Why You Need Courage to Reach Your Goals Part 1

We all know that setting ambitious goals helps us to move ourselves forward.  Our really ambitious goals - the ones we keep to ourselves – often present us with opportunities to be courageous.

Melissa, a smart and well-qualified professional, was hired by a pharmaceutical company to lead a product launch team. Within weeks, Melissa observed flaws in the company's launch strategy. She outlined her ambitious goal: “If this drug is not administered properly to patients with a certain risk profile, it will not work and may actually make them sicker,” she concluded. “If I can see this,” she warned, “so will other careful and conservative physicians. We need a plan to mitigate these risks and educate physicians about managing patients with an at-risk profile.”

Melissa faced ridicule when she raised the issue with her peers. “We’ve already dealt with this issue,” a commercial VP said indignantly, “There is no reason to cover old ground again, second-guess our key opinion leaders and regulatory advisors and complicate our launch just to appease a new gal in the company who is grandstanding.” Other peers also jumped in to find other possible risks with Melissa’s recommendations.

However, Melissa knew her stuff. It took courage for her to trust her own judgment, rather than yielding to these pressures. It took courage to reach out and build bridges with thought-leaders in other parts of the organization that would see and support her point of view. It took courage to oversee the work of colleagues who did not report to her and push for the right choices, rather than easy, conventional or popular recommendations. And she did all of this at a time when she was still getting acclimated to the new company and did not yet have the track record or credibility to stand out and take a different position.

My colleagues, Merom Klein, PhD and Louise Yochee Klein, PsyD, have written an excellent book about their research on five courage activators and how they can be used to achieve our most ambitious goals and overcome our most daunting obstacles. It’s titled Lead from the Middle.  Their five courage activators are the very heart of career growth:

Purpose. Having the big picture perspective to support your ambitions.

Will. The willingness to face adversity with “can-do” enthusiasm and to adapt to conditions that will further your purpose.

Risk. Stepping out to support your team, going out on a limb and creating opportunities for yourself and others.

Rigor. Inventing better solutions for continuous improvement and taking action on them.

Candor. Asking the tough questions and giving straight and direct communication.
 
In this post, I will focus on the power of purpose.  This is where you start in pursuing an ambitious goal. By writing out your purpose and sharing it with others, reluctant partners “get” what you are trying to achieve when you ask penetrating questions or offer out-of-the-box ideas. You want them to buy into the big picture, the common cause and the penultimate objectives. This will inspire them to move from avoidance to sponsorship.  Melissa wrote out her purpose and connected it to the company’s value statements. In this way, she attached her purpose to something with which the company leaders were already aligned.

She visited with key stakeholders individually to communicate her purpose and to ask questions rather than preach to them. Her questions were polite but provocative.  She asked:

What are the three most important things to our physicians when they prescribe to their patients at risk?


What do you think we must emphasize about product safety when we launch this product?


What do you think is most critical to our plan to ensure this emphasis in our launch strategy?

By sharing her purpose and tying it to the company values, she connected her ambitious goal to something everyone could own. By asking questions rather than preaching, she facilitated the thinking of others and their ability to reach their own conclusions.  Many of the stakeholders started to move her way.

Don’t give up on that dream or goal. Start with Purpose. In my next posts, I will discuss Will, Risk, Rigor, and Candor. Stay tuned…

-Andrea Zintz, Career Coach