This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Wild Courage" by Jenny Wood. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Are you letting fear hold you back from your goals? How can you muster the courage it takes to go after what you want?
In Wild Courage, Jenny Wood explains that many people struggle in their lives and careers because they’re afraid of taking the bold actions necessary to succeed. To become a success, Wood says to be courageous and act boldly—be authentic, driven, curious, persuasive, and don’t be afraid to lead others.
Continue reading for an overview of Wild Courage.
Wild Courage Book Overview
In Wild Courage, Jenny Wood explains that many people struggle in their lives and careers because they fear being judged as strange, pushy, or self-centered rather than authentic, driven, or confident. However, Wood counters that the negative stigma around bold actions is unfounded—people judge others who break conventions because they feel threatened by their courage, yet praise their boldness once they succeed. Therefore, to succeed in your professional and personal life, Wood says to be courageous and take bold actions despite your fear—be authentic, advocate for yourself, be driven, be curious, be persuasive, enforce your boundaries, act fast, and lead others.
Wood was formerly a Google executive and a Harvard Business School researcher. She also founded Own Your Career, one of the biggest career development programs in Google’s history. Now, she focuses on her career as a writer and speaker who empowers people to develop the skills and courage to succeed in their careers.
In this guide, we’ll first explain why courage is crucial for taking bold action. Then, we’ll discuss the actions Wood says are necessary for success in your personal and professional life, why they’re important, and how to enact them. We’ll also supplement Wood’s advice with insights on authentic living and professional success from authors like Brené Brown, Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), and Patrick Lencioni (The Advantage).
The Importance of Courage
Wood argues that courage is crucial because it counters fear, and fear, particularly the fear of others’ judgement, is the biggest barrier to success. This fear stems from our evolutionary instinct to fit in and to pressure others to do so as well. In the early days of humanity, fitting in with the tribe ensured safety—those who strayed were more vulnerable to predators. Therefore, survival demanded that we crave conformity and enforce it as the standard in our communities for everyone’s safety.
Today, however, fear doesn’t serve the same function—rather than helping us survive, it holds us back. Our fear of being negatively judged for breaking conventions prevents us from taking the actions we know are necessary to succeed. While following the crowd protects us from negative attention, it also prevents us from making an impact and getting positive attention. The solution to this, Wood argues, is to practice courage—courage is what gives us the strength to fight our fear of judgement and our instinct to conform.
In the following sections, we’ll discuss eight actions Wood says we must take and the correlated stigmas we must overcome in order to succeed.
Action 1: Be Authentic
People are often pressured to fit certain standards to gain acceptance, and they fear being cast out and deemed “strange” when they fail to do so. However, Wood explains that using courage to overcome this fear and be authentic—even if people find you odd—is the only way to get where you’re destined to be in life. Being your true self will repel the people and opportunities that aren’t meant for you, helping you narrow down those that will allow you to thrive. Further, your greatest strengths that are most crucial to your success are the ones that are unique to you—being your authentic self is how you embrace and utilize them.
How to Be Authentic
Wood explains that practicing authenticity requires you to make yourself known and pursue what you want—be vocal about your opinions, goals, desires, and talents. Volunteer for opportunities that will get you noticed. Get comfortable with breaking conventions when you think doing so will benefit your career or company. These things will be uncomfortable at first because they’ll put the spotlight on you; however, attracting attention is necessary to advance your career—leaders will notice your courage and unique talents, and you’ll be the one who comes to mind when they’re considering promotions and handing out opportunities.
Finally, Wood offers a few warnings to heed to ensure that your authenticity is effective. First, before breaking conventions or bending rules, weigh the risks. If the only risk is embarrassment, go for it. However, if the consequence is more severe, like potentially getting fired from your company over something insignificant, consider otherwise. Further, think about how your behavior will impact others before acting—for example, express your disagreement about something, but don’t disparage someone in the process.
Action 2: Be Your Own Advocate
Advocating for yourself is often seen as selfish and boastful—we’re told that being a good person requires us to put others before ourselves and be overly humble. When we break these norms, we’re often made to feel embarrassed and anxious. On the contrary, Wood claims that you can still be a good person while advocating for yourself—prioritizing your needs and well-being and unapologetically striving for your goals. Advocating for yourself and overcoming negative stigma is crucial to success because it ensures you’re using your time and energy wisely, communicating effectively, and putting as much energy toward your own goals and needs as you are toward others’.
