Fears keeping you small

All leaders have fears.  However, not all your fears are created equal.

Some may manifest as low level anxieties.  Some are life paralyzing phobias.  Some may be triggered only by certain events – like fear of public speaking.  Others may be life-long fears.

Then there are the “big guns.”  These are the core unconscious leadership  fears from which all other fears come.  They override every aspect of your being.

In this article you will learn 7 unconscious leadership fears that keep you small.  First, it’s important to understand the nature of fear.

3 Truths About Fear Every Leader Needs to Know

1.     Fear is indestructible. 

Your brain is wired for fear. It is essential for your physical survival.  You want fear to send you signals when you are in danger, in an unsafe situation or about to make a high stakes mistake. Fear is your friend in those circumstances.

2.     Fear comes from a mental construct. 

Fear is a byproduct of your thoughts.  Your fear thoughts are mental constructs – meaning they have no basis in reality. As the saying goes, fear is “false evidence appearing real.”

The emotion of fear is real.  The content of your fear — your thoughts — is not real.  In your mind, though, you believe that your fear thoughts are reality.

To free yourself of such fear, you need to dislodge the mental constructs which drive fear.  Fear thoughts are of your own making and they can be unmade.

3.     Fearlessness does not exist.

Are you a leader that fantasizes about the day when you will be free of all fear?

Guess what?  It’s not going to happen.  Buying into the belief of fearlessness is a trap.  It’s an impossible goal to reach!  Even those who have achieved extraordinary feats have fear.

Your goal should not be to eliminate all fear.  Rather it should be, as one author wrote, to feel the fear and do it anyway.

Below are 7 core unconscious leadership fears you want to know about.  They are hijacking your leadership success and potential.

7 Unconscious Leadership Fears That Keep You Small

As a leader, you will be plagued by thousands of fears in your role.  You will have surface fears – such as fear of public speaking or holding employees accountable.

Then there are the deep unconscious leadership fears that enslave you until you break free.

1.     Fear of fear itself

Being a leader is demanding, high stakes work.  It stretches every ounce of your being.  It tests your strength of courage, perseverance and resilience.

The demands can be so great and the fear so paralyzing that the only way of getting relief is to put your head in the sand and pretend fear does not exist.  In those circumstances, your dominating fear is of fear itself.

In the short term, pretending you have no fear to move forward with your goals and actions can actually be a healthy choice.

In the long term, however, the fears you are avoiding will sabotage your every attempt to play a bigger leadership game.

2.     Fear of (owning your) power

All leaders are powerful yet few know how powerful they really are.  True personal power (or lack of it) determines whether you show up on the cause or effects side of your outcomes equation.

Being at the effects side means you believe that things happen to you.  That you have little or no control on your outcomes.

When you own your leadership power, you believe that …

You are at cause for all the results in your life.

If you fear power, it is because you are conflicted about it.  You have negative associations or beliefs about what power means.

The truth is that you can’t fully contribute your leadership gifts and talents if you fear owning your own leadership power.

3.     Fear of “being found out”

Within every person, there are 3 selves — a Pretend Self, a Feared Self and an Authentic Self.  Your Pretend Self  is that part of you that feels a need to hide behind an imaginary mask.

You don’t want others to know that you feel inadequate in your leadership role.  You don’t feel as though you’re smart enough, experienced enough, confident enough (fill in the blank) to be in your leadership role.

You take on other personas out of fear of being “found out.”  You put on a strong face – pretending to have it all together – when deep inside you feel like a fraud.

When you pretend to be someone you are not, you can never be your authentic powerful self.

4.     Fear of sharing your power

The world of leadership is filled with paradoxes.  One of those paradoxes is about power.

To be an exceptional leader, you must own your personal power (as addressed in #2).  Doing so allows you to take charge of your own individual outcomes and be an example to others.

However, once a leader owns their power, he/she tends to hoard it – such as making all the decisions, resolving all conflicts, leading all meetings, etc.  You hoard power because you fear loss of importance and lack of control if you share it.

Yet for a company to flourish, power must be distributed and shared throughout the organization.  This means developing employees as personal leaders within their own roles and teams.  Allowing them to make decisions within their own scope.  Giving them the tools and know-how to resolve their own conflicts.

5.     Fear of Truth

Reality is truth.  Yet our brains are not capable of knowing 100% reality.  The reason … your brain can only process less than 1%  all the sensory data at any moment of time.

Your sense of reality — or perceived reality – comes from your beliefs, your sense of identity, your model of the world and so forth.  You become so attached to your own sense of reality, that you avoid new information (truth) that conflicts with your current (limited) thinking.

