Courage by Design
Ten Commandments +1 for Moving Past Fear to Joy, Fulfillment, and Purpose
Dee M. Robinson’s authoritative book Courage by Design provides a framework for shaping a person’s working life.
The book outlines eleven “commandments” for choosing courage over fear in both professional and personal settings. Among these are assuming full control of your thoughts, leveraging your strong suits, connecting with solution-oriented allies, and making diversity, equity, and inclusion the forefront of your business decisions. Courage, Robinson affirms, is “recognizing something you want to do with your life as more important than fear.” The tenets work together like gears in a machine, resulting in an idea of how courage can be the driving force to success in business.
Robinson notes that her own success came from harnessing her courage to quit a job where she felt disrespected and to start a business in the airline concessions industry. Her personal anecdotes are used to support the book’s arguments and connect its cerebral concepts to real-life scenarios, as with explorations of personal values and the difference between “mission” and “calling.”
Robinson’s commanding voice instills confidence and inspires action as she outlines the reasoning behind each commandment, revealing its interconnected relationships with the others. Concise definitions of terms, powerful pull quotes, and apt stories of distinguished individuals make each chapter complete. The probing “questions” and pragmatic “actions” isolate pivotal takeaways at the end of each chapter, resulting in self-reflective directives for aligning with these rules and incorporating a personalized understanding of the guidelines into one’s personal and professional decisions. The book emphasizes the importance of autonomy and agency, suggesting methods of customizing its content to various types of work.
Showing how principles like integrity and courage are integral to business success, Courage by Design is a practical, enthusiastic step-by-step guide to taking bold action.
Reviewed by
Aimee Jodoin
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