How to Be Your Own Advocate
Wood explains that one of the foundational steps to being your own advocate is overcoming the anxiety and embarrassment that can accompany it. We often experience these feelings because we’re telling ourselves a dramatized story of what actually happened. For example, you’re embarrassed because you think you asked an obvious question in a meeting—in reality, the presenter was unclear and you probably clarified something others questioned as well. Focusing on these facts will help you take apart the mental narrative causing your stress.
Next, Wood recommends advocating for yourself by eliminating trivial tasks so you can dedicate more time to your goals. For example, identify unnecessary tasks at work that aren’t part of your role, and ask your boss if you can drop them. Further, learn to say no when others ask you to do things that you don’t have the bandwidth or desire to do. Finally, regularly check that your goals actually align with your current wants and needs—not just what you think you should do. Your wants might change, and that’s OK—don’t waste time working toward something that no longer suits you just because you feel you should.
Wood says another way to advocate for yourself is to be assertive—use clear and direct communication to tell people what you want. Don’t soften or minimize your statements just because the discussion feels uncomfortable—whether you need to present a problem, give feedback, or ask for a promotion, do it clearly and directly. Use as few words as possible to get to your point—this will save time and avoid misunderstandings. Further, use direct communication to celebrate your achievements. For example, tell people what you’re proud of and regularly fill your manager in on your accomplishments—if you don’t tell them, they won’t know. This can be as simple as sending a progress email once a week.
Wood also warns against some common mistakes that can occur when being assertive. First, rather than believing there can only be one winner, try to find solutions where everyone benefits—prioritize your own needs, but aim to help others along the way. Second, don’t let your assertiveness turn into insensitivity—make sure you’re taking others into account before acting. Finally, rather than ignoring or downplaying your mistakes, be sure to acknowledge and learn from them.
Action 3: Be Driven
Society tells us not to be pushy and not to get too absorbed in our pursuits. However, Wood says that despite this stigma, to achieve success, you must be driven—focus intensely on what you want and do what’s necessary to seize important opportunities.
How to Be Driven
First, prioritize making progress toward your goals, even if this makes you seem overzealous. To do this, Wood advises creating benchmarks and standards that are tailored toward your goals rather than strictly following the ones that match the status quo. For example, if you want to get a promotion, you may need to create benchmarks and personal expectations that boost your performance beyond the company standard. Further, avoid procrastination and boost productivity by planning to accomplish tasks within 24 hours of receiving them—this will ensure you’re consistently making progress.
Further, Wood says that being driven also requires you to know how to motivate others. Achieving goals, especially in a corporate setting, usually requires teams to work toward a common objective. To motivate teams, Wood recommends holding meetings that engage employees and make them feel they have a stake in the company’s success. Be sure to send a meeting agenda at least 24 hours in advance—not only will this increase turnout, but it will also increase engagement by ensuring people are familiar with the subject matter and helping to redirect the meeting should things get off topic. Also, be willing to take feedback on the agenda, input during the meeting, and feedback after the meeting to further increase engagement.
Finally, Wood warns not to let your driven nature slip into negative territory: Don’t get sucked into perfectionism, set realistic standards, and be sure to set personal time aside to care for your well-being.
Action 4: Be Curious
People often equate curiosity with nosiness; however, Wood recommends braving your fear of being judged as nosy. She explains that practicing curiosity is crucial to success for two reasons: It introduces us to new knowledge, opportunities, and people, and it helps us stand out—asking questions shows engagement, and this is what bosses look for.
How to Encourage Curiosity
First, use your curiosity to help you make connections with new people. Making connections is important because our network is often where we turn to get help or learn about new opportunities. However, many professionals struggle to make connections due to anxiety about how others perceive them. Wood says you can overcome this by focusing on the other person rather than yourself. Make it your objective to learn about them—you can even do some research about them before your introduction and ask them about things you know they’re interested in or that you have in common.
Wood also notes that asking simple questions during meetings is a great way to build connections. Asking seemingly obvious questions may seem silly, but there are probably others who were too nervous to ask the same question. Being the one to speak up will make people appreciate you and see you as an approachable person.
