A Middle Path to Courage

There’s a British TV series from the 1970s called Dad’s Army. It depicted a group of men who formed the Home Guard during the Second World War. They served to protect communities whilst so many men were away at war. It was a really funny comedy with strongly depicted characters.

Two of these characters came to mind in a coaching session recently where the client was mulling over how to handle a particularly difficult transition.

In my response I talked about the need to avoid two different extremes. On the one hand, there is the “Don’t panic” of Corporal Jones. This character would run around aimless shouting don’t panic whenever there was a crisis. It made a lot of noise but didn’t result in any action to resolve the situation. The second character, and polar opposite was the character Private Fraser who was a dour Scotsman. In times of crisis, his approach would be to declare “We’re all doomed”. Neither of these approaches to a crisis or to a transition, whether chosen or imposed, achieves anything more than evoking strong feelings.

A better approach is to find a middle path that embraces worst case scenario and looks boldly at what we can do, owns the situation and tackles it with courage. We begin this by unpacking the situation and looking at it forensically to see what the worst implications can be for the client. What’s the worst that can happen? Looking at worst case scenario, and then unpacking it with questions like “Is that really what might happen?” or “What are the chances that will actually happen?” can take us away from the “We’re all doomed!” mindset. Then, if we look boldly at what we actually have some control over, this give us something practical that we can respond to. Armed with a set of actions and a focus, we can move into the transition with the middle way of courage.