Leading with Courage in VUCA Times
Leading with Courage in VUCA Times: 5 Essential Strategies and the Speakers Who Master Them
HOW TODAY’S MOST EFFECTIVE LEADERS NAVIGATE UNCERTAINTY WITH BRAVE ACTION—Insights from Harvard Business Review & National Speakers Bureau’s Expert Speaker Roster
First introduced in the military to prepare for complex situations, the concept of VUCA—volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—has become a defining reality of today’s world. In an era defined by VUCA, the difference between organizations that thrive and those that merely survive often comes down to one critical factor: courageous leadership.
Harvard Business Review’s latest research in “Now Is the Time for Courage” (September-October 2025 issue) identifies five specific strategies that brave leaders employ to maintain agency and drive bold action when others freeze or retreat.
The 5 Courage-Building Strategies:
Create Positive Narratives – Reframe challenges as opportunities for action
Cultivate Confidence – Build self-efficacy through competence and expertise
Take Small Steps – Build comprehension incrementally through strategic action
Make Connections – Foster psychological safety and collective courage
Stay Calm Under Pressure – Maintain composure using proven techniques
National Speakers Bureau has spent over 50 years identifying and vetting leaders who exemplify these courage-building approaches. Here’s how your organization can develop these capabilities—and the speakers who can guide your team through the transformation.
The Courage Imperative: Why Now?
The need for courage has never been more urgent. According to FactSet, 76% of S&P 500 companies are citing “uncertainty” in their earnings calls—up from just 37% in the three months prior. The leaders who will define the next decade aren’t those waiting for certainty—they’re those creating clarity through courageous action.
Ask us about Leadership speakers and courage in VUCA times!
Setting the VUCA Context
The Futurist Perspective: Jim Carroll
Jim Carroll, one of the world’s leading futurists, has long emphasized that VUCA isn’t just a temporary state—it’s the new permanent reality. With over 25 years helping organizations navigate accelerating change, Jim provides frameworks for thriving when volatility becomes the norm. His insights on “thinking big, starting small, and scaling fast” perfectly align with courage-building in uncertain times.
The Flux Mindset: April Rinne
April Rinne, author of “Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change,” brings essential perspective on navigating VUCA conditions. A World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and trusted advisor to organizations worldwide, April teaches leaders how to develop a “flux mindset”—the ability to see change as opportunity rather than threat.
The AI Disruptive Innovation Navigator: Jim Harris
Jim Harris, one of North America’s foremost thinkers on AI and disruptive innovation, has spent 30+ years helping Fortune 500 companies turn VUCA from threat to strategic advantage. Named Speaker of the Year in 2024 by the country’s largest CEO peer mentoring organization, Jim brings unparalleled insights on navigating the intersection of AI disruption and market volatility. His work with clients including American Express, IBM, and Walmart demonstrates how organizations can thrive when “markets shift overnight and technologies leapfrog decades.” What Jim delivers: Drawing from his experience as the #1 influencer at CES and bestselling author, Jim provides executives with frameworks for “Thriving in the Era of Disruptive Innovation.” His sessions show AI trend analysis to help build adaptive organizations that outpace disruption.
The Courage Expert: Setting the Foundation
The Speaker Who Wrote the Book on Courage: Margie Warrell
Known globally as “The Courage Catalyst,” Margie Warrell has spent over two decades studying, teaching, and embodying brave leadership. Author of multiple bestselling books including “Stop Playing Safe” and “You’ve Got This!”, Margie has advised leaders at organizations including NASA, Berkshire Hathaway, and the United Nations. Her Forbes column on courage and leadership reaches millions of readers globally.
What Margie brings to your event: Drawing from her doctoral research and work with thousands of leaders, Margie provides both the neuroscience behind fear and practical tools to transcend it.
As she writes in Forbes, “Courage As Currency: How Brave Cultures Outperform Safe Ones,” organizations that prioritize courage over comfort consistently achieve superior results. Her sessions combine vulnerability with strength, showing leaders how courage isn’t the absence of fear but action in its presence.
