Today, I will not live in fear.
For all too many years, I did. I lived with fear. Even as I write this I can replay the feeling. The tightening muscles. The cold rush of adrenaline. It stops you dead in your tracks.
I won’t say anything trite like “fear has been my friend”. It hasn’t been my friend. It’s been my companion, but never my friend.
What did I fear? The list is endless. I’ll spare you the personal side of fear and for the sake of this piece I’ll focus on the fear that accompanied me in my career.
Would I be passed over for a promotion? Would I make a mistake? Not even real mistakes — I could work myself into a lather just thinking I could make a mistake. I spent time wondering what could go wrong. It wasn’t even fear of big consequences — even the shame, the blow to my ego of a mistake happening on my “watch”. I even feared being wrong.
It wasn’t just the fear of mistakes. There was another type of loss – losing my status — what if I wasn’t recognized for my accomplishments? I could even manager fear of losing things I didn’t even have — fear of not getting that promotion or that raise, that job I deserved.
I wasn’t alone. If you didn’t feel this way, you are in the remarkable few. I applaud you. Thoreau, the poet and keen observer of the human conditions once said, “most men lead lives of quiet desperation”.
One day, for me that changed…
Many of us learn fear from the time we are children. It’s a long list and for all too many, the fears are terrible. But even those who live more placid lives have fears. Will I get picked for the team? Will they like me? It’s why bullying is so cruel and effective – even when it’s not violent. In fact, it may, for some, be worse than violence. We all rallied round the story of Amanda Todd, the beautiful young soul who took her life because she was being relentlessly bullied. How many other Amanda’s are out there? You only have to look at the teen suicide rate to see that kids often fear social shunning and bullying worse than death.
Sticks and stones can break your bones. But names can and do hurt.
Fear is powerful – more powerful than we might like to think. Neural science has shown that the “fight or flight” response uses the same circuits for a social crisis as it does when our lives are threatened. From a hormonal standpoint, it’s the same adrenalin that runs through us whether its a foxhole with gunfire all around us, a mugger with a knife or the fear of making that speech. Same circuits. Same hormones. Surprisingly – for some – even the same intensity.
Right now there’s one person reading this who thinks — I’m tough — I can take it. They should “suck it up”.
Well think again. Fear takes its toll on the biggest and bravest of us. Your fear may be different, but as George Orwell so eloquently illustrated in 1984 – every sane person has their own thing they fear. Even the bullies — in fact especially bullies — are often the most fearful. Apart from the sociopaths, I’ll grant you that one exception, most bullies are at their heart, living in their own pools of fear. Many of us have discovered this when we stood up to some bully – either in a physical or social situation — only to watch them turn tail and run — either physically or figuratively. I’ve had occasion in my life to deal with two men who have been abusive to their partners. Both were physically far and away larger and stronger than me. Both of them cringed like wounded animals when I refused to let them continue their abuse. I’m not a brave man. But don’t put my back against a wall. I might behave irrationally.
Even more important, don’t put me in a situation where I need to help another person be safe. I’m not a fighter by any stretch of the imagination. Actually, I’m usually a total pacifist. But I can’t stand to see others people suffer or live in fear. Compassion – purpose can trumps fear.
So here’s a great question. If I didn’t want others to suffer, why did I put up with it myself? Why didn’t I give myself the same compassion that I could so easily extend to others? In corporate and even in social life – who was “bullying” me? Me.
That’s right. I was my own worst enemy. Not others. In fact, as my friend Dave Howlett always says, “if you knew how little time most people spend thinking about you, you’d worry a lot less about what they were thinking.” Best piece of advice I ever got from a “motivational speaker”. But I did worry – back then. Today, I can say with all honestly that I rarely worry or live in the same fear that I once did.
What changed? I’ve been fortunate to have found some very good teachers and mentors over the years. It turns out that age is also wonderful teacher. And it turns out, so am I. My own heart has been my guide, when I learned to find the quiet in myself and listen to that real voice within.
I have learned to let go of most of my fears. I’ve learned, although not perfected, giving myself a break. I can, and do, stop beating up on myself. I’ve replaced fear, where it was needed with a simple respect for challenges.
I’ve learned to name them. I’ve learned to say – oh, yes, that adrenalin rush is fear. You would be amazed at how effective this is.
I’ve learned perspective.
As a result, I don’t have many regrets. Fewer with each passing year. I do recognize what a waste of time it was – or is to live with worry or fear. As I said, I have a respect for challenges. I have no time for fear. I think most people would agree.
I’m not saying I’m perfect. I’m only saying that I’ve made a big shift and in doing so, I’ve realize just how much fear drives our world. Some days I think that we “fear losing fear”. Not for us — we fear losing it in the world.
Think about it. We use fear to keep order in our society. We use it with laws. If you do break the law, you’ll go to prison, you’ll pay a fine, even in some places — we’ll kill you. We use it in our families. Even those who no longer believe in corporal punishment still have punishments. Go to your room. Get a time out. No computer. Punishments don’t work without fear of loss. We use it in society at an even more complex level. The wrong behaviour in society can get you named, shunned or ostracized. This doesn’t work without fear — fear of shame and fear of exclusion. I’m just scratching the surface here – fear at the basis of many social relationships.
So it’s natural that it’s part of our work and organizations.
