I was sorting through a stack of books lately when I came across one I read earlier this year, Be Not Afraid: Ben Peyton's Story. This book, by Peter Rennebohm, initially caught my attention because Ben’s father, John Peyton, is a college fraternity brother of mine. As I read it, sometimes through tear-filled eyes, I realized that I was privy to a life-altering experience, an inspirational story that I would remember forever.

Ben was 17 years old in 1996, a junior playing hockey for Edina High School when his neck was broken during a game. After two surgeries to remove bone fragments and fuse vertebrae, he was still paralyzed from the neck down. Doctors told Ben that he would never walk again, but he set a goal for himself: to return to school and graduate with his fellow students, and to walk across the stage to receive his diploma.

He struggled through life-threatening pneumonia and a collapsed lung. After months of rehabilitation at Sister Kenny Institute in Minneapolis, Ben was able to take a few steps while holding onto parallel bars. That fall, he returned to Edina High School for his senior year. In the spring, he walked across the stage at graduation.

All of my business life, I have been intrigued by great leaders. My shelves are filled with books about Winston Churchill, George Patton, Golda Meir, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King, Margaret Thatcher, Vince Lombardi, and Jack Welch, to name a few. They were very different people with very different leadership qualities. However, I believe they all share one common characteristic, something they also have in common with Ben Peyton: the moral courage that drives a person to stand up for what he or she believes.

For instance, it took courage for President John F. Kennedy to stand up to Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and courage for President Ronald Reagan to tell Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down that wall.” It took courage for Martin Luther King to march down the streets of a segregated Alabama to fight for equal rights. It took courage for firefighters and police officers to charge into the World Trade Center towers on September 11, and courage for passengers to try to gain control of hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 over Pennsylvania that same day.

These are obvious examples of extraordinary courage, but what about courage in business? Does it take courage to lead an organization? Contrary to what many believe today, good business is not incompatible with good morals and values. But it takes guts to adhere to those values. If business leaders establish high standards for fairness and decency, they create a work environment of trust that inspires everyone in the organization to take intelligent risks to advance the enterprise.

It does take courage to lead a business. Few can sit in front of a board of directors and say no when they believe it's necessary, and few can make decisions that no one else is willing to make.

Courage to Overcome Failure

Consider the courage it takes to overcome failure. Great business leaders simply get over it and move on. The problems they've faced in the past are not roadblocks to the future, they are simply lessons learned.

Look at the example of Thomas J. Watson, Sr., who had devoted himself to the National Cash Register Company ever since he was hired as a salesman at age 21. He worked his way up through the management ranks, only to find himself fired at age 40 (newly married with an infant son, by the way). He had been convicted, along with other NCR executives, of criminal violations of the Sherman Act, and was facing one year in jail and a $5,000 fine.

Had he not had the courage to overcome this failure, the world would be much different now. Watson’s conviction was overturned on appeal. He found a job with an unknown company that made tabulating and sorting machines. He soon ran the company, renamed it International Business Machines, and made IBM the predominant firm in what became the computer industry.

Watson didn’t blame others for his problems or whine about how life was unfair. Rather, he believed that he was just going through a temporary setback.

Courage to Follow Your Vision

Think about the courage it takes to risk everything chasing a dream. In the business world, many people have visions of new products or markets, but the few who become true leaders have the courage to act on that vision.

For example, imagine a poor, high school dropout living in Rochester, New York, in 1868. After his father died, this 14-year-old was forced to work to support his family. His first job, as a messenger, paid $3 a week. Five years later, after studying accounting in the evenings, he got a job as a junior clerk at a bank, where he earned about $15 a week.

Soon he could afford to buy a camera for a vacation he had planned. In those days, cameras were heavy and large and required the use of a tripod, tent, glass tanks, and chemicals, plus instructions for learning how to take pictures with such a contraption.

Well, George Eastman never made his vacation trip, but he caught the photography bug. He worked at the bank in the day and spent his nights experimenting in his mother’s kitchen to simplify the complicated process of taking and developing photographs. He invented film photography, and the rest is the history of the Kodak Company.

What’s so appealing to me in this story isn’t Eastman’s technical inventiveness, it’s his courageousness in acting on his vision. He coined the phrase, “You press the button, we do the rest.” He worked to reduce costs and introduced a $1 camera, the Brownie, in 1900. But it was a time when few people had even that much to spend on something they knew little about. How did he know there would be a mass market for amateur photography?

That's what leaders do. They are willing to go against the grain and to believe in the future; they will go where others fear to tread.

Scary Territory

Competing in today’s business environment takes guts. Nothing is a given and change is the only constant. Job security is a thing of the past (the average tenure of a CEO has shrunk to under four years), and the corner office is a place where you usually feel cornered. Leaders can’t avoid stress and fear. They experience the pain of knowing they’re not in control, of letting go of long and dearly held beliefs, and of having to make a decision without as much information as they would like to have.

These scary emotions come with the territory, and they can be a great motivator. You can’t be courageous without fear. General George Patton never hesitated to tell his troops that he was afraid, saying, "If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows not fear, I have never seen a brave man."

Do you think that Ben Peyton had fear? You bet he did. But in spite of his fears, he forced himself to work toward achieving his goal.