2 Truths and 5 Myths About Courage

“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” (John Wayne).

Courage is saying or doing something because a person or a high value is in danger. The courageous act is an act of “rescue.” There are no guarantees for success, and the doer knows this.

The above is not the only definition of courage. For the purpose of unpacking some of the myths and non-myths I am offering this description as the starting point.

1) Courage is a verb: Courage is an act of saying or doing. Until the act appears “in the world” arguably it might not be courage yet. Thinking about the action is the birthing process. From this initial thinking stage, if an act is an act of courage, then there are certain predictable components can be identified: Courage requires high focus, clarity of action, action specifics, disciplined preparation to do and continuance in the face of severe/extreme opposition. An act of courage is not a random or impulsive act. Courage does not happen by accident. An act of courage is always done as a deliberate act by a person who has a plan and a specific end in mind.

2) Courage is the right thing to do. Courage comes from living and expressing a highest value. The act of courage is born from a violation of this highest value, or threat to the highest value, or the life of a person. The act of courage is the doer’s intention to make a correction or to prevent the potential consequences if things stay the same. The compellingness to do the right thing is stronger than the preservation of the individual. Once the act is happening, attention is on the “going forward” and doing what is appropriate.

Here are some 5 myths which crops up in thinking about courage.

1) You always win when you are courageous. This happens in story books, but in real life, people (like firemen, police, and soldiers) lose their lives due to a miscalculation. Think of the rescuers that ran into the Twin Tower building during the 9/11 incident and who died in this effort to find and rescue occupants in the building. Standing up for a high value, like in the Enron scandal, Sherron Watkins, the whistle blower, lost her family as she became estranged from her husband and kids. However, research by Angela Duckworth indicates that if the courageous person also show “grits” (resiliency) their chances of reaching the outcome, or surviving the process, becomes better.

2) Courage means you are not afraid. The truth is that courageous people act in spite of a range of intensely negative emotions, including fear for their lives, the agony when considering the potential cost in their personal lives and careers, and the agony about whether it is the right thing? Also, the extreme uncertainty about will it make a difference? And there is the high risk that it might all go wrong and the fear in facing that fact.

3) Courage comes easy or natural to some people. This is not true for the people modelled and case studies. Courage is hard work. It starts as a deliberate act, cutting through an ocean of intensely negative emotions, to a series of acts over an indefinite period of time. It may happen without thinking: “it is my job” and the courageous make it happen. Facing the same situation a number of times, like facing a mob of restless or threatening people, a person might become somewhat “acclimatized” and do what they have been trained to do without thinking, but, that does not mean they don’t have to deal with an adrenaline storm afterwards.

4) Only “brave” people can be courageous. “Brave” in itself is an attribute, used as a descriptor, or an explanation, for people having been courageous. The psychological jury is still out on whether it is a separate attribute or a synonyms for “courage”.

5) Courage can be “borrowed” from people close to you. Myth. Courage is initiated by one person: “if it is to be, it is up to me.” Evidence from bystander behaviour indicates that people will walk by situations in which people are severely and aggressively attacked without doing anything to interfere or stop the ongoing behaviour. (One controversial example of such a study about bystander behaviour is the case of Kitty Genovese: it is claimed by some that more than 38 people walked past while she was beaten to death and not one of the 38 interfered or helped in any way.) Followers will follow the courageous individual. The pattern of passive bystander behaviour can be broken by one person taking the initiative to help or interfere.

Conclusion: the reader might wonder where do hero’s fit into these thoughts on courage? For example the  “Miracle on the Hudson”: On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549, an Airbus A320 piloted by Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger and First Officer Jeffrey Skiles made an amazing landing on the Hudson river. This was after the aircraft lost all engine power due to birds flying into the engines.

Captain Sullenberger was soon regarded as a hero by some accounts. The calm, focused and action-specific orientation of the captain was contagious and the co-pilot, the aircrew and the passangers “borrowed” their calm and focus from his behaviour. Soon it was a chicken-or-the-egg thinking: what, or who, maintained the calm behaviour of the passengers and the crew, including Captain Sullenberger, (even though from the moment of engine failure to landing took a life-time of three minutes, are some estimates on the net)?