How do I lead a fearful team - Pt 1?
This weeks Podcast comes directly out of 4 lessons I learnt from personally leading through anxiety. My team developed significant anxiety and the more that I have reflected on this I found an interesting and sobering root cause.
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This week I am looking at the topic of dealing with fear within your teams. However, ironically, the answers I am about to give have nothing to do with changing your team, or the people, or the actions in your team.
Let me tell you a personal story.
Early in my career I found myself leading a number of teams. I found myself under a lot of scrutiny. I was told that I was doing my job wrong from people who frankly had no idea. But, of course as a young leader, I tried to adjust, change, take on feedback and do things differently. It didn’t work out well.
Perhaps the most difficult thing in that season was that my team started to show anxiety. Our productivity, focus and drive suffered. The reality is that I never managed to turn that situation around.
I don’t know if you are like me, I have found that I learn far more from my failures than my victories.
I look back on that season and recognise a number of things that I should have done differently.
Firstly, I needed to ‘find my why’. Within the context of fear and anxiety, our ‘why’ becomes the stake in the ground that helps us to stay focussed, it helps us to remain grounded, stable and strong in our purpose. When people were questioning the way I operated, I lost focus on my vision. I became wishy-washy. When I am sold on my why, when it is clear in my own head - I am stronger and I can better stay on course. I naturally keep my team focussed and progressing towards that goal. We stay focused on what matters. This strength is felt by my team. Finding my why and communicating that through my words and actions helps my team to remain strong.
Secondly, my team needed to see an appropriate level of vulnerability. Not the sort of vulnerability in which I fell apart with anxiety, nor the type of stone wall shielding them from every attack I received. This balance is often hard to achieve well. You can imagine what happens at the extremes. When I was falling apart, everyone started getting anxious too. When I stone walled everyone, we felt disconnected and unable to support one another. It is important to consciously walk that vulnerability line with your team.
In more recent times when I have focussed well on my vision and I have been appropriately vulnerable I have seen strength and focus that didn’t exist in earlier teams. Now, both of these things, ‘finding my why’ and ‘finding an appropriate level of vulnerability’ are not the sort of thing you can decide to do in the next 30 seconds. It takes significant time and work. Coaching can really speed up this process. Contact me if I can help you today.