answers to this question can have a profound impact on you, your courage, and your life.9 What factors have kept you from making those changes?__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
10 When you look with brutal honesty at yourself, which behavior or habit do you dislike the most?You showed good courage by answering this!
11 What do you say to yourself to not change?Your brain runs on what you tell it.
12 What is your deepest, darkest fear?Your brain can malfunction based on what you tell it to fear.
These reflections are like a Character Mirror that provides a rare look into the inner self. Character comes from the Greek word charassein, to engrave or impress deeply. Character includes our inborn disposition, developed temperament, mentality, mindset, worldview, imprinting of childhood reactions, psychology, fears, present constitution, and way of being—the sum of who we are. More importantly, character is a measure of the actual quality of the self—how we measure up to an ideal standard when tested by difficulty. If you glanced at someone, it would be hard to see the inner person. But if a person ignored a bully beating a child, or respectfully intervened, either behavior would reveal much about their courage and character.
Section III: Courage (28 Questions)
In questions 26–53: Disagree or Agree using the following Likert scale.
Note: the “cowardly number,” 3, is not an option.
| 1 | 2 | * | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| strongly disagree | disagree | — | agree | strongly agree |
1 _____ I'm not fully attentive when others speak.
2 _____ I find it hard to respect people who disagree with me.
3 _____ It's very difficult for me to accept negative feedback from others.
4 _____ I tend to deny my own faults.
5 _____ I tend to worry about work and health without having a plan to change.
6 _____ I mostly avoid conflict.
7 _____ Under stress, I'll make excuses or rationalize what I'm doing.
8 _____ When things go wrong, I tend to automatically think others are responsible.
9 _____ I find it easier to shift responsibility than to look hard at myself.
10 _____ I can easily become defensive by blaming others.
11 _____ I'm quickly impatient with or easily frustrated by people.
12 _____ I hate it when people get angry at me, but I express anger at others.
13 _____ I don't always listen very carefully to my spouse/S.O./family members.
14 _____ I don't always respect all people—especially when arguing with someone I dislike.
15 _____ I normally don't respectfully challenge biased or bigoted comments or behaviors.
16 _____ I am not unselfish or self‐centered.
17 _____ I don't consistently improve how I treat others.
18 _____ I don't always govern my emotions when highly stressed or anxious.
19 _____ I don't always learn from my mistakes and I find myself repeating them.
20 _____ I don't see and then improve my deepest faults in every situation.
21 _____ I really don't treat all people as being at least as important as I think I am.
22 _____ I don't always use reason, wiser people, and conscience to see the highest right.
23 _____ I don't consistently value doing the right thing over getting results.
24 _____ I seldom coach others to do the right thing.
25 _____ Seeing a wrong, I don't consistently discern the right action and then do it.
26 _____ When I see someone act wrongly, I almost never ask that person about it.
27 _____ I tend to try “quick fixes” instead of focusing on a problem's moral root cause.
28 _____ I seldom attempt the Highest Right solution because of feared pushback.
These aren't easy but they're important. We'll spend time on them in Steps Three and Four.
Thank you very much for your candor.
Personal inventories can cause discomfort; completing Form 5 is an act of courage.
Take a well‐deserved break!
“The Bio surprised me,” said Gary. “And the last questions, 25 to 53, were tough. I always thought of myself as being calm under pressure. But in Questions 16 and 21, about worst and most disliked behaviors, I realized that I'm quick to judge and I'm impatient. I react badly to negative situations. I eviscerate others with a hard look or sarcastic word. Worst, I let my direct reports bully their people. I'm excited about what we're going to do with this.”
“Good, Gary. Those things stood out to me, too. We'll definitely use them. And Aiden?”
“Aiden,” he said, “underperforms. But when I'm about to fire him, I get a twinge of conscience. Like I'm doing something wrong, or I'm being controlled by my emotional reactions. I think about the impact on his family if I fire him. What's the right thing? I can see that I started my decision‐making cycle out of fear. I think more about fixing things in the moment instead of figuring out the right thing to do. And I don't have a rational way to discuss things with him in a competent way.”
“Good points,” I said. “Research shows we should heed those signals from our conscience,4 our instinctive moral sense of right and wrong. And to not confuse them with our instinctive signals of fear. The truth is that we simply can't reason effectively when we're fearful. We all face tough situations and need a way to reconcile our feelings with doing the right thing. Luckily, we have a tool.”
Completing the Bio has probably raised your awareness of how you relate to your world. It was designed to help you see where you are now as you begin to overcome your fears and become your best self. This is where I start with large groups or individuals.
Another tool I use in courage coaching and teaching that helps us assess