Further, if you find yourself envious of others, Wood says to turn your envy into curiosity about how they succeeded so you can achieve the same success. You can observe their techniques, habits, and methods of communication and test them out to see which ones work the best for you. Or, you can even ask the people you envy to mentor you.
Finally, Wood warns of two specific situations where you should consider checking your curiosity to ensure it continues serving you:
- Be aware of social contexts and others’ boundaries when getting curious about others, so you don’t ask something inappropriate or insensitive.
- Don’t pursue higher education just because it sounds good or you think it will be expected of you to advance your career. Instead, spend time seriously investigating your career goals, the industry norms, and the financial implications and benefits of pursuing a degree, and pursue areas of study that you’re genuinely interested in.
Action 5: Be Persuasive
We’re often taught that trying to persuade other people to give us what we want is manipulative; however, Wood says that persuasion is natural and necessary to achieve your goals. You often need to get others on board to help you succeed, whether that’s convincing your manager to promote you or recruiting a colleague to teach you a new skill. The key to being persuasive and not manipulative is using empathy to tune into what others want and make sure they also benefit from helping you.
How to Be Persuasive
Wood suggests that influencing others starts with understanding the politics of your organization. The person who’s technically your superior isn’t necessarily the person with the most power or influence over your future at the company; a co-worker from another department who’s friends with the boss might have more leverage in getting you a promotion. You might have to play politics with that person rather than your direct manager. Understanding politics is also useful so you know how to get on people’s good sides, what bothers them, and what you can do to help them—doing nice things for other people is one of the best ways to get help from them in the future.
Wood also advises managing your relationships from all sides to maintain strong connections with potential allies. Rather than solely focusing on making nice with your direct superiors, try to improve relationships with those who work next to you, below you, far above you, and diagonally to you. Strive to have face-to-face conversations with your superior’s superior and your superior’s colleagues. To get your foot in the door, try getting a meeting by offering praise and requesting advice from them. Further, don’t neglect the relationships with your colleagues and those working below you—you never know who could one day end up in charge or who may have valuable skills you’ll need down the road.
While persuasion is crucial, Wood offers some advice to ensure your persuasion doesn’t backfire. First, acknowledge that managing relationships with others sometimes means putting on a happy face even if you’re not totally feeling it. Second, don’t try to win people over by fawning—this doesn’t demand respect. Instead, interact with everyone as their equal, no matter their standing.
Action 6: Be Firm
Wood explains that setting boundaries is crucial for meeting your personal and professional goals, even if people judge you as being harsh. This is because your boundaries protect your peace and priorities, helping you live a life you’re proud of without regrets. But your boundaries are only beneficial if you enforce them. Enforcing your boundaries means drawing a line between what you are and aren’t willing to accept, and taking action when this line is crossed. For example, if you prioritize family over work, tell your boss that asking you to cancel a family plan for a last-minute meeting is crossing a boundary.
How to Set and Enforce Boundaries
First, Wood recommends getting comfortable enforcing your boundaries. Initially, enforcing boundaries—like saying no to a task someone asks you to do so you can focus on something more important—might make you feel anxious or guilty. While this is normal, Wood suggests remembering the favor you’re doing yourself—you’re putting your time and effort toward the things that are going to make the biggest positive difference for you.
Further, Wood advises setting boundaries around email to conserve your time—spend less time reading emails and send fewer responses. To do this, Wood offers a four-step formula: First, filter emails to separate unimportant ones like promotions from important correspondence, and unsubscribe from useless email lists. Second, set aside a time-block for email and only respond during that period. Third, when taking time off, create an automatic response requesting that people indicate the importance of their email so you can read what’s necessary when you return. Finally, consider whether a response is necessary—if you’re only responding because you feel like you should, you probably don’t need to.
Finally, Wood recommends reminding yourself to be respectful when enforcing boundaries. There’s no need to be aggressive or dramatic. Simply inform people of your boundaries, and kindly detach from those who don’t respect these limits.
