The Courage to Stay the Course
A conversation yesterday reminded me why I left a 25-year career to start again.
I was sitting in the Science Gallery under the shadow of the Shard, surrounded by about 40 HR professionals grappling with one of those topics that sounds deceptively simple: change.
The Ivy House Members Club had pulled together a brilliant panel (Lauren Tingay, Andrew Shorter, Tejal Shah, Natalie Benjamin), and within minutes, Andrew Shorter said something that cut through: "Change is unpredictable and messy."
No framework. No model. Just truth.
Because here's what I've noticed. Everyone you know at work is probably wrestling with at least one of these right now:
How to define the change they're facing
How to react to it without looking lost
How to manage it when it keeps shifting
How to communicate it when they're still figuring it out themselves
How to survive it without burning out
Sound familiar?
What made yesterday's event different was that nobody pretended to have it all sorted. Real conversations. Real struggles. The kind of honesty that only happens when you stop performing and start sharing.
A few things stayed with me from the panel and the conversations that followed:
Change is the new certainty (alongside death and taxes)
Never be too wedded to the end product – because it's never going to be exactly what you planned anyway
Keep what's good, lose what's holding you back – easier said than done, but essential
Not doing something is still making a decision – inaction has consequences too
Courage is a choice, and can be developed
That last one hit differently.
Natalie Benjamin is working on courage with senior teams right now, and she shared something that's stuck with me: courageous leaders don't just initiate change. They stay the course.
Because starting something new? That's the easy bit (well, easier). It's staying with it when it gets messy, when doubt creeps in, when everyone's looking to you for certainty you don't have yet – that's where courage really shows up.
It takes a lot to change something. The status quo is often easier, even when it's slowly killing you. But sometimes you don't get a choice.
December 2024, I knew I had to make a change.
I was trapped. Twenty-five years of career success, climbing the ladder, ticking boxes. From the outside, it looked brilliant. From the inside, I was done. Burned out. Disconnected from what mattered.
I needed a change that would reconnect me to my purpose.
So courage kicked in (or desperation, depending on how you look at it), and I made the ultimate "burning platform" move. I walked away from the salary, the relative security, all of it. Set up on my own.
And now? It's slowly building. Some days feel like progress. Other days feel like I'm still figuring out which way is up.
I need courage to stay the course.
This is something all leaders experience in some form or another – inside and outside of corporate organisations. Whether you're navigating a merger, a restructure, a culture shift, or questioning whether you're even in the right role anymore.
Sometimes the biggest act of leadership is having the courage to change something. Including yourself.
So here's what I'm sitting with: What's the change you need to make for yourself?
And just as importantly – who's in your camp? Who's helping you define it, react to it, manage it, communicate it, survive it?
Because courage isn't really about going it alone. It's about having the honesty to admit you need support, and the wisdom to find people who get it.
Ready to work on this together?
I work with senior leaders who are navigating complexity, leading through uncertainty, and figuring out what comes next. If you're carrying the weight whilst everyone looks to you for answers, let's talk about what support looks like for you.
