Never be led by fear

As a leader, you must never allow yourself to be led by fear. Let me explain.

Topics:

- For much of July I have been travelling, hence I have missed a few episodes this month, sorry!
- I am done with travel now, so the normal weekly schedule will resume.
- I find that when I travel, I get inspired to write and therefore I have many interesting leadership topics lined up for you in the weeks ahead.
- But this week, I want to talk to you about fear, and why as a leader you cannot allow yourself to be led by fear.
- By “led by”, I mean allowing others to transfer fear to you, real or otherwise, with the intent to led you towards deciding something in their favour.
- A classic example of this is someone saying “if you don’t do this, then that will happen”. Some fake urgency is also usually introduced.
- It’s a why to push you towards making a decision in their favour, by motivating you with fear.
- But as we all know from Frank Herbet’s “Dune”, “Fear is the mind killer”.
- Inevitably if you rush to deciding based on fear rather than reason, it will be a bad decision.
- Attempts to lead you by fear is weasel behaviour, and anyone attempting to do so with you should not be trusted!
- There is rational fear, which is a survival mechanism built into us by nature, and irrational fear, which is a fear of something that cannot actually harm you.
- Most “led by fear” attempts are based on irrational fear.
- Secondly, I have also seen this being used as a form of distraction or deflection.
- For example, someone saying “never mind this topic, instead let’s focus on that really scary topic over there!”.
- It’s like the Internet slang “FUD”, or Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, which is a deliberately topic to distract or undermine the audience with the intent to confuse them from the real truth.
- At best, a leader should be a truth seeker, as important decisions need to be made based on evidence, not on fear of what MIGHT happen.
- Other people’s fears are for them, they are not for you.
- If you allow them to infect you, they will cloud your judgement.
- Let the fear passed through you, instead parse the useful information, including the observation of who is attempting to led you with fear, and what could their motivations be?
- Let’s remind ourselves once again of the full quote from Frank Herbert from his science fiction masterpiece “Dune”:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

- Often the “little-death” in question is the death of truth, or the death of reason.
- In a time of real crisis, your team looks to you for direction and reassurance: there is no faster way to destroy that reassurance that to be openly afraid.
- As a leader, you no longer have that luxury.
- Finally, this week I also wrote a new blog entry entitled “The return of the artisans”, where I argued if you can afford to support an artisan, please consider doing so because when these skills die out, they are gone forever.
- Please check that out on my blog techleader.pro, ref: https://techleader.pro/a/700-The-return-of-the-artisans

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