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Why Courage Alone Isn’t Enough

Why Courage Alone Isn’t Enough

When Bold Moves Fall Short Without Team Alignment

Jealeania Morris
August 20, 2025

The Leadership Trap: Why Courage Without Alignment and Trust Fails Teams

Most leaders know courage is critical. But courage without alignment and trust can backfire. Teams may nod along in meetings, follow the plan superficially, or hide burnout until it’s too late.

Courage isn’t just about speaking up; it’s about speaking up in a way that drives clarity, collaboration, and lasting results.

Inside the Room: What Leadership Really Looks Like

This year, I worked with an executive leadership team that was fully committed and “sold out” to leading in their teams, departments, and roles.

It became clear that a significant amount of great work was being done across the organization. Still, this effort created internal frustration among the leadership team due to a lack of alignment.

What did we do?
We worked through my Courage + Alignment Framework, which focuses on:

Listing all the activities and initiatives each leader was giving their time and attention to.
Having the whole team rate what they thought the top priorities were for the organization at that time.
Asking each leader to state their reasoning and what led them to that reasoning.

What we discovered was eye-opening: each leader on the executive team was essentially running their own “company” within the company.

Let me be clear, they were not running independent brands. They were building their individual companies under the umbrella of the main organization.

This approach created additional misunderstandings, unclear boundaries, and overlaps where one leader’s responsibilities ended and another’s began. Once these patterns were made visible, the team could start aligning priorities, clarifying responsibilities, and reducing friction, all without diminishing individual contributions.

Two Major Tensions for Misaligned Leadership Teams

Conflicting Priorities: When executive leaders are not aligned, teams waste up to 20–30% of their time working on overlapping or low-impact initiatives (McKinsey & Company, 2023). Misalignment leads to frustration, unclear ownership, and stalled decision-making.
Communication Breakdowns: Misaligned leadership creates gaps in messaging and expectations, which impacts up to 70% of employees’ understanding of company goals (Gallup, 2022). Teams are left guessing priorities, which reduces engagement and productivity.

"A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other."- Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last

Actionable Tip of the Week

Start every meeting with a “Courage + Alignment Check-In.”

The Alignment Check-In should include:

Give status updates and reassess priorities based on industry shifts and organizational needs.
Agree on how the team as a whole will move forward and clarify what that looks like for each leader’s department.
Adjust processes and procedures, if needed, to ensure the agreed-upon goals and priorities are accomplished.
Wrap up by checking for understanding to ensure everyone is on the same page.

This practice reduces misalignment, strengthens communication, and keeps the team moving as one cohesive unit.

The Most Courageous Part

The most courageous part of this process isn’t just having the team conversation; it’s the alignment check-in each leader must do with themselves.

Each leader must set their ego aside to align with the greater good, the overall mission, vision, goals, strategies, and leadership that best serve the organization. This self-reflection requires humility, honesty, and the willingness to put the success of the organization above personal preferences or silos.

When leaders do this, they create space for collaboration, clarity, and sustainable impact. True courage in leadership is not just about speaking up, it’s about showing up with integrity, self-awareness, and purpose every single day.

Ready to Close the Gap Between Intent and Impact?

Reading tips and checking off action items is a start, but real, lasting change happens when mindsets shift. Most leaders try to drive results on their own, but changing behaviors sustainably is challenging without an experienced, objective guide. That’s where a trusted, third-party consultant comes in, someone trained to navigate these conversations, challenge assumptions, and ensure measurable outcomes without damaging the team.

At Authentic Encounters, we partner with leaders who are serious about closing the Courage + Alignment Gap and creating teams that thrive. There are two ways to take your leadership and your organization to the next level:

For Leadership Teams: The Culture Shift Blueprint – Our proven framework helps your executive team have courageous, aligned conversations that create lasting cultural change.

Reply to this email or schedule a strategy call if you’re ready to start closing the Courage Gap in your team today. A licensing-ready program helping your team break silos, address the elephants in the room, and create lasting cultural change.

For Individual Leaders: The Courage Code for Leaders – A 5-week accelerator designed to build confidence, courage, and the influence needed to lead with impact. Click here to enroll.

If you’re ready to move from training to transformation, we’re prepared to help you get there. Reach out today and let’s start the work that truly changes your team and your organization.

💡 Pro Tip: Leaders who act with courage and clarity inspire teams, improve communication, and drive measurable impact.

A Final Note From Lena…

Real Talk Leadership: Courage + Alignment in Action - Video

In this video of Real Talk Leadership, we dive into why courage alone isn’t enough to create high-performing teams. Leadership is more than bold ideas and speaking up; it’s about aligning intentions, trust, and actions so that your team can move together toward real results.

Join me as we explore a practical framework for bridging the gap between individual effort and organizational alignment. You’ll see how executive teams can transform frustration into clarity, collaboration, and measurable impact, and learn actionable strategies to lead with both courage and alignment in your workplace.