Being Courageous and the Three Types of Courageous Behavior

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The Three Buckets of Courage

October 28, 2024
Coaching Skills, Emotional Intelligence

Blog Post

By Bill Treasurer

October 28, 2024
Coaching Skills, Emotional Intelligence

The Three Buckets of Courage

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Courage involves behavior. Like all behaviors, courage can be developed, encouraged, and reinforced. While a lot of writers have focused on the realms in which courage is applied (e.g., moral courage), military courage, and political courage, it is more useful to understand the common ways that people behave when being courageous, regardless of which realm they’re operating in.

While the realms themselves may have sharp differences, the ways people behave when being courageous within those realms are surprisingly similar. In my work as a courage-building consultant, I have discovered that there are three ways of behaving when your courage is activated. When you become familiar with the three distinct types of courageous behavior, you gain a deeper understanding of how to tap into and strengthen your own courage and the courage of those around you.

I call these three different forms of courage the Three Buckets of Courage.

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Try Courage

When managers talk about wanting workers to “step up to the plate,” it is Try Courage that they are referring to. Try Courage is the courage of initiative and action. You often see Try Courage when people make ﬁrst attempts. For example, whenever you see someone attempt new, skill-stretching, or pioneering tasks. Someone who volunteers to lead a tough or risky project is demonstrating Try Courage.

Trust Courage

Trust Courage is the courage that it takes to relinquish control and rely on others. When managers talk of wanting employees to embrace company changes more willingly or to follow directives more enthusiastically, it is more Trust Courage that they want employees to have. When Trust Courage is present, people give each other the beneﬁt of the doubt instead of questioning the motives and intentions of those around them. Trust Courage isn’t about taking charge (as with Try Courage); it’s about following the charge of others.

Tell Courage

Tell Courage is the courage of voice and involves speaking with candor and conviction, especially when the opinions expressed run counter to the groups. To preserve their safety, workers often agree too much and speak up too little. When Tell Courage is activated, it causes workers to assert themselves more willingly and conﬁdently. Tell Courage at work is shown when employees tactfully but truthfully provide tough feedback, even to their manager. It’s also seen when workers raise their hands and ask for help, or when they tell their manager about mistakes they’ve made before they are asked.

The main beneﬁt of using the Three Buckets of Courage as a framework for understanding and categorizing courageous behavior is that it helps make courage, as a concept, more graspable.

Parsing courage into three behavioral buckets allows us to discriminate the different ways we have been courageous in the past and are capable of being in the future.

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Coaching Skills, Emotional Intelligence

Author

Bill Treasurer

Bill Treasurer is founder and chief encouragement officer at Giant Leap Consulting (GLC), a courage-building company that exists to help people and organizations live more courageously.

Bill is considered the originator of the new organizational development practice of “courage-building.” Bill is the author of the internationally bestselling book, Courage Goes to Work. The book provides practical strategies for inspiring more courageous behavior in workplace settings. In 2009, the book became the 6th bestselling management book in China.

Bill is also the author of Courageous Leadership: Using Courage to Transform the Workplace. As a comprehensive off-the-shelf training program, the material is designed to help organizational development practitioners and training professionals inspire more courageous behavior in their organizations. The program has been taught to thousands of leaders in 11 countries on 5 continents.

For over two decades, Bill has designed and delivered leadership and succession planning programs for experienced and emerging leaders for clients such as NASA, Accenture, CNN, Saks Fifth Avenue, Hugo Boss, UBS Bank, Lenovo, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the CDC, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Learn more at www.giantleapconsulting.com and connect with Bill on LinkedIn.

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