Leading Fearlessly!
Leading Fearlessly involves catching yourself reacting to a situation, rather than responding to it, and then shifting to a more effective response.
Leading Fearlessly involves catching yourself reacting to a situation, rather than responding to it, and then shifting to a more effective response.
Leaders tend to ignore or minimize feedback when they are too afraid to hear it. Fear undermines our capacity to take in feedback and use it to grow personally and professionally, as well as to influence and impact others.
Leading Fearlessly: When people react fearfully to feedback or suggestions for improvement, they often exhibit:
Which one(s) of these do you exhibit when your buttons are pushed?
Visible behaviors like these are usually the result of underlying irrational fears, brought to the surface by certain situations. The three most fundamental irrational fears that threaten our need to be accepted, valued, and protected are these: Personal Rejection, Role Insignificance, Irreparable Hurt.
Which one(s) of these 3 irrational fears stand out as your strongest fear?
Irrational fears alone would not create your retroactions, however. They simply agitate you. You must also believe that, if you react in a certain way to the fear, it will protect you. Irrational fears combine with faulty beliefs to undermine your response. Faulty beliefs can most easily be thought of as “if, then” statements that start with the belief and end with the false promise of protection. They direct your ineffective behaviors.
Here are seven common faulty beliefs; which one(s) seem to be like those that drive your ineffective behaviors?
From where do fears, faulty beliefs originate? Faulty beliefs develop in the same way irrational fears are born--in a moment of upset from early childhood. When a fearful event occurs in childhood, we feel the fear and quickly construct a theory about how to protect ourselves.
Why do fears and faulty beliefs persist into adulthood, even when we identify them and are on the lookout for them? Anchor lies tell us why we are fundamentally unacceptable to others. This helps explain the habitual, intractable nature of our fearful reactions. The five anchor lies are:
Which of these five lies do you think underlies and sustains your fears/faulty beliefs?
The key to Leading Fearlessly is to understand fully the role of lies, irrational fears and faulty beliefs in making you stumble, and then to catch yourself when you begin to react thoughtlessly as a leader. The components of breakthrough behavior as a leader are these:
In a leadership role, the key to leading fearlessly is to recognize that certain people or circumstances may bring out the worst in you, but you can have control over your reactions.
Recognizing your irrational fears, faulty beliefs and/or anchor lie(s) can help you stop reacting. Shifting your response to one based on healthy beliefs creates opportunities for high performance.
Think about the ways in which you get in your own way as a leader of others. What will you apply right away from this learning module to help you lead more fearlessly and effectively?