Fear of failure? The risk is smaller than you think.
When I started working with Stephen*, he was terrified he was going to mess up and be managed out of the business.
A relatively new Director, he was beating himself up because he didn’t think he was doing a good enough job. But when it came to getting important work done, he just couldn’t seem to get started – until he had no choice.
It makes perfect sense. Procrastination meant he avoided the possibility of failing. Ironically, it also prevented him taking action which would help him succeed.
Fear of failure is something that comes up so often in my coaching with leaders, especially when they’re new in role.
You’re on the front line. You’re answerable to senior stakeholders who expect you to deliver. You often have to make decisions without having all the facts. It’s not surprising you’re worried you’ll say or do the wrong thing.
The problem is that your body brain reads new and uncertain situations as a threat to your safety. It doesn’t take much for it to jump to the worst case scenario – letting people down, lost reputation, redundancy – and activate the fight flight response.
Added to this, research tells us that losses have roughly twice as powerful an effect on our brains than the equivalent gain, so we’re more likely to go out of our way to avoid a potential loss than we are to try to gain a reward**. Makes sense given we’re built for survival.
Whereas the reality of not getting something right is usually much less dramatic – an inaccuracy in a report to correct, a missed deadline that needs addressing, ruffled feathers that need smoothing.
Going back to Stephen, the funny thing was that, when he delivered, he was on the money 90% of the time. The work we needed to do was to help him surface and replace limiting beliefs that fuelled his self-doubt and procrastination.
It was great to hear him say at the end of our coaching, “I’m not worried any more about getting things wrong.” And by this point, he and his team weren’t just delivering their targets – they were exceeding them.
Because he wasn’t worried about getting things wrong, he was giving himself the chance to get more things right.
Fear is sometimes associated with the acronym False Evidence Appearing Real. This quote from Michel de Montaigne articulates this beautifully : “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.”
Where might your fear be greater than the likely reality?
* Stephen isn’t this leader’s real name, and the details of his situation have been altered slightly for confidentiality.
** Quoting Dr Tara Swart in her book “The Source” drawing on research from Kahneman and Tversky
