You 2.0: Cultivating Courage

Hidden Brain

On the afternoon of May 12, 2008, a high school language teacher in China named Fan Meizhong was conducting a lesson when the building began to shake. He didn't hesitate. He opened the door and ran out of the building—the first one out. When his students emerged from under their desks, they asked him: "Where were you? We got so scared, we hid under the table waiting for direction." Fan Meizhong had no remorse. "When it comes to my own physical safety, I'm a coward," he said. "I needed to save myself first." The earthquake killed nearly 90,000 people. Fan Meizhong became known as "Running Fan," considered the most hated man in China.

Ranjay Gulati, a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School, has spent years studying what separates people who act courageously from those who freeze or flee. His own life gave him an early lesson in that gap. When he was 14, living in India, a developer sent a man to his mother's house to pressure her into selling valuable farmland. The man pulled back his blazer to reveal a gun tucked in his waistband. Ranjay stood at the door, frozen, running cost-benefit calculations in his head. His mother didn't hesitate. She walked across the table and slapped the man across the face. He fled. "Just because you're scared doesn't mean you do nothing," she told him afterward. That line stayed with him