On today’s podcast, Lisa Marie Platske from Upside Thinking, Inc. and Stephen Halasnik from Financing Solutions discuss how business owners can show courageous leadership. Courageous leadership in the business sense is not the autocratic style of leadership that some political leaders exhibit. On the contrary, it’s a type of leadership that’s built on empathy, compassion, vulnerability, resilience, and more. A courageous leader is neither deterred nor intimidated by uncertainties, challenges, or failure.
Summary
What is Courageous Leadership In Business
Leadership is very critical to the success of every business. It’s an essential management function that helps in harnessing the organization’s resources to promote efficiencies and reach target goals. Leadership in business gives direction, motivation, and guidance for a company to attain its mission.
Today, the question is no longer about the imperative of leadership in running a business but how business owners can courageously showcase their leadership ability in their business management. Courageous leadership involves taking a calculated risk, exuding a completely different operating system, and always being at the cutting-edge of events. 
Courageous leadership is an essential quality every business owner should strive to acquire. In its simplest definition, it means not being deterred or intimidated by events or the outcome of a decision. It takes a lot of courage to be successful in business.
Vision, Vulnerability, and Voice
A courageous leader has the following characteristics: vision, vulnerability, and voice. Vision is the ability to concentrate on what you set out to achieve without losing focus, even when faced with daunting challenges. It means having crystal clear objectives without allowing anything to take you off your mission. Courageous leaders have the ability to mobilize followers or employees to work in alignment with their vision. In other words, they have a clear, thought-out plan that they need to communicate to their employees to keep their business running.
On the other hand, vulnerability is the ability to show empathy and become unattached to past events that may be emotionally disturbing. It means having a depth of forgiveness by not allowing situations, experiences, or anything to take you off mission.
In addition, the third component, which is voice, means having the ability to speak up for what matters in a way that is catalyzing and incredibly magnetic to others. As a business owner, you should have the ability to showcase that you can take people to a better place.
Fostering Employees’ Happiness
Your management style determines how successful your business becomes. You should try to guide your team with conviction and transform your business challenges into opportunities. As a business owner, you should foster job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and workplace happiness to increase productivity. In addition, a courageous leader tends to promote trust and performance among employees.
Living a Balanced Life
A courageous leader should not be overly serious about his business to the detriment of his personal life. In other words, he should strike a delicate balance between his private affairs and his business operation. Experience has shown that having a balanced life helps improve the quality of one’s work. Part of being a good business leader is taking a step back from what you do to get refreshed in order to achieve a greater height.
Conclusion
Business leadership can be challenging when faced with complex problems. But courageous leaders have what it takes to navigate through a crisis and come out stronger. Resilience is an essential aspect of the leadership function. It’s an attribute that helps leaders to endure great challenges and work toward a solution.
In addition, a courageous leader should possess a high level of emotional intelligence to gain insight into his workplace behavior and know how people see them. Plus, emotional intelligence helps leaders build trustworthiness and enhance employees’ support when there are great changes within the organization.
Courageous leaders have the ability to make themselves better and stronger when circumstances turn against them. They are not intimidated or cowed by events because they can see a great opportunity to rise and grow amid uncertainties or turbulence.
Learn More About Our Guest
Lisa is An award-winning leadership expert in human behavior and has received accolades from the United States Small Business Administration, and The International Alliance for Women, recognized as one of the top 100 women making a difference in the world. She left her Federal law enforcement career after 9/11 to build Upside Thinking, Inc. She is A member of the Forbes Coaches Council and has trained or coached over 100,000 leaders around the globe.
About Financing Solutions
Financing Solutions provides an easy-to-setup unsecured business line of credit to small businesses. The small business financing product is a great cash backup plan that costs nothing to set up, nothing until used, and is inexpensive when needed. Financing Solutions is rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and 5 stars by the BBB/Google Reviews.
Unlike a traditional business bank loan, our business credit line requires no collateral or personal guarantee (except in the cases of fraud) making it an excellent alternative business financing option. Small businesses often used their line of credit for short-term expenses, working capital, to make payroll, or for a business investment especially when business cash flow is temporarily down.
Get a free, no-obligation business line of credit quote by filling out our simple 2- minute business line of credit application here.
Remember: The time to set up a credit line is when you don’t need it.
