What does courage mean as a company value?

Saying or doing the right and personally costly thing while it still matters. At work it is almost always verbal and almost never dramatic, which is why it goes unnamed.

How do you recognise courage at work?

In public, and with the cost named. The point of the message is not only to thank one person; it is to answer the question everybody else has about whether it was safe.

Should you recognise someone who spoke up and was wrong?

Yes, if the concern was reasonable. Recognising only correct dissent rewards being right rather than speaking, and the team learns to stay quiet unless certain.

What courageous behaviour is most commonly missed?

Self-disclosure. Somebody reporting their own mistake that nobody would have found has done the hardest version of this and receives, in most companies, a conversation about the mistake.

Company values

Courage

Professional courage is almost always small, verbal and uncomfortable, and it is almost never what gets described when companies talk about being bold.

It is verbal and small

Professional courage does not look like anything. Somebody says a timeline is not real, in a meeting, to the person who set it, and everybody else in the room agrees privately and says nothing.

That is the whole event. It takes four seconds and it is the reason the project gets fixed in March rather than August.

Recognise it even when they were wrong

A team that only celebrates dissent that turned out correct has rewarded being right.

The next person with a concern and no certainty will keep it to themselves, and those are the concerns worth hearing.

How you would know

Disagrees upward: Says the plan will not work to the person whose plan it is.
Raises the thing nobody names: Puts a known problem into words in a room where it has been avoided.
Takes the unpopular decision: Chooses the option that is correct and will make them briefly disliked.
Reports their own mistake: Discloses something nobody would have found.

6 messages that name it

You told the exec team the timeline was not real. Everybody in that room agreed with you privately.
Manager
The private agreement is what makes it courage.
Thanks for naming the thing we had all been talking around for a month.
Peer
Specific about the duration of the avoidance.
You cut the feature you had built. That cannot have been comfortable and it was right.
Manager
Acknowledges the personal cost of being right.
Sofia told the customer we were not the right fit and lost the quarter for it. They came back in March.
Manager
Real cost, real vindication, in that order.
You reported your own mistake that nobody would ever have found.
Manager
The clause at the end is the entire message.
Thank you for pushing back on the deadline. I know what that cost you upstairs.
Report
Recognises a cost the writer only half sees.

What its absence looks like

Where courage is absent, everybody knows the plan is wrong and the meeting ends in agreement. The problem gets named six weeks later by somebody handing in their notice.

Recognising it well

Recognise it publicly, because the audience is the question. Everyone else is deciding whether it was survivable.
Do it even when they were wrong. A team that only rewards correct dissent has rewarded being right, not speaking up.
Say what it cost. Courage recognised without reference to the cost sounds like praise for having an opinion.

Questions people ask

What does courage mean as a company value?: Saying or doing the right and personally costly thing while it still matters. At work it is almost always verbal and almost never dramatic, which is why it goes unnamed.
How do you recognise courage at work?: In public, and with the cost named. The point of the message is not only to thank one person; it is to answer the question everybody else has about whether it was safe.
Should you recognise someone who spoke up and was wrong?: Yes, if the concern was reasonable. Recognising only correct dissent rewards being right rather than speaking, and the team learns to stay quiet unless certain.
What courageous behaviour is most commonly missed?: Self-disclosure. Somebody reporting their own mistake that nobody would have found has done the hardest version of this and receives, in most companies, a conversation about the mistake.