As a leader, you must never allow yourself to be led by fear. Let me explain.
Notes:
For much of July I have been travelling, hence I have missed a few episodes this month, sorry!
I am done with travel now, so the normal weekly schedule will resume.
I find that when I travel, I get inspired to write and therefore I have many interesting leadership topics lined up for you in the weeks ahead.
But this week, I want to talk to you about fear, and why as a leader you cannot allow yourself to be led by fear.
By “led by”, I mean allowing others to transfer fear to you, real or otherwise, with the intent to led you towards deciding something in their favour.
A classic example of this is someone saying “if you don’t do this, then that will happen”. Some fake urgency is also usually introduced.
It’s a why to push you towards making a decision in their favour, by motivating you with fear.
But as we all know from Frank Herbet’s “Dune”, “Fear is the mind killer”.
Inevitably if you rush to deciding based on fear rather than reason, it will be a bad decision.
Attempts to lead you by fear is weasel behaviour, and anyone attempting to do so with you should not be trusted!
There is rational fear, which is a survival mechanism built into us by nature, and irrational fear, which is a fear of something that cannot actually harm you.
Most “led by fear” attempts are based on irrational fear.
Secondly, I have also seen this being used as a form of distraction or deflection.
For example, someone saying “never mind this topic, instead let’s focus on that really scary topic over there!”.
It’s like the Internet slang “FUD”, or Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, which is a deliberately topic to distract or undermine the audience with the intent to confuse them from the real truth.
At best, a leader should be a truth seeker, as important decisions need to be made based on evidence, not on fear of what MIGHT happen.
Other people’s fears are for them, they are not for you.
If you allow them to infect you, they will cloud your judgement.
Let the fear passed through you, instead parse the useful information, including the observation of who is attempting to led you with fear, and what could their motivations be?
Let’s remind ourselves once again of the full quote from Frank Herbert from his science fiction masterpiece “Dune”:
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Often the “little-death” in question is the death of truth, or the death of reason.
In a time of real crisis, your team looks to you for direction and reassurance: there is no faster way to destroy that reassurance that to be openly afraid.
As a leader, you no longer have that luxury.
Finally, this week I also wrote a new blog entry entitled “The return of the artisans”, where I argued if you can afford to support an artisan, please consider doing so because when these skills die out, they are gone forever.
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