“Fearless” Leadership

(2 minute read time)

No matter if you are a seasoned leader or just getting started on your leadership journey, leadership involves fear.  Heck, let’s be honest LIFE involves fear whether you are a leader or not.

Forbes magazine cites several fears leaders face:

• Criticism
• Failure
• Making decisions
• Public Speaking
• Responsibility
• Having to be perfect
• Having to be 100% fair
• Motivating people
• Being accessible 24/7

Let’s start by defining fear.  I Googled it and found the following definition:

“an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat”.

If you have read any of my work, you know I teach that thoughts create feelings.  If you agree with that, then you will join me in the idea that fear comes from our thoughts.  

The definition of fear above supports this theory.  It literally says the emotion of fear is “caused by the belief” that something is dangerous, may be painful or is a threat.  The definition does not say that the threat is real.

If we can latch on to the idea that it is our thoughts creating the fear we can experience so much freedom from the fear.  Why? Because we get to think anything we want to.

Recognize that fear is just your brain doing it’s job.  It’s supposed to warn you of imminent dangers. But, you have to ask yourself “Is what I am afraid of really dangerous?”.  Most of the time the answer is no.

Now you might be saying to yourself, “That’s nice Deneen, but am I really just supposed to think a happy thought about my fear and then it will go away?”

My answer is: You don’t have to be fearless to take action.  You can acknowledge the fear and move forward anyway. Don’t let fear mean stop.  At the same time, just know the thing causing the fear is what you are thinking. All thoughts are completely optional.  All of them.

There is not one thing on the list of fears above that you can’t handle.  And if your fear is something else that’s not on the list, I suspect you can handle that too.        

Let’s tackle your fears together.  Click here to schedule a free 30-minute coaching session with me.