By no means is fear of truth exclusive to leaders.  However, avoidance of  truth can have dire consequences to leaders and their organizations. Your actions and decisions are driven by cognitive biases and those biases can be costly.

For example, success often blinds leaders and prevents them from seeing the truth of a looming future ahead.

6.     Fear of losing the known

For your company to grow, leaders must move into foreign territories where they have no prior experience.  In those situations, you don’t have a mental flashlight to guide you.  That can be scary.

In reality, it’s NOT your fear of the unknown that stops you.  After all, how can you fear something you don’t even know about?!

What you really fear is …

Fear of losing (or letting go) of the known

As you grow to new leadership levels, the new possibilities can be endless.  Yet seldom does your mind see these new changes as amazing opportunities.  Instead, you …

·      Fear losing your sense of safety when making a leap

·      Fear letting go of current routines and habits that give you predictability

·      Fear letting go of who you are for who you can be

7.     Fear of your own brilliance

While it is a rare leader who hasn’t dreamed of standing on the shoulders of giants, boldly stepping out and realizing your own greatness is a scary proposition.

Yes, the majority of leaders fear their own brilliance.

How do I know?

I observe it in such behaviors as …

·      Getting caught up in distractions – such as, always looking at your cell phone

·      Mindless activities

·      Chasing the externals to make you feel good about yourself.

Being visible in the world … rising above mediocrity … standing in the light of your authentic self, that takes radical courage.

Fear does not have rule you.  The key is to know how to dislodge it.

Dislodge Your Unconscious Leadership Fears in 5 Minutes 

Step1:  Name your fear.

To break the hold of your fear, first name it.  Boil it down to a single word – like SeenAsFake.

Step 2:  Personify your fear.

For example, if you fear fear itself, perhaps you personify it as a big black monster.  If you fear power, perhaps you imagine it as Hitler or mean sergeant.

Step 3:  ID visual and auditory associations with your fear persona (identified in #2).

When you think of your fear persona …

·      What’s the characteristics of the picture?  Black and white or colored?  Large or small?  Near or far?

·      What does he/she/it sound like?  Deep or high voice?   Fast or slow pace?  Loud or soft?

Step 4:  Change the identified associations above to their opposites to transform your fear. 

For example,

·      If your fear picture is black/white, large and near, change it to color, small and far.

·      If your fear voice has a low pitch, loud volume and slow pace, change it to high pitch, low volume and fast pace.

That’s it!  With this simple 4 step process, your fear will transform from a roar to a whisper.

Want to know more secrets how to rise to the top of your leadership game? 

Sign up for our free report below — Wired to Win Big:  7 Inner Game Leadership Strategies to Rise to the Top and Stay There.  The only game you ever need to win is the game within your mind!

The post 7 Unconscious Leadership Fears That Keep You Small appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Let’s first summarize what you learned in Part 1.  Part 1 addressed:

• The top 3 reasons why your leaders are struggling with accountability and under-performing teams
• Why and how your “mindset” drives as much as 90% of your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, communications and, ultimately, results… in all areas of your leadership role, including accountability.
• How the first 3 mindset factors – namely, purpose/vision, values and beliefs – either strengthen or undermine your leadership capacity to drive results through healthy accountability.

To review Part 1 of t

his article series, click here.

Let’s now look at the remaining 3 mindset components of your inner leadership game for building strong accountability and a high performance organization.

Identity

Identity relates to your sense of who you are.  It includes your perceptions about yourself; your strengths and self-judgments; and your roles.  Your identity is mostly outside of your conscious awareness and is either your ally or foe in terms of how big of a game you play as a leader.

The language of identity is expressed through the words “I am …”  The words following “I am …” provide clues how you see yourself and what you most identify with mentally and emotionally.

Empowering Identities: “I am resilient, charismatic, valuable, a change agent, etc.”Let’s take a look at specific examples how your identity shows up in your language – either verbally or in your self-talk.

• Disempowering Identities: “I am a failure, unworthy, angry, inferior, etc.”

Having worked with hundreds of leaders, I have found that to what extent your identities either empower or disempower you in your role and your capacity to drive strong accountability, has to do with your relationship with power. 

To become a strong accountability leader, it is essential that you own your own personal power.  You must develop an “at cause” mindset for all the outcomes in your role.  You must develop a strong internal locus of control  – ie.,  see yourself as a person who can control (or influence) your own success and destiny (rather than your outcomes being determined by outside circumstances or people).

To assess your relationship with power, ask yourself:

• When you think of the word “power,” what negative associations do you have with that word?
• Do you equate power with force?  How might they be different?
• In your daily leadership role, do you find yourself on the “cause side” or “effects side” of your results equation?  Ie. do you feel like you can influence the outcomes in your life or that things and circumstances happen to you (aka Victim mentality)?

