Our guest for today is the founder of Cultivate Courage LLC, Dave Cornell. Dave’s powerful presentation, Cultivate Courage, focuses on fear, change, and courage and how they affect individuals and organizations. He shares today how these play a huge role in building company culture.

“A culture of courage is one that takes risks and where people are not afraid to fail, knowing that in failure, we grow.” – Dave Cornell

Work and Personal Life

Dave’s business is focused on three areas; Speaking, Coaching, and Training. Audiences were receptive to his presentation, which also served as a launching pad for

performance development and personal improvement. Parts of his training includes DISC behavioral profile, effective communication, and conflict resolution. 

In terms of personal life, he is happily married for 37 years with wife, Amy. He is a father of two, grandfather of four beautiful grandchildren. On his spare time, he enjoys golf, basketball, and anything with a comedic bent.

Culture of Fear or Culture of Courage

Dave shares that everything has a culture —business, church, school, a family. He further shares that the culture is either driven intentionally or it just happens. As culture is everywhere, oftentimes, a culture is built around fear, but we rarely notice that it is.

“In a culture of fear, people don’t have the difficult conversations that need to be had. People don’t hold people accountable. People don’t do a very good job hanging on to people. There is high turnover, people don’t feel comfortable.” – Dave Cornell

Dave characterizes a culture of fear as a place where people are afraid to have the difficult kind of conversations. On the other hand, there is also a culture of courage, where people recognize the fact that having difficult conversations allows them to grow and work through difficult challenges. 

“We grow when we have those difficult conversations. Cultures of courage are the ones who aren’t afraid to talk about the elephant in the room.” – Dave Cornell

Culture Starts From the Top

Dave candidly shares that he believes the culture of the organization starts at the top. The bosses are the ones who lay the groundwork for what kind of culture he or she wants for his or her company.

“As a leader, are you willing to accept responsibility for your mistakes and not blame others? It takes courage to admit when we are wrong. As a leader, are you willing to allow your people to fail? Or if when they fail, do you chastise them and tell them how much money this cost and if they do it wrong the next time, they’re out?” – Dave Cornell

Dave poses important questions to leaders on what kind of culture they are developing: a culture of courage or a culture of fear. He discusses more interesting points on this episode.

Download and listen to How Fear, Change and Courage Affect Your Organization to learn more. Remember to let Dave know you heard about him on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the links below:

Facebook: @cultivatecourage

Twitter: Cultivate Courage