We have all kinds of sanctions to drive fear. In his book, “Your Brain At Work”, author David Rock codified these with his 5 letter acronym – SCARF. SCARF stands for five things drive fear in organizations. We fear losing - status, certainty, autonomy, relationships and even fairness. All of these are powerful, and Rock says that MRI’s show that these triggers do indeed use the same neural circuitry and hormonal response as fear of imminent violent death. Yet Rock claims that the two most powerful of the five are status and fairness. Loss of status and feeling that one is treated unfairly often drives totally irrational actions. People will harm themselves rather than endure these. They will quit a job even with nowhere to go. They will walk away from deals or exchanges even at their own expense because their idea of fairness is violated.
Even in the “lesser” impact areas, even when we are not driven to irrationality, these fear triggers often us to sub-optimal behaviours. I say often and not always because the adrenalin of a fear reaction does provide a boost. Adrenalin and fast response forces you back into habitual patterns. Wonderful for situations where a known response is always correct. Wonderful for our ancestors to whom the fight or flight response meant survival. In the jungle or on a battlefield – unquestioned, habitual response can be the difference between life and death.
But in our modern world, it’s thought, not reflex that is key. Ours is a world of uncertainty and complexity. Ours is a world where new problems require new approaches – where the old solutions don’t work. Ours is a world with “wicked problems”, where we need creative, out of the box solutions.
Approaches that keep us in the zone on low or dangerous performance — that keep us in this adrenalin laced habit laden behaviour — these are deadly to the modern company. We see it constantly. How is it that so many companies have missed seeing the real problems, the real competition, the real challenges?
I would say that in far too many cases, fear of punishment leads and organizational cowardice and fear of loss of what we think is our fair share — which can also be known as greed or clinging — these are too often the drivers of habitual responses that are out of place, ineffective and downright destructive.
I’ll give you a great example that leaps to mind. In the movie Apollo 13 when the engineers on the ground has to come up with some way to save the crew of the ship from suffocation the leader holds up a square filter and a round filter and says — “We have to make this — into this. And here is what we have.” With that he dumps a pile of items onto the table — none of which look very promising. How can you make a new high precision filter in space. Except to those who can see things differently.
In the movie, the person “in charge” doesn’t threaten. He doesn’t dwell on the consequences. He doesn’t need to. This team has purpose — they are going to save the lives of their colleagues.
A fiction? Well, I did manage to hear an interview with one of the engineers on that team and I have to say that his recollection was similar to what we saw in the movie. His comment was, “as soon as I saw duct tape, I knew everything would be okay.” I can’t imagine how you tell someone that the solution to great engineering challenge will be found because you have “duct tape”. But this was not a man in fear. It was a man — a team — with purpose.
So why do business schools continue to perpetuate old style thinking? I can hear them howling in denial. But its true. Their “formal programs” teach outdated and often fictional case studies and with them, the worst habits in business. I can’t be the only person whose read a published story about a company and wondered if the authors had even visited. Nothing in “their world” matched what we’d seen in ”real world”. One reason? For one thing, nobody wants to admit to failure. What’s that famous saying? ”Good decisions require good judgement. Good judgement is learned by making bad decisions.”
I won’t shame the authors here, but in a long career I’ve seen far too much omission and frankly, far too much fiction in what passes for business cases.
That’s the formal program. The “informal” is just as bad – maybe worse. These programs teaches ambition, entitlement and ego. How else do you explain the idea that one school is better than another. Come on. Is a C student from Harvard really superior to an A student from a much lesser known school? That myth is why Harry Truman, the fearless “tell it as it is” leader said, “C students rule the world.”
That informal system, the sense of entitlement and superiority — even among the “lesser lights” — is that wy graduates think that they should step into management roles without even having spent a day in the actual operation? Is it how they think that CEO should be worth 1,000 times what a line worker – the person who actually touches the customer – makes? Is it why they think that even when the same CEO leads the company to disaster?
Fear and habits. That’s what far too many of these great schools teach. Great for survival in the primeval forest. Deadly in our modern, post-industrial world.
You don’t have to be a genius to see the challenges that we are facing as we try to maintain our environment, our social structures and our standard of living.
We live in a world that desperately needs a reboot. Its a world where new and innovative thinking are required as never before.
The need was never greater to break the cycle of habit. We need, as never before to learn to live fearlessly.
So what provides the discipline to hold us together? Surely we have to have something that regulates us, that provides us with cues for correct behaviour — something that keeps us on the right path?
We do. It’s called purpose. You won’t find it in many business cases — although some of the more enlightened schools are making strides in that direction.
Purpose is that motivator, that constructive driver. Not fear.
We are a world in crisis. We are that huddled group, circling in space, waiting for the answer, ironically, to our CO2 problem — and many other environmental and social problems. As we look at what we have to address these problems, will we look with fear? Or will we look with purpose?
I don’t know. All I do know is that it starts with me. I want to be there when someone looks out at the duct tape and says – we can solve this. It doesn’t have to be me. I don’t fear being part of the solution. I just care about the solution.
So today I’ll cut myself some slack when I screw up. I’ll let go a worry. I’ll try to show compassion to someone. And I’ll try to live with purpose. And when I go back to the university where I teach or the business that I work at — I’ll go with purpose and not fear.
I wish the same for all of you.
