September 28, 2006
Courage, Law Firms, Life, and the World
Courage is defined as the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear. It would be far more appropriate to say “the act of facing difficulty, danger, pain, etc, in the face of fear.” And there isn’t enough of it around. But it is an essential quality of leadership.
When advising a young lady who had just been promoted to an important management position several years ago, I told her that she needed to pick three to five principles to which she should unwaveringly adhere. The second piece of advice was more important. I told her, the minute those principles were understood by others, some people would began an all-out effort to get her to compromise those principles. For some, it is merely their way of testing you. Are your principles really entrenched, or are they like the Pirate’s code, more guidelines than actual code? There will be others with lesser minds who nevertheless consider themselves intellectually superior. For those, the concept of absolutes, standards, and right and wrong are an anathema. Against such an onslaught, it takes courage to stick to what is right—your beliefs.
Davis Maister talks about Passion, People, and Principles. Passion, people, and principles are the ingredients that make a successful law firm. Numbers and metrics are simply the measuring stick. It takes people with a passion (a common sense of direction) guided by a common set of principles (core beliefs and culture) to make something great.
It takes courage to maintain those principles against the efforts of those who don’t want absolutes. For them, each situation, each event, and each decision can be dealt with intellectually without the constraints of principles or the absolutes of right and wrong. Such relativism can show an absence of courage—a way of subconsciously or consciously rationalizing our actions and inactions to avoid dangers that we fear. In business, those dangers can be the possible loss of clients or the fear of confronting others about their unacceptable behavior or performance. In both our personal and professional lives, peer pressure can lead to compromised principles. Going along with the crowd—doing what is politically correct, intellectually in, what the cool people do, what smart people think, etc.—is motivated by the fear of not being accepted. Without ample courage, we compromise our principles a little here and a little there. With enough compromise, the moral compass is lost altogether.
Even greater courage is required on the world stage. The dangers can be deadly, and thus, fears are far more real. Sometimes courage is all that stands between civilization and madness. It takes courage to say that some things are not acceptable. Consider the recent reaction to the Pope’s remarks about Islam or the similar reaction to cartoons offensive to Muslims. Those reactions are not acceptable, period. There is no gray area here. It doesn’t matter if you are Christian, Jew, or Muslim. It doesn’t matter if you are a young black man or an angry white man. It is not acceptable to riot, destroy property, and murder people because you are offended.It isn’t acceptable. It makes no difference what was said or what was drawn. Why don’t we hear more people saying that? Where is courage?
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Filed under Firm Culture by Tom Collins