Free Yourself of Making Skewed Decisions Driven by Fear
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Discover how to liberate yourself from fear-based decision-making in leadership. Learn to identify hidden drivers, confront fear directly, and navigate challenging choices wisely.
Be it firing a long-tenured team member who’s no longer performing, determining whether to take the leap into a high-risk venture with huge upside potential, or closing down a “sacred cow” project no longer generating a worthwhile ROI…CEOs face myriad challenges daily.
The Hidden Forces Impacting Your Decision-Making
In conscious leadership, it’s vital to become aware of and free ourselves from being driven by any hidden forces within us that may be impacting our ability to make clear, wise choices. Here’s how.
It’s imperative to see where we’re actually coming from, choosing from, when making choices. How can we pay attention to what is driving our choices?
Are we objectively responding to each aspect of a situation, seeing with crystal clarity? Or are we too inside of and affected by the situation, which distorts our ability to see clearly and choose the best course of action?
How Fear Plays into Your Choices
Challenging decision points have the potential to stimulate fear, and each of us has our own set of things we tend to fear in our role as CEO. Some of us may fear that we’re not good enough as a leader. Others may be more likely to fear that a decision could cause a loss of income, position, important employees, status, etc.
That we experience fear is not the problem. The problem lies in not seeing that we are being driven by fear, and having it warp and negatively impact our decision-making process. The more consequential the situation, the greater the potential fallout from being unknowingly driven by fear.
The Consequences of Ignoring Fear
No one likes experiencing fear-based thoughts and feelings, so we often do our utmost to bury them.
That’s an ineffective strategy because when fear-based thoughts and feelings don’t get resolved, they still affect us. Buried, they weave their way into our choices without our noticing, skewing our perspectives on things.
This can lead to experiencing times when we don’t know why we’re saying or doing certain things.
The 'At Any Cost' Dilemma
Look at it this way: a fear-based thought like, “I’m afraid I could lose my company”, is born out of some part of us that is trying to protect us from that loss and its consequences.
If we are driven to make sure we don’t lose our company, that part of us will always be on alert for any such threat. Worse, our fear will attempt to fulfill its mission at any cost.
It’s the “at any cost” part that usually gets us into trouble. For example, when we’re evaluating a new opportunity with huge upside potential but some risk as well. The ignored and buried fear will attempt to reduce the threat by distorting our perception of the opportunity — emphasizing the risk in an effort to thwart moving forward.
This fear within us won’t care as much about the upside because its mission is to keep the company safe at all costs.
Becoming Aware and Confronting Your Fears
The key is for us to be sufficiently aware of the types of situations that tend to generate fear for us so that we can deal with the fear instead of letting it distort our perspectives and skew our decisions.
Conscious leaders will be aware of feeling fear and be able to allow the discomfort of that feeling. When we are free of trying to avoid it, we position ourselves to be better able to address the fear directly.
Facing our fears in the toughest situations allows us to see far more clearly and to act wisely.
Facing Irrational Fears for Clear Decision-Making
What we’ll find is that most of the fear we experience is generated by some degree of irrational thinking. Those fear-based thoughts will not hold up once we take a discerning look at them.
When we see through the illusions of these kinds of thoughts and beliefs, our capacity to assess and make decisions will be unimpaired.
Adopting a New Approach: 'See the Fear and Deal with It'... Now
There’s value in the idea of “feel the fear and do it anyway.” I prefer “see the fear and deal with it so it doesn’t interfere with leading wisely.”
It is critically important to become aware of and deal with any fear that appears to be driving us. Why? Because in doing so we improve the odds of having the clarity and soundness of mind to make wise decisions, regardless of how challenging any situation may be.
Unleash your Brilliance as a Conscious Leader
It's my mission to support people in leading with unyielding integrity, clarity, and authenticity. If you'd like to tap into your deeper insight and practical wisdom to lead more powerfully and effectively, feel free to reach out at connect@evolvingceo.com to set up a time to connect.
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