I was in tenth grade when my dad lost his company. Not long after that, we lost our home to foreclosure.
This wasn’t just a house to us. My parents had bought it for $14,000 in 1970 and spent years making it our family home. They added a pool, a pool house, and a tennis court. It was where I grew up and where so many of my childhood memories lived. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t ours anymore.
I remember seeing my dad sitting on the edge of his bed with his head down, crying. I had never seen my dad like that before. As a kid, you think your parents have everything figured out. That was one of the first times I realized maybe they didn’t.
When it was time to leave, we packed and moved everything ourselves. We were driving our belongings to a small two-bedroom townhouse about 45 minutes away when my favorite chair came loose from one of the trucks. It was a pale mint green, scalloped Laura Ashley chair, and I loved it.
I watched it fly off the truck and smash across the highway.
I was devastated.
Looking back, I know it wasn’t really about the chair. That chair was just one more thing that felt broken. My dad’s company was gone. We were losing our home. Everything that had felt safe and familiar was changing, and I had absolutely no idea what our life was going to look like next.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was also getting one of my first lessons in courage.
My parents kept going.
What Does Courage Really Look Like?
When we think about courage, we tend to think about big, heroic moments. We think courageous people aren’t afraid, or that somehow they have a level of confidence the rest of us don’t have.
I don’t believe that.
I believe courage is being afraid and deciding to move forward anyway.
After my dad lost his company, he went back to selling trucks. At some point, my mom agreed to deliver one of those trucks for him. That one delivery turned into another. Then she recruited my aunt. Then friends. Eventually, even us kids became part of it.
We jokingly called them the Mother Truckers.
It started with one truck, one opportunity, and one yes. There was no master plan. My parents didn’t suddenly have everything figured out. They were doing what so many of us have to do when life changes without our permission: figure out the next step and take it.
The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized that this is what courage looks like most of the time. It’s not dramatic. It’s having the conversation you don’t want to have. It’s asking for help when you’d rather figure it out yourself. It’s applying for something you aren’t sure you’ll get. It’s making a decision without knowing exactly how it’s going to turn out.
Courage is doing it scared.
There are three things that experience taught me about courage that I still carry with me today.
1. Fear wants the whole plan; courage takes the next step.
I love a plan. I want to know what we’re doing, where we’re going, and preferably how it’s all going to turn out.
Unfortunately, life and leadership don’t usually work that way.
Fear convinces us we need certainty before we move. We tell ourselves we’ll have the difficult conversation when we know exactly what to say. We’ll make the change when we’re sure it’s going to work. We’ll go after the opportunity when we feel completely ready.
How often are we ever completely ready?
My parents certainly weren’t. They couldn’t see how losing the company and our home was going to work out. My dad did what he knew to do and went back to work. My mom said yes to delivering a truck. Then they took the next step after that.
I have had to remind myself of that lesson many times throughout my own life and career.
Courage doesn’t require you to have the entire road mapped out. Sometimes you simply need to ask yourself, What is the next right thing I can do?
This is especially important for leaders because we aren’t always going to have all the answers. Businesses change. People leave. Plans fail. New challenges show up that weren’t on anybody’s agenda. Our teams don’t need us to predict the future. They need us to be willing to move forward when the future isn’t completely clear.
2. Fear makes us think we have to do it alone; courage lets other people in.
For a long time, I thought being strong meant handling things myself. If I was the leader, I should know the answer. If I was struggling, I should figure it out. If something was heavy, I should be strong enough to carry it.
I’ve learned that isn’t courage. Sometimes that’s just pride wearing a really good disguise.
When I think back to my family during that time, nobody rebuilt alone. My dad leaned on my mom. My mom brought my aunt and friends into what she was doing. Eventually, all of us were helping.
Even the memory of seeing my dad cry looks different to me now. As a teenager, seeing my dad broken down scared me. As an adult, I understand that there was strength in not pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t.
Leadership doesn’t mean you have to know everything, fix everything, or carry everything.
Some of the most courageous things a leader can say are, “I don’t know,” “I need help,” “I made a mistake,” or “What do you think?”
Asking for help doesn’t take away your credibility as a leader. In many cases, it builds it. It gives other people an opportunity to contribute, and it reminds your team that leadership isn’t about pretending to be invincible.
Sometimes courage isn’t about being strong enough to carry more. It’s being brave enough to let someone help you carry it.
3. Fear keeps us focused on what broke; courage asks what we can build next.
For years, I thought about that chair as part of the story of everything we lost.
Now I think about it differently.
I can still picture that pale green chair hitting the highway, but I also know what came after it. My family figured it out. My parents rebuilt. My mom found something she never would have gone looking for if life hadn’t forced her in a different direction.
None of that means losing our home was a good thing. Courage doesn’t require us to pretend something painful wasn’t painful. Positive leadership doesn’t mean putting a positive spin on every bad situation either.
It means we don’t stay stuck there.
Every leader eventually has a broken-chair moment. Maybe it’s losing a great employee, missing a goal, getting passed over for an opportunity, making a bad decision, losing a customer, or watching a plan you worked incredibly hard on fail.
You get to be disappointed. You get to be frustrated. You may even need a minute to sit in it.
But eventually, you have to decide what comes next.
Instead of continuing to ask, Why did this happen?, courage allows us to start asking, What can I do with what I have now?
That’s where we begin rebuilding.
What Will You Do Scared?
I wish I could tell you that after everything I’ve experienced, I don’t get scared anymore. I do.
I’ve just gotten better at recognizing that being afraid doesn’t automatically mean I shouldn’t do something.
Courage is a practice, and just like every leadership practice, we get better at it by using it. We practice it in the small moments so we’re more prepared when the big ones show up.
When I’m facing something that scares me, I’ve learned to come back to three questions:
- Clarify the Fear: What am I actually afraid of?
- Own the Next Step: What is the next right thing I can do?
- Use Your People: Who can help me carry this?
I call it Keep On Truckin’, and yes, it absolutely comes from the Mother Truckers.
Those three questions don’t magically make fear disappear. They’re not supposed to. They help us stop giving fear so much control over what happens next.
My parents didn’t know where that season of our lives was going to take us. They didn’t have the whole plan. They had a family to take care of, bills to pay, a completely different life than the one they had expected, and a decision to make about what they were going to do next.
So they kept going.
That lesson has stayed with me far longer than that Laura Ashley chair ever did.
Courage doesn’t mean you aren’t scared. It means fear doesn’t get the final say.
Sometimes you have to get in the truck, take the next step, ask someone to ride with you, and Keep On Truckin’.
Ready to build courage one daily practice at a time?
Courage is one of 12 everyday leadership practices in Lynne Ghelfi’s upcoming book, No Talent Required: 12 Daily Positive Leadership Practices That Build Culture and Performance. It’s built on Lynne’s own story, which runs from the Mother Truckers to the dealership floor, and on lessons from leaders who shaped her. Alongside the stories, each chapter gives you simple practices, reflection questions, and a Positive Leadership Assessment to help you and your team build trust, stronger cultures, and better results. None of it takes talent. It just takes choosing to show up every day. Click here to pre-order your copy of No Talent Required today.
About the author
Lynne Ghelfi is an eternal optimist who has spent the last 15 years in the automotive dealership world, where her passion for people and leadership became her purpose. As a Maxwell Leadership Certified Consultant, speaker, coach, and author of the upcoming book No Talent Required, Lynne helps leaders build stronger cultures and better performance through simple, intentional practices anyone can learn. She’s also a proud mom of three who believes some of the most powerful leadership lessons happen in the everyday moments.
