6 Steps to Overcome Fear
On Thanksgiving, my husband and I went cross-country skiing. I’ve only been on skis a couple of times in my life and that was quite a few years ago. I was both excited to learn and a little fearful: What if I fall? What if I hurt myself? What if I’m not very good? What if I look like an idiot? Yet, the prospect of learning to gracefully glide across the beautiful Colorado snow was quite alluring.
The experience reminded me of the relationship between fear and excitement. It is helpful to think about fear on one side of a continuum and excitement on the other. The question then becomes how do you – or how do you help someone – move from fear towards excitement? Fear is one of the greatest barriers to action. In the Knowing-Doing Gap, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton advise that, as a leader, you must drive out fear so that people are free to act. As a leader, this is one of your most important tasks; if there is fear, performance suffers.
Why? Because fear keeps people from taking risks, it keeps them from learning, it keeps them from taking action. Have you ever thought, “I’ve told them what to do. Why aren’t they doing it?” Chances are there is an element of fear keeping them stuck.
There are many things a leader can do to drive out fear; just as there are many causes of fear within a team or organization. Here, however, are six ways to drive out fear:
- Connect to the values, purpose and passion of the person.
When someone is pursuing something that has meaning to them, you can help them use that as a motivator. Often our purpose is greater to us than our fear. - Connect to their ideal self or future vision.
Richard Boyatzis, Ph.D., (Primal Leadership, Resonant Leader and hundreds of research articles) has proven that the ideal self (the future vision of who we want to become) is a major driving force behind change. It helps us achieve change and sustain it. For teams, you can help them shape a shared future vision, which can serve the same purpose. - Use curiosity.
Help the person explore the continuum for themselves: what do they find fearful, what do they find exciting? Once you identify the excitement, find ways to help them tap into that excitement. - Find confidence in their courage.
Help them think about times in the past when they have faced a fear or a challenging situation. What did they do to succeed? What can they take from that to use in the present situation? - Build small wins to create momentum.
Especially if it is a large task, break it down into small steps to create a sense of accomplishment. It is important to help the person celebrate the process and the steps they are taking towards the goal. - Pride in taking action.
Finally, once it is all said and done, celebrate the actions the person took in order to reach their goal. Research shows that instead of only celebrating the end accomplishment, celebrating the process that gets the successful result helps reinforce the desired actions and process. It can also help the person build confidence for the future.
Finally, as a leader, you will encounter times when you will be surprised by someone else’s fear. It may not make any sense to you whatsoever. That doesn’t make it any less real for the person who is experiencing it. Simply telling them that they shouldn’t feel fear is a useless exercise and one that will merely frustrate you and the other person.
© 2011 Bobbi Kahler. All rights reserved. Developing Leaders, Creating Possibilities: Kahler Leadership Group
>> Are You Setting Goals or Setting Your Team Up to Fail?
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