🎯Strategy 1: Create Positive Narratives
Insight: Brave leaders reclaim their agency by creating positive narratives that counter fear-based paralysis and retreat responses.
The Speaker Who Lives This: Ben Nemtin
Ben Nemtin transformed personal crisis into global inspiration through “The Buried Life” movement, proving that impossible is just a starting point. His journey from depression to helping millions pursue their dreams demonstrates the power of rewriting your story. From playing basketball with President Obama to having a beer with Prince Harry, Ben shows what happens when you replace limiting narratives with possibility.
What Ben Nemtin brings to your event: Through stories of achieving the impossible and practical goal-setting strategies, Ben teaches leaders how to break through organizational learned helplessness. His sessions help teams reframe “we can’t” into “here’s how we will.”
The Positive News Pioneer: Muhammad Lila
Emmy Award-winning journalist Muhammad Lila has reported from the world’s most dangerous conflict zones—Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine—yet chose to create something radically different: Goodable, a media platform dedicated to positive storytelling that has reached over 1 billion people. After years covering war and crisis for CNN, ABC, and NBC, Muhammad recognized that while negative news dominates headlines, positive narratives have the power to inspire action and build resilience.
What Muhammad Lila delivers: Drawing from both his frontline journalism experience and his work building Goodable, Muhammad shares powerful insights on finding and amplifying positive stories even in the darkest situations. His unique perspective—having witnessed humanity at its worst and chosen to highlight it at its best—provides compelling examples of how reframing narratives can transform organizational challenges into opportunities for growth.
💡Strategy 2: Cultivate Confidence Through Competence
Insight: Cultivating confidence is a key way brave leaders develop courage to fight rather than freeze or flee under VUCA conditions. Confidence comes from self-efficacy—the belief in one’s ability to succeed.
The Speaker Who Demonstrates This: Ramy Nassar
With nearly 25 years in technology leadership, Ramy Nassar embodies how deep expertise builds unshakeable confidence. As former Head of Innovation and Partnership for Mattel, he navigated the complexity of transforming a legacy toy company for the digital age. His track record—launching over 100 digital products and leading transformations across multiple industries—demonstrates how competence creates the confidence to act decisively in uncertainty.
What Ramy delivers: Through his experience building innovation capabilities at scale, Ramy teaches organizations how to develop systematic confidence through rapid experimentation and learning cycles. His sessions blend strategic insight with tactical execution, showing how organizations build the competence that enables courageous decision-making even when the path forward is unclear.
The Self-Efficacy Champion: Jon Montgomery
Olympic gold medalist and host of The Amazing Race Canada, Jon Montgomery brings unique insights on self-efficacy—the cornerstone of confidence under pressure. His journey from skeleton racer hurtling down icy tracks at 140 km/h to guiding teams through high-stakes challenges on national television demonstrates how self-efficacy transforms into unshakeable confidence. As Jon explains: “The overarching key message that I leave audiences with is building confidence, building something that I refer to as self-efficacy. It’s the unwavering belief that I will accomplish that which I seek.”
What Jon delivers: Drawing from Olympic competition and years of witnessing teams navigate extreme challenges, Jon ignites audiences through high-energy storytelling that makes the concept of self-efficacy tangible and memorable. His vivid accounts of facing fear at 140 km/h and watching ordinary people achieve extraordinary things on The Amazing Race Canada inspire teams to recognize and build their own unwavering belief.
👣Strategy 3: Take Small Steps to Build Comprehension
Insight: Brave leaders take small steps to boost their comprehension of the challenges they face, building understanding incrementally rather than waiting for complete clarity.
The Curiosity Strategist: Fenton Jagdeo Jr.
Fenton Jagdeo Jr. teaches leaders how to operationalize curiosity as a strategy for innovation and transformation. Through his proprietary Curiosity Compass framework, he shows executives how small, intentional questions and experiments can unlock new possibilities, helping organizations move forward even when the future feels uncertain. His approach emphasizes that courageous leadership isn’t always about big leaps, but rather, it’s about building momentum through deliberate steps that compound into lasting and measurable impact.
