I think one of the great things about doing what I do is the people I get to meet. On the weekend I was presenting for the Entreprenuer Organization and one of the other speakers was the energetic, enthusiastic, and effervescent Amanda Gore.
Amanda must be one of Australia’s most famous speakers – and it is years since I had seen her in action (she has spent much time wooing audiences in the US). What a delight to listen to her message and to experience her shear joy in sharing ‘The Joy Project”. Thanks Amanda for being so wonderfully generous with the group.
She of course has a no nonsense approach to well-being and all things human. She spoke a few words on the attributes of leadership and how fear gets in our way. What stops us having these attributes – how would you rate yourself out of 10 on each of them?
- Vision/Purpose
- Listening
- Humility
- Clarity
- Perseverance/Focus
- Courage
Leadership is very much a matter of getting out of our own way. To give up our FEARS – and the little voice in our heads which tells us to ‘slow down and be careful’.
She outlined Five Famous Fears
- Humiliation – which is the fear of what other people think, the irony is that people are too busy thinking about themselves to worry about thinking about you.
- Separation – Being different, separated from those that are important to us, being disconnected.
- Poverty – The ‘I haven’t got enough’ concept… yet money does not bring security
- Unknown – The fear of new things – or lacking of faith, hope and trust
- Missing out – The fear of keeping up with the ‘Joneses’ – continually making comparisons (if you win the rat race you are still a rat)
To thrive as a leader is to give up these fears (but we all have them) – it is difficult to eradicate them – but at least identifying where they stop you will help.
The first thing to reduce fear is to discover which fear drives you (or all of them) – discovering what the fear is – where the need for that fear has come from – and then to create the appropriate behaviors to compensate for that fear. Amanda shares more in the video below about “the Ammy’ which is our fight of flight mechanism imbedded in our brain.
We don’t often talk about fear in business – but to have true happiness and joy then fear needs to be managed.
It is difficult to be a great leader – operating from a space of fear.
