Asserting Your Value with Courage
Oct 20, 2025
Uncovering our hidden strengths so we can get to a point where we begin to comprehend our true worth can be a grueling process. Without overcoming the self-imposed limits we’ve placed on our own value, often for years or even decades, there’s little chance of genuine modesty being involved in situations where we feel forced to make a case for what we bring to the table. At that point, what we share tends to be more from a place of self-preservation. But the more we’re able to embrace our distinct voice and validate our worth by measuring the positive impact we’ve made, the more open we can be in asserting our value with courage.
The first time I remember doing this, albeit with a very limited amount of confidence or courage, was around August of 2003 when I made an initial case with my corporate safety director to give me an opportunity to support our global behavior-based safety leader by working directly with the company’s sites throughout North American. Having done this for a few locations on a case by case basis for a year or so leading up to that, I had grown (at least a little) more confident in my ability to deliver training that team members in other locations could apply and I had seen a few of them make measurable progress; progress they hadn’t made previously even with direct support from other corporate-level trainers who had since moved on. Without having the courage to make that (likely weak) assertion of the value I thought I could add, I wouldn’t have gotten that opportunity or so many others that followed.
Nearly a decade later, and with a bit more confidence, I made a case to be considered for an open human resource generalist position in our local facility. While I didn’t have anything resembling the bachelors degree the job description required, I had supported the HR department for most of the time I was in the behavior-based safety role so I had no doubt I could catch on. Accepting the position came with the expectation of completing a degree but I’ve never been one to let a little detail like that keep me from taking on something new.
A couple years after starting our business, Cindy and I knew we needed to insert ourselves as the primary keynote speakers at the event we were hosting annually. Our initial goal in facilitating that event was to build relationships throughout our local business community. Going into the fourth year, we knew the only viable next step was to move from serving just as hosts to establishing visibility of the value we could offer. Had we not worked so hard at embracing our distinct voices - for years leading up to that - I can assure you that our self-imposed limits would have stopped us, and we would have written it off as humility.
I could go on and on… Who would want to read a book written by someone who barely graduated high school? Why would anyone in their right mind hire, or even allow for that matter, a carpenter/press operator to speak in front of hundreds of executives and business owners? Because I was able to gain validation along the way by measuring the impact I was having on the people I served, I gradually developed more courage in asserting the value I could offer. When I solicited Terry Ward’s feedback on how I could perform better when interviewing in early 2000, he told me that I’d need to learn how to confidently detail my strengths. As hard as that’s often been, his guidance serves me to this day.
While our paths are different, asserting your value with courage will still be crucial as you uncover your hidden strengths and come to terms with your true self-worth. In fact, most leaders will struggle to trust someone who doesn’t understand their self-worth, so we’ll dig into that next.