{"id":51588,"date":"2021-10-21T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T16:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=51588"},"modified":"2021-10-21T14:08:13","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T18:08:13","slug":"brave-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brave-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"Barriers to Brave Leadership: The 4 Errors to Avoid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/daring-leader\/\">brave leadership<\/a>? What are the common barriers to brave leadership in organizations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brave leadership is a type of leadership that allows for risk and failure, and positively engages with feelings of uncertainty and fear. Organizations that fail to build trust with their workforce, prepare their team to deal with failure, and establish clear values will find it difficult to groom brave leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read on to discover how to overcome the barriers to brave leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Why Brave Leadership Matters&#8230;and What\u2019s Getting In Its Way<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re living in a rapidly-changing world that demands constant innovation and creativity from organizations. But there are four errors that organization leaders make that get in the way of implementing brave leadership.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Error #1: Trying to engineer vulnerability and uncertainty out of the workplace<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By refusing to allow the risks and uncertainty in their workplaces, leaders create work cultures where team members don\u2019t know how to control their natural emotional reactions to uncertainty and failure. Instead, their team members are driven by their emotions toward <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/defensive-behavior-in-the-workplace\/\">defensive behaviors<\/a> that hold them back, such as perfectionism, criticism, and a refusal to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/accepting-responsibility\/\">take responsibility<\/a> for their mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Furthermore, many leaders use unclear or untrue language in tough conversations in a bid to protect themselves from the negative emotions that might be sparked by honesty. By doing this, leaders create work cultures that are void of the honest and productive feedback that allows team members to improve themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Error #2: Not establishing clear values&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When a leader doesn\u2019t spend time clarifying an organization\u2019s values, those values will be too ambiguous to be modeled or evaluated. The leader will waste time trying to \u201cwrong\u201d behaviors that don\u2019t align with their vision for the organization, without being able to pinpoint why the behavior is wrong or what behavior would be considered \u201cright.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Additionally, organization members should be able to lean on their values when faced with a tough decision. Wishy-washy values aren\u2019t strong enough to act as a guide, and organization members risk listening to whatever opinion is loudest, or doing what is easiest over what is right.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Error #3: Not building connection or trust in their organization&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When there\u2019s no culture of trust in a workplace, team members hold back from expressing new ideas for fear of being ridiculed by their colleagues or punished for going against the status quo. This lack of trust extends to the way team members <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/recover-from-failure\/\">recover from failure<\/a> and shame as well\u2014they don\u2019t talk about or work through tough situations if they don\u2019t feel that their colleagues will respond with empathy and support. Instead, they let the shame fester under the surface, manifesting in toxic defensive behaviors.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Error #4: Not preparing their team members to deal with failure<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When team members aren\u2019t prepared to fail, they don\u2019t respond productively to failure\u2014they react emotionally. This drives problematic behaviors such as covering up mistakes instead of talking about and learning from them, or blaming one another for failures and setbacks instead of holding themselves accountable. With teams that can\u2019t handle failure, leaders waste their time on reassurance and fixing defensive behaviors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The way to combat all four of these errors and build a thriving organization is <\/strong><strong><em>brave leadership<\/em><\/strong><strong>\u2014leadership that allows for risk and failure, and engages with feelings of uncertainty and fear.<\/strong> Brave leadership is necessary because it fosters courageous work cultures, where employees take risks and learn from their failures\u2014which is crucial for innovation. Developing these skills and teaching them to your team is hard, uncomfortable work\u2014but you\u2019ll gain a culture where members <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/act-with-integrity\/\">act with integrity<\/a>, share ideas without fear of judgment, respond to failure productively, and will take the risks necessary to innovation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is brave leadership? What are the common barriers to brave leadership in organizations? Brave leadership is a type of leadership that allows for risk and failure, and positively engages with feelings of uncertainty and fear. Organizations that fail to build trust with their workforce, prepare their team to deal with failure, and establish clear values will find it difficult to groom brave leaders. Read on to discover how to overcome the barriers to brave leadership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":44210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,14,30],"tags":[516],"class_list":["post-51588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-management","category-work","tag-dare-to-lead","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Barriers to Brave Leadership: The 4 Errors to Avoid - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Constant innovation and creativity requires courageous leadership. Here is how to overcome practices that hinder brave leadership.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brave-leadership\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Barriers to Brave Leadership: The 4 Errors to Avoid\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Constant innovation and creativity requires courageous leadership. Here is how to overcome practices that hinder brave leadership.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brave-leadership\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-10-21T16:00:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-10-21T18:08:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/courage-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1709\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Joseph Adebisi\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Joseph Adebisi\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brave-leadership\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brave-leadership\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Joseph Adebisi\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d8daf45671a09e8745a7a9f50a03b2a0\"},\"headline\":\"Barriers to Brave Leadership: The 4 Errors to Avoid\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-10-21T16:00:01+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-10-21T18:08:13+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brave-leadership\/\"},\"wordCount\":637,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brave-leadership\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/courage-scaled.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Dare to Lead\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Business\",\"Management\",\"Work\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brave-leadership\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brave-leadership\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brave-leadership\/\",\"name\":\"Barriers to Brave Leadership: The 4 Errors to Avoid - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brave-leadership\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/brave-leadership\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/courage-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-10-21T16:00:01+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-10-21T18:08:13+00:00\",\"description\":\"Constant innovation and creativity requires courageous leadership. 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