Be Brave

This delightful insight comes care of my friend Richard Wilding. Richard is the founder and owner of WMW, a creative agency which likes to pick fights with complexity at work. He's just written the UK Government's narrative for tech founders to set up, scale up and stay in the UK.

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Reflecting on my time not only as a leader, but also as one of the led, it’s true to say that I’ve seen way more examples of cowardly leadership than brave.  

I realized this in the wake of my own cowardice:

I’m getting to the pointy end of what is a fairly chunky presentation. The organising thought for the creative is cracked and I’ve been working with my copywriter to get the creative expression just so. We cracked it this morning. I said to my writer, “Tell Sarah (my art director) to hurry up. All she does is the colouring in” to which Sam replied, “I wouldn’t dare. That’s your job,” to which I replied, “Sam, have you never read the all-time business classic, ‘Leading through cowardice’?” (For the record, Sarah is a blindingly excellent art director). 

It's hardly just me, though. I had a boss confide in me once that before giving people pay rises, he used to hide in the toilet.  

In the days before the internet, I’d have bosses leave me post-it notes asking me to contact difficult clients because not only could they not face the client, they couldn’t face asking me to face the client. Leadership-by-email is now the de facto way of hiding away when you should front up.  

I’ve lost count of the number of times clients have told me that one of the problems they face is people, senior people, C-suite people, agreeing to one thing and doing another because they can’t stomach the thought of having to argue their corner. It’s both shocking and shockingly prevalent. Name any single company in the world, of any size, and you’ll find siloes and siloes and siloes, with walls erected to enable silo leaders to hide behind them and not face the harder choices that come with being, well, with being an adult.  

I sometimes wonder what would happen to the share values of these companies if they were populated by people with a spine. 

I’ve had a client tell me, “You’ve lost your credibility” because of some terrible faux pax I made. That was long, long ago. It shook me. I was so embarrassed. I learned.  

When I set up my company, I told everyone that I value three human qualities at work – originality, craftsmanship and bravery. Bravery is the hardest to master. Always be brave with people. Especially the scary ones. They are the ones who most need leadership. 

Leading through cowardice. Please submit your anecdote here. 

Related: Create Psychological Safety
Related: Call A Time Out

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