The Courage to Share
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Three years ago my team took part in a workshop with Michael Bungay Stanier based on his book “Do More Great Work”. In the book he describes three qualities that we need to practise to support great work – focus, courage and resilience. He spent the workshop focusing on Courage. It was a powerful workshop delivered via Skype from his home in Toronto.
Courage is such a key issue for us if we are going to do things that push us way out of our comfort zone. And it is when we are out of our comfort zone that we really grow and develop. Michael would say that this is when we are really doing great work.
We need to push through and ignore the inner critic, and we need to ensure that we have protection from the voices of the outer critics too. Brené Brown in her excellent book “Daring Greatly” talks of the need to be prepared to be vulnerable if we are going to really achieve things with our lives.
Earlier today I finished another draft of a ‘thought paper’ I have been pulling together based on the conversations I have been having to develop ideas for a programme of work called Engaging with Science. I am really excited about this – but I am also uneasy about sharing this very early version of something we are developing. But it is in the very nature of co-creation that things need to be shared early, whilst they are still untidy and ill formed.
It’s important to set the parameters for sharing to ensure that everyone understands what is being asked and the status of the work is clear. Putting ourselves out there is important – but building courage requires us to ensure that there are safe places for sharing and developing ideas.
Writing this blog post has really helped to clear my mind and clarify how to have the courage to just do it and share the paper with those that have been involved. It’s a strange thing, courage. It seems to really grow when we push ourselves to vulnerable places and overcome the fear. But it also needs an inner resilience. We need to master our inner voices of criticism to put ourselves out there.