Fear

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Fear is everywhere in organisations – it’s just good at hiding.  And from those hidden places, including within leaders themselves, fear corrodes change arguably more powerfully than any other force.

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Some forms of fear are obvious - fear of failure, fear of change, fear of losing my known world. 

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But what more subtle role does fear play?  

 

How about failure to prioritise or assign accountabilities?  Slow or opaque decision making?  Proliferation of the meaningless – from KPIs to cc lists on email?    

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Fear is behind these too - because it fundamentally drives protective strategies against the biggest psychological dangers we all face: rejection, humiliation, and failure. 

 

It also holds the hidden keys to transformation and competitive advantage.

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For leaders to become adept at recognising fear, and leveraging its true positive power, they need to recognise its roots in their own thinking.  They also need to understand how fear is a predictable (and often useful) function within organisation systems.

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Going after the fear (instead of ignoring or minimising it), dissecting it, and treating fear as data, is perhaps the single biggest unlock a senior team can make.  They can then develop clear strategies that address its root causes - whether it's boldness and greater risk tolerance that's needed, more information, or making things safe by modelling different behaviours from the top.  

 

So our work isn't about pushing leaders to be bolder, or trying to make teams and organisations proof against fear.  It's helping top teams learn how to lean into and leverage what organisational fear can teach them - to unlock its great advantage. 

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“Where the fear, there is your task!” (Carl Jung)

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