If you’ve ever sat on a critical decision longer than you should have, delayed a strategic move for your organization because the risk felt too high, or failed to intervene when someone on your team was being sidelined or mistreated, you know how moments of leadership hesitation can haunt you. You might replay them, kicking yourself. Or you may start telling yourself a damaging story: You don’t have what it takes for bold leadership.
The truth is, fears and inaction strike in all our lives, especially in times of extraordinary change. But they don’t have to define how we respond. Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati spent 12 years researching and writing his latest book, How to Be Bold: The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage, and says a simple equation explains why our courage is so frequently stymied. “I like to think of it as the ‘fear equation’: uncertainty + loss of control = fear,” he writes. “That fear in turn can prevent us from acting, even if we’re normally quite brave.”
Gulati set out to understand what personal beliefs and behaviors spur people to find courage in the face of fear. “Modern-day Hollywood movies and fiction writing project an image of these people who are congenitally courageous,” he notes. He interviewed dozens of subjects to understand the science of bold action. What he found were scores of examples of people—from Mahatma Gandhi to Simone Biles to ordinary people—who struggled to be bold at times but equipped themselves with skills and strategies to find courage in the face of fear. “I came to realize that courage is a muscle you can build,” he says.
Courage for Uncertain Times
“We are at unprecedentedly high levels of uncertainty,” says Gulati, who has studied the behavioral side of business for nearly four decades. “CEOs use the word ‘uncertainty’ three times more than they ever did before in their earnings calls.” Markets are volatile, geopolitical forces are shifting, technology and artificial intelligence are speeding ahead, with or without us—and we are simply living in a world defined by unpredictability. “So if you add all that up, what do you get? You get behavior in organizations today that is paralyzed by fear,” he says. Yet Gulati reminds us, “Courage is not the absence of fear but the ability to act with wisdom and compassion despite uncertainty.”
He has assembled a “playbook” of nine key techniques anyone can use to find courage. One key method that leaders can use in the face of the common “freeze” response, he says, is a strategy sociologists call “sensemaking”—or moving ahead amid confusion to gather information to ultimately help create a plan.
Gulati points to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant crisis in Japan as an example. In the aftermath of a tsunami, the plant’s sister plant, Fukushima Daini, and its workers faced a looming nuclear disaster. With only hours left to avert disaster, some 400 employees restored the plant’s cooling systems, preventing a catastrophe. Site superintendent Naohiro Masuda led the effort, initially sending staff volunteers on missions to conduct detailed inspections of the damage. It was a wise first step that moved the team from paralysis and gave them critical information needed to complete the repairs.
Clarity drives courage–but so does identity. Gulati has explored the social psychology concept of “identity fusion,” pointing to the tale of Brandon Tsay, a 26-year-old who confronted a shooter who entered his family’s California dance studio in 2023. In a moment that was caught on video and that Tsay later described as “out of character” for him, he wrestled the weapon out of the shooter’s hands. When Gulati interviewed Tsay, he pinpointed his motivation, saying, “I’m thinking to myself: If I let go of this weapon, if I fail to do what I set out to do, how would the people in my life, the people around me, the people I love, how would they be affected?" Moments like this may be rare in their intensity, but the underlying driver is familiar: People act boldly when they see others’ well-being and outcomes as tied to their own.
All nine of Gulati’s strategies offer new ways to think about the social and psychological forces that support courage. So when uncertainty hits—AI disruption, market swings or nonstop organizational change—rest assured that courageous leadership doesn’t come from fearlessness. It comes from the kind of boldness that can be built.
The 9 C’s of Building Courage
In How to Be Bold, Ranjay Gulati uses “the 9 C’s” as a science-backed guide for building everyday courage.
Coping
To manage fears that arise, you can minimize powerlessness by leaning on faith and identifying and shrinking the biggest dangers at play.
Confidence
Focus on building and practicing skills that affirm your competency in complex, real-life settings, an approach that is shown to improve self-efficacy.
Commitment
Confront fear and paralysis by seeing yourself as on an “epic quest” and crafting a personal narrative that includes a vision of a desired future and the steps you will take to get there.
Connection
Assemble “support squads” for yourself by cultivating relationships with people who can bolster you emotionally and encourage you to see yourself as courageous.
Comprehension
“Sensemaking”—going forth amid uncertainty while you gather and interpret data—prevents the cognitive freeze that comes from fear overload.
Calm
To find your balance again in moments of fear, return to rituals that provide predictable comfort and pay “selective attention” to only the factors that reinforce your own agency.
For Leaders
Clan
Rely on “identity fusion,” in which loyalty to a community and shared purpose measurably increase your team’s willingness to take risks for collective goals.
Charisma
Observe how other charismatic leaders act and practice your own presence by clearly communicating a mission, modeling devotion and signaling calm strength.
Culture
Normalizing bold action, distributing ownership and embedding shared values can help create an organizational culture that drives courageous behavior at scale.
Image courtesy of ©Evengia Eliseeva
This article was first published in the July/August 2026 issue of SUCCESS Magazine. Get your copy here.
