Overcoming fear

Among the many emotions that can influence how executives interpret and respond to events, there’s one worth addressing on its own: plain old white-knuckled fear. In times of rapid change, when the actions that used to lead to success don’t any more, even strong leaders can experience intense, unproductive levels of fear caused by threats to their identity, their reputations, their social standing, and even their basic survival needs of a job and a paycheck. Ironically, leaders with the strongest track records are often more susceptible to fear during tumultuous periods because they have less experience facing adversity than their colleagues with more checkered pasts do.

Spiking levels of fear can convert frank, flexible, open, and self-reflective leaders into defensive, close-minded, rigid, and literal ones. These leaders may take things personally, feel persecuted, cease productive self-reflection, and lose the ability to process new information and respond to difficult situations. Others in the organization will notice this, of course, and will let the executive know in subtle ways—reinforcing fear and defensiveness.

Breaking this cycle doesn’t require a CEO to become an armchair psychotherapist, but it does require engaging team members on an emotional level. As leadership-development expert Donald Novak puts it, “helping executives verbalize their emotions and acknowledge their validity can allow them to move past fear and become more productive.” Putting fear on the table, so to speak, helps get it out of the way.

To understand what this kind of empathetic coaching looks like in practice, consider the CEO of a large global firm who recently discovered that one of his best functional executives had become “stuck.” Although this executive, at the outset of the downturn, had led his peers in dialing back investment and then cutting costs, he had subsequently boxed himself into a corner, telling the CEO, “I simply cannot cut any more if you still expect me to support the business.” The CEO addressed this paralysis in a conversation about his functional leader’s underlying fears: of failure, of disappointing his boss, and of losing his team, to name just a few. The CEO admitted that he had some of the same fears and emphasized that this was a completely normal way to react. This acknowledgement helped the executive out of his corner and stirred a discussion about ways to reinvent the function without sacrificing performance.

When CEOs acknowledge their own fears, they strip away the stigma attached to the emotion and make it easier for other executives to move beyond it. It’s also important for CEOs to examine the role that they play in reinforcing fears. They may need to change some kinds of behavior (such as blustering about the consequences of underperformance) in order to engage productively with their team. They may need to address anxiety about reputations and job security more transparently than usual. Finally, the CEO needs to model the “right” sort of behavior, including openness to dialog and collaboration, respect for all opinions, and self-confidence. Some of these may be difficult to summon in tough times, but they are powerful counters to the prevailing defensiveness and fear that often are rife in those times.