Out of Fear, Into Action

Dear Managers and Leaders!

I know. It has been a very long time since our last conversation. As you know, I was taking a course last Fall and then I got terribly sick with the H1N1 flu. All this to apologize for missing several of our online meetings! I hope you will forgive me.

Today feels terribly awkward. I have not written on this blog for a long time and I feel I will not be able to start again. I’ve been telling myself for several days now that I have to start blogging again and I always find a good reason not to. I’m frozen in fear! I fear I will not be able to give you the same quality as before. I fear I will not be able to come up with good ideas that will entertain you and allow you to improve your leadership skills. “Who am I to try to teach people how to lead?”

I’m sure you’ve all felt that way at one time in your life. Starting something new, or going back to what you were doing can be frightening. The fear of failure is a strong fear. But it should not stop you from trying. If you allow fear of failure to stop you from doing anything, then it is at this exact moment that you fail! Hubbard was saying: “There is no failure except in no longer trying." I completely agree with this statement. To succeed, you have to keep trying again and again until you find a way to succeed!

So how do you get out of your fear-induced frozen state? Well, you have to get up and start doing something. That something might not be great, but it will move you into action and out of your frozen state. The fear of failure is in your head. You thus have to get out of your head and get into action to get out of your fear.

So, this is exactly what I’ve done here! Write this first post after a long time as a cure to my fear of failure! I hope you’ve enjoyed this cure as much as I did!

NOW WE CAN START 2010!!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.

Leadership Symptoms Analyzed (4)

Editor’s note:

This post is inspired by a discussion that happened on the Leader’s Cafe Foundation Forum in LinkedIn. The forum can be found here: Link To LinkedIn Forum. And the specific discussion can be found here: Specific Discussion.

Dear Managers and Leaders!

In my four previous posts, I listed 6 symptoms that leaders should take really seriously and analyzed the first three symptoms: "A team member does not produce what the leader was expecting", "Team members are not coming up with new ideas" and ""Team members are unwilling to push their boundaries". Today, we will continue our analysis and tackle the forth symptom: Team is operating from fear.

For your team to function at its full capacity, it needs to feel safe to take risks and work at its limits. It needs to operate through synergy and collaboration to go beyond what each individual can achieve. A team operating from fear will not have the right environment and confidence to push its limits, transcend its capacity, and deliver on their promises.

Detecting that a team is operating from fear is probably tougher than detecting the symptoms that we discussed in earlier posts because it involves feelings. We will try below to help you detect this situation with more accuracy and then we will discuss how to turn the situation around.

What type of fear?

I am not a psychologist so I cannot give you an authoritative list of fears that people can have in the workplace. However, here is a list of what I consider when I think about fear in the workplace:

• Fear of losing a job (the number one fear, especially in the current economic climate)
• Fear of losing a position
• Fear of being embarrassed in public
• Fear of being hurt emotionally
• Fear of impacting one’s family (if working too much or losing a salary for instance)

How to Detect Fear?

Here are a number of things to check when you are wondering whether your team is operating from fear.

• Lack of Sharing – When people on your team keep information to themselves or refuse to help each other, then there might be fear involved. It is possible that the people keeping information for themselves want to avoid being surpassed in skills by others which would mean a fear of losing one’s job, or at least losing the capacity to advance in one’s career. Information is power and sharing information could mean losing some power over the others in the minds of those protecting information.

• Yes Sir! mentality – When your team never questions your decisions, when you are alone at the top making all the calls and never encountering any criticisms, voiced opinions, or positive feedback, then it is possible that your people fear the consequences of speaking up.

• Finger pointing – When a problem occurs and people immediately try to find the culprit rather than focusing on solving the problems, then you most likely have a fear issue to deal with. It is necessary to find the root cause of a problem, but not in terms of finding the culprit. If your team is in that mode, then you should definitely look into this as a serious symptom that will generate more and more problems down the line.

• Protect-your-back mentality – This often goes hand-in-hand with the finger pointing. If your organization is caught up in a finger pointing match every time a problem occurs, obviously, people will do everything they can to protect their back so that fingers will point in other directions should problems occur. When team members have a protect-your-back mentality, they will not want to push their limits and operate at full capacity. They will also lose a lot of time just protecting their back instead of doing productive work!

• Risk avoidance – If people on your team avoid risks, it likely means that they do not feel safe in their environment as we already discussed in yesterday’s post.

• Mania to have everything in writing – When people ask that everything be captured in writing, it means that there is lack of trust and fear that things can turn bad. This is why people who do not know each other well will sign contracts to close their deals while family and friends might just talk about doing things together. The level of trust is higher. If people on your team constantly ask that things be written down, you should consider that a serious symptom that is likely related to fear or lack of trust.

What Should You Do?

So what should you do if you detect that your people are operating from fear? First, I’d say that you need to discover the root cause of their fear and eradicate it. If the fear is not grounded in reality, then you need to tell your team clearly that there are no reasons to be afraid. For instance, if people are afraid of losing their job because of the economic climate and you do not see any potential layoffs in the making, then you must reassure your team. On the other hand, if their fear is real, then you need to work differently and minimize the impact of their fear.

Second, as a general rule, you must create a safe working environment for your team. Your team needs to be a place where people don’t feel threatened to lose their job at the slightest mistake. It needs to be a place where people are not judged or found culprit but rather a place where they can learn and experience more and more things, where they can be recognized for the risks they are taking and praised for their ideas. Your team must be a cauldron where the magic potion of trust and coaching will drive your people to develop and produce more than the sum of what each team member would have done alone.

What about you dear leader, have you ever felt that your team was driven by fear? Have you ever found yourself protecting your back or finger pointing every time a problem occurs? Please help me complete the picture by adding your comments!

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.