Courage is the first virtue of leadership success. Leaders require courage to make bold decisions even when there are dissenters, to say what needs to be said no matter the consequences, and to place their trust in those they manage. Yet surprisingly, despite the central role that courage plays in leadership success, until now there have been few training programs devoted solely to building courage in the workplace.

The Courageous Leadership workshop introduces a new organizational development practice called courage-building. As a new professional discipline, courage-building is predicated on the assumption that people perform better when they are behaving courageously than when they are anxious and afraid. To be a courage-builder, however, you have to role model courageous behavior. This workshop is designed to help you do just that. The objectives of this workshop are to:

• Learn about the three different types of courage and when (and how) to use each

• Gain insight into your own "courage history" so that you can use your past to strengthen your future

• Understand the impact that fear has on personal and organizational performance

• Learn about two distinct ways of leading, and approaches for inspiring more courageous behavior among the people with whom you work

• Identify specific actions for extending the value of the workshop so that you can continue benefiting from it going forward

• Become a courageous leader

By learning to apply the strategies and approaches that are introduced in the Courageous Leadership workshop, and then applying them in your workplace, you will help people step up to challenges more readily, embrace change more fully, and speak up more assertively. When you put your courage to work, and when you step past the threshold of your zone of comfort, the entire workplace benefits.