What Courage Really Means In Leadership

To me, courage is the very essence of leadership. For startup founders, courage almost comes baked in. They go against the grain, break rules, challenge giants, and push forward with limited resources. They thrive on risk and uncertainty. That kind of courage is raw and personal, driven by conviction, focus, and a need for control. But courage doesn’t belong only to startup founders. 

Leaders in big, established organizations need it too, maybe even more so. They need the guts to challenge the status quo, question what’s “always been done,” and steer their teams toward reinvention. Being courageous in a mature company means something different. It’s not about charging into battle. It’s about confronting bureaucracy, overcoming inertia, and empowering others to act. It’s about trusting your people to make decisions and being open enough to show your own vulnerability, your failures, and your limits. Think Satya Nadella reshaping Microsoft’s culture, Mary Barra steering GM toward electric, or Howard Schultz reimagining Starbucks as an experience-driven brand.

But one of the biggest traps in thinking about courage is to see it as the absence of fear.

John Hagel III, the author of The Power of Pull and The Journey Beyond Fear, points out that most leadership models are rooted in fear-based thinking and focus on scarcity, protection, and control. And that fear shows up everywhere in organizations: in people worrying about their jobs in the age of AI, and in organizations anxious about staying ahead of competitors. Fear quietly drives decisions in more ways than we care to admit.

Hagel doesn’t suggest we should eliminate fear; in fact, he says it’s impossible (and even undesirable). What matters is learning to work with fear instead of letting it rule us. His idea of “pull-based leadership” captures that perfectly. Push-based leaders rely on control, plans, and tight execution. Pull-based leaders, on the other hand, attract opportunities. They experiment. They learn fast. They bring diverse people together around shared possibilities.

Courage in leadership isn’t about being fearless or even about fighting fear. It’s about seeing the opportunity on the other side of fear, and stepping toward it anyway.

Check my new book "The Uncertainty Principle" on peterhinssen.com if you want to learn more about leading a company in uncertain times.