Leap into Your Courage

This week I’d like to introduce you to CB Bowman, the Courage Consultant.

CB is the host of the Courage: To Leap & Lead podcast, providing techniques for executives and professionals to implement courage in business and in life. She is also the founder and CEO of the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches (ACEC). CB is dedicated to working with organizational leaders, decision-makers, and individuals to remove the word “failure” from their vocabulary. She encourages her audience to replace fear with creativity and helps people master the art of success and growth through courage. CB has been named one of the best leadership coaches by multiple sources, including LeadersHum, Thinkers50, and Global Gurus.

CB’s Dance Through Life

CB refers to herself as a “non-traveled military brat” growing up. Though her father was in the military, having a steady home was important to her mom, so CB did not get the usual travel experience of a child of a military officer. She eagerly made up for this when she came of age, traveling all over the world.

CB’s travels quickly taught her that courage is not the absence of fear, but making decisions in spite of fear, adversity, and sometimes even what allies are advising you to do. One of the best lessons she learned abroad was “the art of saying no.” Being courageous doesn’t entail saying yes to everything, but saying no in a way that leaves the other person whole—something many of her American colleagues find novel and counterintuitive.

Delete “Failure” From Your Lexicon

“There is really no such thing as failure,” CB says. “If you don’t succeed at something, you really are succeeding at learning. You can apply that learning to the next go-around.”

CB says her most important message is to stop considering failure an option—a message she lives as much as she teaches! In her journey to creating her successful podcast, CB pursued several different topics. The first couple didn’t take off, but she soon found one that did. When that topic didn’t bring her fulfillment, she reworked it again until she landed on the topic of courage. Now she’s thriving with a podcast, a LinkedIn newsletter, and speaking engagements. Failure is off the table for CB, and she’s inviting you to remove it too.

Simple Solutions Solve Complex Problems

In our connected world, “there is no escaping anything anymore,” CB says. It takes courage to speak, to try, and even to just exist amid the concurrent ongoing struggles in the world today. In addition to the Courage: To Leap & Lead podcast and newsletter, CB works through her business Courage Consulting to inspire others to go for gold by finding simple solutions to complex problems. Her no-blame, no-shame approach re-envisions how we think about courage in terms of profitability and teaches us to see failures as learning successes.

You can find CB’s podcast on every major streaming platform or at https://courage-consultant.com/podcast-live-stream and subscribe to her newsletter on LinkedIn.

To discover more about learning successes, the art of saying no, and other important lessons, watch and listen to our conversation below.

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