If only people were better, we didn’t have so much change, I wasn’t always so busy, the company didn’t keep making bad decisions: if only these things were true, I could actually lead better.
Sound familiar? This is in leadership everywhere. And the truth is, the only way to lead better is to lead ourselves better. That involves facing the uncomfortable truth: unconscious fear drives these kinds of thoughts.
Fear creates a flight, fright or freeze response. It helps us - the gift of fear is vigilance. But so many corporate leaders are unconsciously governed by fear that it impacts performance, to the tune of about $36B USD across the US, UK and Australia ever year.
Not you, you say? So maybe just read on for a friend.
Let’s deal with flight first. In the UK and Australia, the most prevalent manifestation of fear is avoidance. Not dealing with poor behaviour, under performance or conflict in general. The really nice person in your team may be chronically unsuited to the role. But you fix things for them and carry on. There’s a team member who others seem to always have trouble with, and you write it off as “personality clashes”. You say yes to your boss or client, knowing that they’re sending you down the wrong path.
There’s another, more sinister one that creeps in particularly as leaders become more senior. It’s sitting in the meeting nodding along but silently disagreeing. You may even leave and say to a friend how ridiculous that all was and there’s no way you’re going to do what you just agreed to do. Welcome to executive-level avoidance. Mots of us have done this and it’s the molasses in the system that gets in the way of robust debate and ultimately a better outcome. And most leaders are doing it because they are simply scared of having proper, adult disagreement. The more senior we are, the more we have to lose.
What about our second sign, fight? This is far more common in the US. Punchy leaders abound, and there seem to be more leading sovereign states now than ever before in my lifetime. Their fear is disguised as confidence: they build followership because from afar they look strong. What’s actually going on, though, is a fear of not being enough: of being wrong, less powerful, unheard. Their way of being big is to make others small. I’m not saying we have to spend a lot of time with these leaders, but if we can see them as fearful, its easier to deal with them.
And now to freeze. Simply doing nothing is a sure sign a leader doesn’t know what to do. A colleague once told me about his leader nicknamed “the mirror”, because he was always looking into things. Nothing was delivered, nothing ever improved and good people eventually got the message and left. This leader is lost with the not knowing.
All of these fear responses cost peformance. And we all engage in them at times. The problem is, most leaders don’t realise they’re doing it. We feel overhwhelmed, frustrated, burnt out or just plain “done” (as one of my clients said). There’s a cure, but the first step is owning up to the problem. Then, clearing and integrating the fear to have appropriate, respectful conflict. There’s a specific way to do this and it’s about getting clear on your intention, then stating it. This drives the highest performance possible in you and your team. There’s an easier way to lead, and that same client said “to find my fire again.” Choose a more powerful path.