Fenton’s insight on courage: “In times of volatility, the most courageous leaders don’t wait for perfect clarity. They create it, step by step. Operationalizing Curiosity is what allows them to question current realities, and take small, deliberate actions—testing, learning, and adjusting along the way—to drive growth… especially when growth feels expensive. Each step builds confidence and momentum, turning uncertainty into opportunity, strategy into progress, and growth into a true return.”
The Speaker Who Champions Simplification: Lisa Bodell
Lisa Bodell, global futurist and simplification expert, confronts the epidemic that’s making courage impossible: organizational complexity. As CEO of FutureThink and bestselling author, Lisa reveals how we “hire people to be bold, then drown them in process” and “celebrate courage—only when it’s comfortable.” Her new keynote “Enough! Let Leaders Lead” diagnoses the real problem: “We celebrate courage – only when it’s comfortable. Now, Clarity Is the New Courage.”
What Lisa Bodell delivers: Through real-world stories of leaders who simplified, clarified, and took back control, Lisa shows how small steps toward simplification build the comprehension needed for brave action. Her sessions demonstrate how clarity, focus, and boundaries lead to higher performance and engagement while delivering practical shifts that drive productivity gains and execution speed. As she powerfully states: “The future belongs to unapologetic leaders who prioritize clarity over complexity, purpose over politics, and action over appearance.” Lisa gives leaders permission to stop performing and start actually leading—taking the small, decisive steps that cut through noise and create genuine understanding.
The One Degree Shift Expert: Eric Termuende
Eric Termuende, co-founder of NoW of Work and bestselling author, brings his “One Degree Shift” framework to organizational transformation. His work with global organizations demonstrates how tiny adjustments—just one degree—can lead to dramatically different destinations. Eric shows that courage often means making small, strategic pivots rather than massive overhauls.
Eric’s unique approach: The “One Degree Shift” philosophy teaches organizations that meaningful change doesn’t require complete transformation. By identifying and implementing small, strategic adjustments, teams build confidence and comprehension while maintaining forward momentum.
🤝Strategy 4: Make Connections That Multiply Courage
Insight: Making connections is one of the five key ways to develop courage, recognizing that isolation amplifies fear while connection enables brave action.
The Speaker Who Builds These Bridges: Dr. Brynn Winegard
Dr. Brynn Winegard, award-winning professor and brain expert, brings her MERIT framework to organizational courage-building. Her research on collective intelligence reveals how the “Interact” pillar of MERIT—emphasizing face-to-face interactions—is crucial for building the psychological safety that enables brave action. With expertise spanning neuroscience, marketing, and organizational psychology, Brynn demonstrates how creating psychologically safe environments through purposeful challenges builds courage at scale.
Brynn’s impact on audiences: Through her MERIT framework, Dr. Winegard teaches organizations to build courage through connection and calculated risk-taking. Her approach includes “microdosing failure” through low-risk daily challenges and building immunity to rejection—practical strategies that transform how teams approach uncertainty. By establishing psychological safety as the foundation, then layering in growth mindset practices and process-focused thinking, she helps organizations architect environments where courage becomes contagious.
🧘Strategy 5: Stay Calm Under Pressure
Insight: Staying calm is essential for brave leaders, who employ a variety of techniques to maintain composure when facing VUCA conditions.
The Speaker Who Masters This: JF Ménard
JF Ménard, mental performance expert to Cirque du Soleil and Olympic champions, has spent his career at the intersection of peak performance and extreme pressure. When Cirque du Soleil performers execute death-defying acts or Olympic athletes compete for gold, the difference between success and failure often comes down to mental composure. JF’s expertise in building this unshakeable calm has made him the go-to mental performance coach for those who cannot afford to fail.
JF’s actionable insights: Drawing from decades with elite performers, JF teaches practical techniques that translate from the Olympic arena to the boardroom. His sessions provide immediately applicable tools—breathing protocols that neuroscience proves reduce cortisol, focus techniques that maintain clarity amid chaos, and mental frameworks that transform pressure from enemy to ally.
