Fear of Fear

Are you afraid to be afraid?

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the tri­umph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who con­quers that fear.” — Nel­son Mandela

I was recent­ly speak­ing with one of the amaz­ing CEOs we work with, talk­ing about the things that made the dif­fer­ence between the high­est per­form­ers and the team mem­bers that were sim­ply ​“good”.

We talked about tra­di­tion­al attrib­ut­es but one of the behav­iours that came up was the fear of fear.

It became clear that when you push your­self, make a big com­mit­ment, decide you want to change the world, piv­ot a busi­ness, or dra­mat­i­cal­ly improve an orga­ni­za­tion, there’s a cer­tain amount of risk involved.

And if you are real­ly focused on work­ing on the right things — impor­tant and impact­ful projects and goals, you are going to be afraid. That ter­ri­fies some people.

But, for the most suc­cess­ful lead­ers, it’s different.

While they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly enjoy being fright­ened, ulti­mate­ly, they aren’t over­ly wor­ried about stand­ing, naked and vul­ner­a­ble, at the point of no return. That’s where the human spir­it real­ly comes alive, and where the best work and cre­ativ­i­ty actu­al­ly happens.

The Chal­lenge

1. Think about you and your team: has the fear of being afraid impact­ed your deci­sion making?
2. If you were not afraid to be afraid, what would you do, or com­mit to, differently?