding of behavioral courage, integrity, character, and courageous, effective leadership. It has three parts.

Part I is about you—the equipping of The Courageous Self . Here you'll friend courage and paint a personal courage‐colored portrait. You'll stop your worst fearful reactions to create space for the behaviors of courage.

Part II is about relationships— Courage with Others . There you will deploy 16 basic courage plays and behaviors while interacting with others in communication, teamwork, leadership, management, and personal relationships. You'll learn the central, radiating power of courageously respecting all persons to consistently do the Highest Moral Action.

Finally, in Part III, Choosing Your Core, you'll select your personal identity—your operating principles—draft your Individual Courage Advancement Plan for continued assessment and forward navigation, and then Cross the River of Fear.

You need an Executive Courage Coach to guide you through each step, to equip you to own the courage to live intentionally, robustly, and even happily. For the short span of this shared journey, I would like to be that coach.

I equip people to face fear and to find, build, forge, and share their courage in a process older than Exodus, The Iliad, and The Analects . The best of Greek and Eastern wisdom literature was created during plagues, crises of fear, ethnic wars, and conflict.

Take this opportunity to play in a different realm in which no one is denied the right to personal courage. With it, you will enter a deeper country of brave lions and fearless leaders in which you can take extraordinary and unprecedented actions. Those actions—our key verbs—equip you to become who you were always supposed to be.

Acquiring courage is one of the greatest human adventures.

The risks lie not on the journey, but in avoiding it. For who among us has already conquered fear, mastered courage, perfected one's true core identity, and achieved a complete firmness of character? Who doesn't want better plays on the great and exciting field of life?

Will you join me on this courageous journey?

1 1.Gus Lee and Diane Elliott‐Lee, Courage: The Backbone of Leadership (Jossey‐Bass, 2006).

2 2.Habits for Well‐Being. https://www.habitsforwellbeing.com/20-inspiring-quotes-on-courage/#:~:text=20%20Inspiring%20Quotes%20on%20Courage%201%20“%20Courage,run%20it%20is%20easier.%20…%20More%20items…%20. Accessed November 11, 2021.

3 3.Mike Myatt, “The #1 Reason Leadership Development Fails,” Forbes (December 19, 2012), http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2012/12/19/the-1-reason-leadership-development-fails/. Accessed July 12, 2021.

4 4.John P. Kotter John P. Kotter on What Leaders Really Do (Harvard Business Press, 1999), p. 1. Professor Emeritus Kotter is Harvard Business School's iconic leadership expert.

5 5.Dr. Paul Brand, The Gift of Pain (Zondervan, 2020). Brand was a medical missionary in West Asia who was born in India and did pioneering medical research on leprosy. I've heard many similar perceptions of Americans in Asia and Africa.

6 6.“How Many Football Fans Are There?” Reference, April 14, 2020, https://www.reference.com/world-view/many-nfl-fans-ad650cc48aba3841. Accessed December 6, 2021.

7 7.David Harris, The Genius: How Bill Walsh Reinvented Football and Created an NFL Dynasty (Random, 2008), p. 131.