The Resilience Expert: Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe
Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, one of Canada’s leading experts on resilience, brings a research-informed yet deeply practical approach to staying centered during turbulence. Her work on everyday resilience has transformed how organizations think about calm under pressure.
Courage in Action: Real-World Global Application
The Humanitarian Courage Perspective: Dr. Samantha Nutt
Dr. Samantha Nutt, founder of War Child, has spent 25 years working in post-conflict zones demonstrating what organizational courage looks like in practice. Her work supporting communities recovering from war—providing education, opportunity, and healing in devastated regions—requires daily acts of courage both personal and institutional. As War Child noted when she received her Walk of Fame recognition: “Her courage, compassion, and relentless advocacy have shaped War Child’s mission—and inspired a generation of humanitarians.”
The Military Leadership Perspective: Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire
Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire brings unparalleled insights on moral courage from his service in Rwanda and subsequent advocacy work. His perspective on leading through impossible situations provides a masterclass in maintaining humanity and courage when systems fail. He shares tactics and strategies for leading a corporate team through a crisis situation; to reduce staff losses, to inspire internal and public confidence, to promote innovate team thinking, and to move beyond crisis management to Courageous Crisis Leadership.
Ask us about Leadership speakers and courage in VUCA times
Building Your Organization’s Courage Quotient
As the HBR article emphasizes, these five strategies reinforce each other. Organizations that develop all five systematically create cultures where courage becomes institutional rather than individual.
Quick Implementation Roadmap:
Q1: Assess & Prioritize – Identify your most pressing VUCA challenges and select 1-2 courage strategies to focus on first
Q2: Build Capability – Bring in expert speakers to model courage strategies and launch pilot programs in high-impact areas
Q3: Apply & Refine – Test courage practices on real business challenges while measuring progress through specific KPIs
Q4: Embed & Scale – Integrate successful practices into leadership development and performance management systems
The key is starting with visible wins that generate momentum, then expanding systematically across the organization.
The Multiplier Effect of Courageous Leadership
Companies that prioritize psychological safety and courageous leadership report 30% higher levels of innovation and 40% greater employee engagement, according to Korn Ferry’s research. Organizations that invest in systematic courage development see measurable improvements in:
Navigation of industry disruption
Employee engagement during change initiatives
Decision-making velocity in uncertain conditions
Leadership pipeline development
As Margie Warrell argues in her Forbes article “Courage As Currency: How Brave Cultures Outperform Safe Ones,” organizations that cultivate courage as a core competency consistently outperform those that prioritize safety over growth.
Your Next Courageous Step
The gap between knowing what courage looks like and actually developing it is where most organizations struggle. That’s why bringing in speakers who don’t just teach courage but embody it makes the difference.
National Speakers Bureau’s team of industry experts can help you identify which courage-building strategies will have the greatest impact for your specific challenges and audience. Our 50+ years of experience and our mission to be a catalyst for change, means we understand not just what your organization needs to hear, but who can help.
Ready to build courage in your organization?
Contact National Speakers Bureau for personalized speaker recommendations that match your specific challenges and objectives. Our industry experts will respond within hours with options tailored to your event and audience.
ps See an At A Glance list of all the speakers mentioned in this article, below the form
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Refresher: Featured Leadership Courage-Building Speakers above:
VUCA Experts: Jim Carroll (Futurist) • April Rinne (Flux Mindset)
The AI Disruptive Innovation Navigator: Jim Harris
Foundation: Margie Warrell (The Courage Catalyst)
Positive Narratives: Ben Nemtin (The Buried Life) • Muhammad Lila (Goodable Founder)
Build Confidence: Ramy Nassar (Innovation Expert) • Jon Montgomery (Olympic Gold/Self-Efficacy)
Small Steps: Lisa Bodell (Simplification Expert) • Eric Termuende (One Degree Shift)
Make Connections: Dr. Brynn Winegard (MERIT Framework)
Stay Calm: JF Ménard (Mental Performance) • Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe (Resilience)
Real-World Courage: Dr. Samantha Nutt (War Child) • Lt-Gen Roméo Dallaire