A few years ago, I asked a French client if he knew what the root of the word courage was.
“Rage?” he replied.
At the time, I laughed. I thought he was wrong. I corrected him: “Cœur,” the French word for heart.
It turns out we were each half right.
Courage = Heart + Power
The “heart” part connects us to what we care about, letting love and connection orient us.
What’s the role of rage?
Rage and other forms of anger are signals that something we care about is in danger, that somebody is violating or threatening to violate the boundaries we hold around that care. That signal comes in LOUD and CLEAR with an activating energy to stop that from happening and change the trajectory, restoring the care at the core.
If we suppress, ignore, or deny our anger, we miss the power within it to restore our world to the way we want it to be.
A startup founder I’m coaching shared recently that he had paid a nonrefundable significant amount upfront to a vendor who hadn’t delivered the results they’d promised.
He was feeling conflicted: his default stance was “Let it go” but he was feeling furious about the injustice. When we explored this anger, he discovered it had a very specific protective function.
His anger wasn't just random frustration - it was a clear signal that something he cared deeply about was being threatened: his company's resources, his investors' trust, and his own long-term investment in building the business. The anger was trying to "prevent being taken advantage of" and "guard company resources.”
What was particularly revealing was seeing that the anger "steps in when he won't advocate for himself.” This was so clearly the anger’s activating energy trying to restore what he cared about at the core - in this case, proper stewardship of the company and respect for him and the business relationship.
But raging at the vendor—while perhaps momentarily cathartic—wouldn’t get his money back or move them closer to the results he wanted. Moreover, it conflicted with my client’s otherwise kind nature.
When anger is disconnected from heart, it loses the sense of the care at the core. Instead of advocating for something, it shows up just as reacting against what is.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pointed to the problem of seeing only half the equation: “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”
My client and I did an exercise where he practiced bringing both direct challenge and care for the relationship to the vendor conversation at the same time. The goal was finding the right calibration where the anger's protective wisdom could guide appropriate boundary-setting without being destructive and in service of those cares at the core (respect, resource stewardship).
To practice this, ask yourself after a conversation for each quality, “1 to 10, how much did I embody it?” If you have a difficult conversation coming up, I recommend practicing the opening line beforehand and asking yourself that question. Reliably in our workshops on feedback and in my coaching, I find light bulbs often go off in the third practice round. You can do this in just 1-2 minutes.
For my client, the final approach felt "aligned" - using the anger's energy to advocate clearly while still creating space for a win-win resolution. The anger wasn't the problem; it was the messenger telling him that his care for the company required him to act.
At the end of our practice rounds, he said, “I was having a lot of in-my-belly nervousness about this conversation because I was feeling the anger, and I was needing to push it down. And now I'm feeling like, ‘Oh, yeah, I can't wait to have this conversation! I know what I'm trying to advocate for. I'm excited to be direct and ideally get what I'm asking for.’”