It’s Humpday!

WEDNESDAY - September 9, 2026

HUMPDAY

Weekly Insight & Inspiration for Purposeful Leaders

THIS WEEK’S FOCUS

The Many Faces of Courage

The kind of bravery leadership actually requires.

Courage rarely announces itself. It shows up quietly, in the moment fear is the loudest, as someone chooses to act despite that fear, for someone other than themselves.

This Friday marks 25 years since September 11, 2001. Twenty-five years since firefighters climbed stairwells that everyone else was running down. Since first responders, medics, nurses and strangers ran toward danger instead of away from it. Since ordinary people, in the worst hours of their lives, chose extraordinary courage.

Most of us remember exactly where we were and what we were doing as the events unfolded that day. I had just dropped our middle daughter off at daycare and turned on the TV for some background noise to a full day of housecleaning. The news showed a fire on top of a building after what was thought to be a private aircraft, had potentially struck it. I knew my husband was preparing for his workday in Chicago, so I picked up the phone to share the crazy situation I was seeing on the news.

My husband had just left the Air Force a few months prior. After ten years of service we made the decision to separate from the military and he was hired as a pilot with United Airlines. On this day, he was waiting for his flight later that morning. We chatted briefly about what I was seeing on TV and just about the time he found a TV to watch, the second plane hit the second tower. We both sat in complete silence. We just watched together in horror, miles apart, as the entire situation unfolded and went from bad to worse. After what felt like forever, he broke the silence and said, “That plane was not private. I have to go. I don’t know when I’ll be home.”

That day didn’t just change the world. For those of us who lived through it, it changed something in us. It has stayed with me for 25 years, not just as a memory of tragedy, but as a permanent image of what courage actually looks like. The more I have led, coached and mentored, the more I’ve come to believe that courage is not a single act but instead, courage has many faces.

The Courage to Face Your Fears

The firefighters who climbed those stairs had no idea what they were climbing into, and I am sure at times were afraid. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is walking directly into it anyway because the job in front of you matters more that the fear.

Most days leadership doesn’t ask this of us in such dramatic terms. It asks in smaller, quieter ways like the difficult performance conversation you’ve been avoiding, the new program you’re not sure you know how to build, the promotion you don’t feel ready for. Fear shows up in leadership constantly. The leaders who move organizations forward are not the ones who never felt fear, they are the ones who felt it and acted anyway.

The Courage to Speak Up and Advocate for Those Who Can’t

Nursing has always required this kind of courage. It’s the courage to call the physician back a second time when something feels wrong, even after being dismissed the first time. It’s the courage to challenge a plan of care that isn’t serving a patient. It’s the courage to say, in a room full of people with more authority than you, “I don’t think this is right.”

As a leader, this courage scales up. It means advocating for your staff when the staffing plan puts them and your patients at risk. It means being the voice for the person who doesn’t have a seat at the table where decisions are being made. It means calling out the bully in the department when no one else will. Someone somewhere can’t speak up for some reason, they are counting on you to step in, have courage, and speak up on their behalf.

Courage to Do the Hard Things

Some leadership work is hard because it’s technically difficult. Most of it is hard because it’s emotionally difficult. The layoff conversation, the program you have to shut down, the team member you have to hold accountable, the mistake you have to admit was yours. It would always be easier to delay, delegate, soften the truth or avoid all together.

Courageous leaders do the hard thing anyway, and they do it with kindness and compassion. Avoiding a hard conversation does not make it kinder. It compounds it and makes it worse.

Courage to Stay True to Your Beliefs Even When It’s Not Popular

This may be the quietest form of courage, and the one most easily worn down over time. It’s holding a standard of care when it would be easier to lower it. It’s saying no to a decision the rest of the room has already agreed to. It’s staying true to what you know is right for your patients and your people, even when it costs you popularity, comfort, or your seat at the table.

Leadership will constantly offer you the easier, more popular path. Courage is choosing the right one instead.

Courage to Put Others Before Self

Every act of courage on September 11th shares this thread. The first responders who ran into those towers, the passengers on Flight 93, the strangers who carried others down flights of stairs, none of it was about self-preservation. It was about someone else’s survival mattering more in that moment, than their own safety.

Leadership asks for a version of this every day, on a much smaller scale. It’s staying an extra hour so your team isn’t left short. It’s taking the blame for a failure that was actually shared. It’s making sure your people get the credit, the opportunity, the recognition, instead of keeping it for yourself. Servant leadership isn’t a leadership style. It’s a form of courage.

3 PRACTICES FOR LEADING WITH COURAGE

Name the fear before you act on it. Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It is acting in spite of it. The next time you are avoiding something out of fear, name the fear out loud. It loses some of its power when you do.
Pay attention to those who need a voice. Look for the person, patient, or situation that needs someone to speak up and doesn’t have the standing to do it themselves. Be that voice, even if it’s uncomfortable.
Do the hard thing first. Whatever difficult conversation, decision or task you’ve been putting off, do it now! Courage gets harder to access the longer you wait.

On September 13th, just before noon on the East coast, the first commercial airliner took to the air since the attack. It was a 757 loaded with passengers out of Chicago’s O’Hare airport. I have no doubt that the pilot, the crew and all the passengers were scared. The entire duration of the flight was silent. The flight attendants stayed seated. No one spoke. When the plane finally touched down at its destination the whole cabin erupted in tearful applause. It took courage to get on that first flight and after many of the passengers offered the pilot their gratitude for his courage, he came home.

A Final Thought

Twenty-five years later, we still remember 9/11 because of the courage it revealed in people who never thought of themselves as heroes, doing the hardest, most selfless things imaginable, for people they had never met.

We honor them best not by remembering that day once a year, but by instead by carrying a little more of that courage into every ordinary day we are given.

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This week, in memory of all those we lost and all those forever changed by September 11, 2001, choose one act of courage. Face a fear, speak up for someone who can’t, do the hard thing, hold your ground, put someone else first.

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I’d love to hear from you. Please reach out and share if you found this insight helpful, if you’d like to talk about it more, or if there’s a topic you’d like to see in a future Humpday. Stacie@LumisLeadership.com

~ Stacie

Previous Humpday’s can be found in the Newsletter Library at www.LumisLeadership.com

The “Humpday” was an e-mail originally created by a great leader and mentor - Marc Strode. He used the Humpday to bring insight and inspiration to his team every week. With his permission and at his request to Keep the Spirit - the Humpday lives on. Marc, thank you for being a leader worth following. Despite your love for camels, you truly are the GOAT!