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The Three Habits Of Fearless Leaders

This article is more than 8 years old.

If you want to understand fear and trust in the workplace, the first thing to know is that everybody feels fear.

We all feel it. People we think of as fearless feel fear the same fear we all do, but they handle it differently than other people.

Fearless leaders feel the same adrenaline racing through their veins that other people feel when they get fearful.

Maybe you're a manager and one of your team members messed up a major customer situation. It's a disaster. You hear the news and you can't believe it.

Your heart begins to pound. A customer fumble is the last thing you need this week.

What do you do? You clean up the mess first, of course. Once the commotion has died down and the customer's situation is resolved, what will you say to the team member who dropped the ball?

On the day of the crisis, you might say nothing at all. Maybe the ball-dropper is contrite and feels terrible. Maybe he or she doesn't understand what went wrong. What difference does it make, today?

Unless there's a way for your teammate to make the same mistake again before the day is over, a fearless leader will wait for a calmer moment to walk backwards through the mishap and straighten it out. A fearless leader will say "Listen, things happen. Go home and get some sleep."

The next day you'll talk. You'll ask your teammate "So, what do you think went wrong yesterday?" Your goal in the meeting is not to admonish or threaten your colleague, but to understand - without blame, shame or punishment.

You'll listen to your teammate as he or she runs through the story of yesterday's unfortunate events.

There's nothing to get angry about. How would anybody learn anything if either of you were upset?

A fearful manager would never wait a day to dig into a problem on the job. They'd bluster and threaten the minute they heard there was a problem. That's their fear showing itself!

Fearful managers can't resist the urge to discharge the electrical current that is coursing through their body. They discharge their stress onto the person they believe screwed up. That doesn't help anything in your company but it makes the fearful manager feel a little better.

They don't see their place in the catastrophe. They don't take responsibility for it, as the manager of the team -- their fear won't let them. Just like the ball-dropping employee, they're afraid of looking bad or getting in trouble.

A fearless leader feels the same anxiety but keeps breathing. He or she knows that everything happens for a reason, and that mistakes teach us more than our successes do.

Here are the three things Human Workplace leaders do differently than managers who have not yet discovered the power of trust at work.

They're Careful Not to React in the Moment

Work is an easy place to show strong emotions. Everyone is under pressure at work, and when something goes haywire the easiest thing for a manager to do is to get angry. Fearless leaders don't do that.

What good would it do to start yelling at people? A fearless leader's focus is not on judgment and blame but rather on keeping the Team Mojo level high. They know they'll get to the bottom of whatever went wrong.

They'll figure out what didn't work correctly in their system and they'll fix it. Then they'll say "It's good that we had that meltdown last Thursday -- it gave us the chance to fix our sales order processing system, which we wouldn't have done otherwise."

They Assume Good Intention

A sure sign of a fear-filled manager is this: when something goes wrong at work, they'll say "I knew it! Charlie never checks his numbers the way he should." They go right to blame and  shame, before they've asked Charlie one question or maybe even before they understand what actually happened.

Their fear throws them into a panic state. They forget that people come to work to do a good job. No one does his or her job badly on purpose. A fearful manager might talk to Charlie this way:

Manager: So Charlie, what happened with the Acme account? They're freaking out! I heard from the VP just now. What the heck happened?

Charlie: I understand you're frustrated, but so am I. You're pretty angry. Are you sure you want to talk about this now?

Manager: Heck yes I do! We can't have this kind of thing happening again!

Charlie is wiser than his manager is in this moment. His manager is consumed by fear. Charlie isn't exactly fear-free himself, but he's dealt with fearful managers before.

He knows that the tempest will die down. He knows it's never a good idea to try to problem-solve when emotions are running high.

Charlie wants a resolution to the problem -- one that will keep this kind of disaster from happening again. Right now, his manager just wants to let off steam. That is not a managerial task, however!

They Take Responsibility 

A manager's responsibility for his or her department's activities is pretty close to absolute.

When you are the manager and something goes wrong, there's no one to blame. Who could you blame? An employee who goofs up is someone you chose for your department (or inherited when you took the job, but whom you've kept on the payroll).

You trained them or supervised their training. They are a member of your team.

Every great thing and every less-than-sensational thing they do is a reflection of your leadership.

Strong leaders take responsibility for everything that happens in their departments -- the good and the bad. They don't blame their employees for mishaps -- after all, those mishaps happened on their watch!

It isn't hard to shift your focus from fear and control to trust. It only takes patience and self-awareness.

It requires you to trust yourself enough to trust your teammates. Can you step into your power in 2016, put the hammer down and lead with a human voice?

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