Most employees spend their days biting their tongues. They watch bad decisions roll forward. They bury good ideas. They laugh at jokes that are not funny and stay quiet when questions need asking. Why? Because fear has a tighter grip on the modern workplace than most leaders dare to admit.
But Dr. David Van Fleet, a seasoned management scholar with over fifty years of studying how organizations really work, says there is another way. His latest book, COURAGE IN ORGANIZATIONS, just released, is not another soft, self-help fluff piece. It is a blunt, honest, and surprisingly hopeful roadmap for anyone tired of trading their voice for a paycheck.
Van Fleet draws a line in the sand that most authors avoid. He says courage is not the same as fearlessness. Fearlessness means nothing scares you. Courage means your knees shake, your stomach turns, and you still speak up because the goal matters more than the discomfort. This small but powerful idea flips workplace culture on its head. According to the book, organizations that embrace true courage see thirty percent more innovation and forty percent higher employee engagement. Yet here is the catch: truly courageous workplaces are almost extinct. Research cited in the book shows that only about one in three teams operates with both courage and a strong human connection. The rest fall into traps of conflict avoidance, burnout, or outright fear.
So what separates the brave from the broken? Van Fleet delivers a simple but unforgettable framework called V-REEL, originally developed by strategist David Flint. V stands for value. R stands for rareness. The first E covers eroding factors like toxic leadership and fear of retaliation. The second E focuses on enabling factors such as psychological safety and transparent communication. L stands for longevity—how long courage lasts when it is properly protected.
The book does not just preach theory. It tells real stories. Readers will meet Sven Eriksson, a young soldier in Vietnam who refused an order to harm an innocent girl and faced down his own commander. They will travel to Pakistan to meet Saima, a divorced mother who turned personal hardship into a thriving fashion brand with sixteen female employees. They will learn how Progressive Insurance celebrates respectful disagreement instead of shutting it down. These stories are messy, human, and unforgettable.
Van Fleet writes with the wisdom of a grandfather and the honesty of a frontline supervisor. He does not use fancy jargon or hide behind research summaries. He speaks directly to the person who has ever felt small in a meeting, punished for a mistake, or alone in doing the right thing.
About the Author
Dr. David Van Fleet does not write books from an ivory tower. He writes them from the trenches. With over fifty years of hands-on experience in both the practice and teaching of management, he has seen the best and the worst of how people treat each other at work. He taught at the University of Tennessee, the University of Akron, Texas A&M University, and Arizona State University, where he is now Professor Emeritus. But do not let the title fool you. Van Fleet is not a distant academic. He is a storyteller, a mentor, and someone who genuinely believes that workplaces can be better.
Over his long career, he has published more than one hundred journal articles and book chapters. He has written extensively on bullying, workplace violence, dysfunctional organizations, and psychological safety. His previous works include Bullying and Harassment at Work, The Violence Volcano, and Dysfunctional Organizations. Yet Courage in Organizations may be his most personal book yet. It is the yang to the yin of his companion volume, Fear in Organizations. Together, they form a complete picture of what lifts people up and what tears them down.
Van Fleet writes with a rare blend of warmth and directness. He does not lecture. He invites. He does not shame. He equips. When you read his work, you feel like you are sitting across from someone who has seen it all and still believes in the goodness of people. That is the kind of voice that changes not just how you work, but who you become at work.