Action 7: Be a Go-Getter
Many people fail to achieve their goals because they’re afraid of taking risks and being called impulsive or reckless—instead, they let overthinking delay action. But Wood says that being successful requires you to have the courage to act fast and be willing to take risks. If you wait for the perfect moment or to have 100% certainty in your plan before starting something, you’ll never start. Further, risks are necessary for you to progress, and people are generally more regretful over the risks they didn’t take than the unsuccessful ones that they did.
How to Prioritize Action
Wood says that to prioritize action, you should release your desire for perfection and embrace your mistakes. She explains that many people wait to take action until they feel their plan or skills are perfect. In reality, perfection doesn’t exist—so instead of waiting, identify first steps, get started, and iron out the rest as you go. It’s also crucial to acknowledge that, as perfection doesn’t exist, you’ll naturally make mistakes—instead of letting them scare you off, embrace and learn from them. When you make a mistake, recognize that it’s normal, fix it, apologize where apologies are necessary, look for any positives the situation may offer, and lean on trusted colleagues to help you out.
To ensure you avoid taking unnecessary risks, Wood recommends spending the appropriate time making decisions. Pause to ensure you’ve given yourself time to properly consider your options, and don’t let pride drive you to quick and unnecessarily reckless action.
Wood also recommends being conscious about how you bring up risky topics. If you need to have a sensitive conversation, make sure it’s the right time, place, and delivery so your message is relayed appropriately and received well.
Action 8: Be a Leader
Wood explains that reaching a certain level of career success often puts you in a leadership position where you’re managing others to some extent; therefore, understanding how to lead is crucial. However, many struggle in this position because they fear being called “bossy,” or they end up being overly controlling out of fear of their team underperforming. To be a courageous leader and avoid these pitfalls, Wood says you should enable and empower others to reach their potential. Success as a leader is defined by how successful you help others and your organization become.
How to Be an Empowering Leader
First, rather than micromanaging, Wood suggests spending your time developing employees’ skills so they can complete tasks on their own. Many leaders default to micromanaging because they want things to be done well, and they know how to do them best—that’s what got them where they are. However, this prevents leaders from focusing on higher-level priorities. To be a successful leader, focus on coaching your team to become the best they can be rather than doing everything yourself.
Second, Wood advises observing your team to understand everyone’s roles and the different moving parts. This has two benefits. First, you’ll better understand the work that goes into people’s jobs so you can find ways to help make their lives easier—for example, by connecting them to someone who can help or simplifying certain processes. Second, having a detailed understanding of the moving parts will help you solve problems by targeting the root of the issue and recruiting team members with the expertise to help solve it.
Third, Wood says that being a good leader requires you to give effective feedback. To do so, Wood first recommends maintaining morale by offering five pieces of positive feedback for every piece of negative feedback. Further, when giving feedback on problematic behavior, be sure to mention the specific situation, objectively explain what the behavior was, seek to understand the person’s intention and perspective of why it happened, and acknowledge their intention while explaining the consequences of the action. Then, brainstorm ways to improve together. This will make it easier for the person to understand what happened and how to fix it.
Finally, Wood warns to avoid common traps that hinder positive leadership. First, don’t put too much pressure on your employees. Make sure your expectations are realistic and healthy, and judge their effort based on the results they produce rather than how much effort it looks like they’re exerting. Further, avoid toxic behaviors like creating unnecessary urgency or being indecisive or inconsistent.
Exercise: Make a Bold Action Plan for Authenticity
Wood explains that achieving success requires you to overcome fear and take bold action. In this exercise, we’ll identify some areas where you can overcome your fear of being judged as “weird” so you can be authentic.
- Brainstorm a recent scenario where your fear of being judged prevented you from being authentic—for example, maybe you had a great solution to a problem during a meeting but were too intimated to speak up once someone else already proposed their solution.
- Now, brainstorm some methods for how you want to act next time a scenario like that arises. For example, you can speak up and say something like “I have another idea that I think might provide some additional benefits.”
- Finally, brainstorm some conversation starters you can use in your daily work life that will allow you to share more of yourself with others. For example, if you’re learning a new language, you can ask others if they know any second languages and then share your current language goal.
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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Jenny Wood's "Wild Courage" at Shortform.
Here's what you'll find in our full Wild Courage summary:
- Why fear may be holding you back from achieving your dream life or career
- The eight actions you must take to overcome fear in order to succeed
- Why you need to learn to set boundaries, even if people judge you for them
