When it comes to overcoming fear as a leader, self-doubt is usually at the center of the picture. After all, how could you possibly help anyone else if you feel like you can’t help yourself? 

In this blog, we are going to look at some fear management techniques and empowering team dynamics to show you how to lead through challenges and find solutions that work for you and your team. It’s time to overcome your self-doubt and fears so you can empower others. Let’s take a look.

Understanding Fear in Leadership

There are a million and a half ways to quantify and categorize fear. Still, in leadership, fear usually boils down to feeling like you will let your team down, come up short in some way, or fail because you, as a person, are not capable enough, smart enough, experienced enough…enough, enough, enough. 

I’m here to tell you ENOUGH is ENOUGH!  What all this ‘enoughness’ boils down to is an opinion in your head that’s not valid. It’s fear chewing your ear as you go about your day. If you are in the leadership position you are in, it’s because you demonstrated a capacity to be the right fit for the job. 

Fear in leadership is normal. It’s a part of being human. What you need to know is that you do not…I’ll repeat myself, DO NOT…have to listen to it. 

I’m not saying that you’re perfect. If you’re human, you’re definitely not perfect. You have more to learn like the rest of us. However, if you think that you add no value to your team, it might be time to take a look at the facts. 

How often do you succeed at little things that make everyone’s lives easier? How often are you a boon to those in need? How often can you see the direction in which everyone needs to go, even if it’s scary? I don’t want false modesty here…I want real answers. 

If you show up and do any of these things on any given day, you are enough of a work-in-progress to keep being a work-in-progress while you lead your team, and that’s that. 

The Power of Vulnerability in Leadership

One of the ways that I describe leadership is taking a group of people with different personalities and egos. The goal is to make them stronger together than they are alone.

One of the best ways to motivate folks is to be relatable. It’s human nature to compare ourselves to one another even if it’s not useful. Thus, when you present yourself as a flawless, infallible being at the helm of the ship, your team is going to feel like they don’t measure up.

You want to share your humanness, your insecurities, failings, flaws (warts and all). Let them see that the real win is the work-in-progress piece. A leader shows up every day and gives it their all. When they see you doing this, and they see you sometimes fall short, that’s how they know it’s okay to be human, and that takes a lot of pressure off of them (and you). 

When you are vulnerable in a leadership position, you make yourself available to your team for the connection and rapport that is necessary to build and empower it. Isn’t that what leadership is all about?

Strategies for Overcoming Fear in Leadership

Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that overcoming fear is easy, but it is possible. Here’s how. You understand that fear is not telling you the truth, and you learn to sit with it without letting it inform your next decision. 

I would love to end this section here because that is the long and short of it. You don’t get rid of fear. You don’t truly conquer it, in my opinion. To conquer would mean it no longer comes by, and that’ll never be the case. 

What you need to learn how to do is to become the space that fear can flow into and out of without getting stuck to anything while it’s passing through. You need to be like a tiny tourist trap on the way to Vegas: let fear stop in, look at your merchandise (that it can’t afford), and then be on its way to Vegas where it’s probably going to do some real damage to the family finances. 

In other words, you are the space it passes through as it annoys the world around it. But guess what? You don’t move. You don’t run. You don’t fight it. You just keep doing what you’re doing while it pays for gas at the pump and buys the hat it will probably lose in two weeks. You just keep being you while fear gets to keep being fear. 

Empowering Others Through Fear Management

I think the best way to empower others through fear management is to grapple with fear, go toe-to-toe with it, come out the other side, and then coach your team about how to do the same. You can’t learn something from someone who knows nothing about it, so this is where you get to shine. 

Once you learn to sit with your fear, let it speak. Politely ignore it while being yourself and doing what you need to do. This makes you a strong guide for your team during any storms that may come. That’s a pretty powerful leader. 

Because you’re going to be vulnerable, you can say things like, “I’m scared, too. Let’s do it anyway.” Through that courageous leadership, they will know that they are following a real human into the fire, someone who also risks getting burnt rather than some demigod who started the fear in the first place. 

When you learn to change yourself by overcoming even one or two of your own fears, you become a limitless resource of human empowerment. Well done. 

Taking On Courageous Leadership

It’s not going to be easy, and it probably won’t be fun, but I’ll tell you what this kind of self-work is: worth it. The first time you compassionately sit with someone who is shaking in their boots and help them out the other side, you are going to understand why it was paramount that you went through the process first.

Here’s to sitting with fear, grappling with it, wanting to run and staying put, and what’s most important—questioning its validity—on the journey to becoming a leader who has overcome their own fear to such a degree that they can now empower others. Now, who said you weren’t enough?

To learn more about how you can turn your fear into fuel, go here.