A leader’s relationship with power determines to what extent a leader has the capacity to drive results through people, teams and the organization as a whole. Without a healthy, empowering relationship with power, your leadership and organizational performance will suffer and your greatest asset — your people – will be severely under-utilized.

Motivation and Attitudinal Patterns

Every individual has their own unique internal motivation and attitudinal drivers. These drivers are the invisible forces that “pull” a person forward in a specific direction.

These drivers also mirror how you are “wired inside.”  That is, these patterns – uncovered through an online assessment – identify your thinking and decision making style, your primary motivators, your interest and focus filters, your relationship to time, change and even to norms and rules. These patterns predict as much as 70% of you, your team’s and your organization’s performance.

Below are 2 examples of motivation patterns that serve you as either assets or liabilities in driving strong accountability. Keep in mind that there are no “best” patterns. They each have their own strengths and pitfalls.

To keep it simple, the following tables cover only the pitfalls when an individual’s score is too high (not the pitfalls when a score is too low).

• Primary motivation drivers — Power vs Affiliation vs. Achievement

• Relationship to Norms/Rules – Assertive vs. Tolerant

When uncovering these patterns, the overall goal is to help a leader eliminate or minimize the liability patterns while creating more flexibility in thinking and behavior for optimum leadership results.

Any patterns that are too high or too low will undermine a leader’s ability to drive best results through people.

For more information about attitude and motivation patterns and their impact on leadership and organizational performance, go to:

www.empoweredbusiness.com/solutions/organizational-performance.

Emotions

Our emotions are powerful, often unconscious, triggers that drive our behaviors, communications and state. To what extent emotions in your workplace either fuel your organization or destroy the spirit and cohesiveness of your company depends on how you handle and master your emotions in your role.  First, a few basic principles about emotions important to increase your overall effectiveness as an accountable leader.

Every emotion – no matter how positive or negative — is a powerful teacher, catalyst and mirror about yourself that, when used for change and learning purposes, can ignite your leadership growth at lightening speed.

Denial or avoidance of your emotions does more harm to you as a leader than the actual emotions themselves.  The truth is denying and/or avoiding your emotions – like fear or anger – only amplifies the emotion, keeps you stuck in habitual reactiveness, shuts down your rational thinking and destroys your ability to influence and lead your employees.

The “golden ratio” in emotions can unleash leadership capabilities beyond what you can imagine.

New findings show that you perform at your peak when you experience the “golden ratio” in emotions – ie., a 3 to 1 ratio of positive vs negative emotions.  Not only is it unrealistic to try and be in a positive state all the time, it is detrimental to your leadership growth to not gain valuable lessons from negative emotions.

Let’s look at 2 negative emotions that often get triggered in the accountability process and what those emotions are trying to teach you.

Anger or frustration:

If either emotion gets triggered for you in the accountability process, ask yourself as a leader:

• Are you caught up in a blame mentality and not taking responsibility for your contribution to the breakdown?
• Are you a perfectionist and allow no room for employee mistakes or learning?
• Are you impatient or unrealistic in what an employee can achieve by a certain timeframe or given certain circumstances?

Anxiety or fear:

If you experience anxiety or fear in the accountability process, how might either emotion mirror the following about yourself?

• Do you suffer from negative self-perceptions or lack self-esteem?
• Do you lack key accountability skills, such as effective delegation, follow-up and coaching skills?
• When holding others accountable, do you fear conflict?  Does that fear drive you to take on the tasks yourself?
• Do you fear not being liked by your employees?

In part 1 and 2 of this article series, we covered the 6 mindset drivers – mission/vision, values, beliefs, identity, motivation drivers and emotions – that account for as much as 90% of your performance and results, including accountability

The ultimate goal in these 2 articles has been to increase your awareness how mindset factors are impacting your leadership effectiveness and your capacity to drive results through your organization.

Stay tuned for part 3 of this article series to learn my top 10 leadership and culture practices for a strong accountability organization. An article you don’t want to miss!

If you would like more details about your inner leadership game, I invite you to download a complimentary report: Wired to Win Big;  7 Inner Game Leadership Strategies for Rising to the Top and Staying There.

Denise Corcoran – CEO, The Empowered Business^TM – helps growth-seeking companies develop game-changing leadership teams and organizations that drive and sustain profitable growth by design.   Denise can be reached at denise@empoweredbusiness.com or www.empoweredbusiness.com.

The post The Accountable Leader: Developing the Right Mindset That Ignite Performance (Part 2) appeared first on The Empowered Business.