What's the One Thing You Need to Eliminate to Make Your Business Survive?: Fear

It's probably no surprise that fear hinders innovation.

When you're about to make a presentation in front of your peers about something you feel less than knowledgeable about, it's not going to be the time you also come up with a new app for cutting calories.

Organizations are transforming all over the place, thanks to the Internet and social media and how we communicate now (I'm breaking up with you: text).  But a new study points out that transformation requires the mitigation of fear, according to newswise.com.

"Mitigating the fear of failing, the fear of not knowing what to do, the fear of learning new skills, and the fear of losing one’s position or job," the web site reports. "Change can be scary for employees — especially for employees who do not have the skills needed for the new way of working, and especially for employees who do not have significant financial reserves to fall back upon if they find themselves needing to change jobs. People cannot learn when they are fearful."

What has surprised researchers in their transformation work is that leaders and managers can be just as fearful of the transformative change as employees. "For managers and executives, the fear can be a fear of losing what they now have (power, status, responsibilities) or the anxiety about whether they have the abilities to do what will be necessary in order to lead in this new era," newswise quotes study writers. 

We have seen leaders sink underneath conference tables when it was suggested that they do a transformative pilot program, researchers Edward D. Hess and Donna Murdoch say. The fear of not knowing can be big.

They write, "Questions that are commonly asked include: Where do we start? How do we structure the initiative? Is the initiative company-wide or siloed? Who leads the initiative? What technology do we need? What skills are we lacking? What is our competition doing? How will we train our employees for new roles as these technologies are implemented?"

Questions that are rarely asked, however, happen to be as important: How do we handle the human, emotional part of the transformation? How do we lead in a way so that our employees will emotionally embrace the new learning and ways of working that need to occur? How do we minimize one of the biggest human inhibitors to transformation: fear?

An organization can’t transform unless its people transform. And its people won’t transform unless their managers and leaders transform. Leaders and managers must role-model the new desired mindsets and behaviors that are necessary to successfully accomplish the transformation.

"Managers and leaders can deal with these fears many different ways," newswise notes. "Reflexive responses can be:•The “corporate grin and nodding yes” with the internal talk being “no way”•Doing the minimal necessary to buy into the change or transformation initiative, hoping to make it to stock option vesting or retirement doing what one has done before•Delegating responsibility for the change initiative to a group, creating distance — not having direct responsibility for the initiative so failure is not attributed to them•Half-heartedly undertaking the transformation, believing this initiative — like many in the past — will blow over.

So how do you do this?

--Mitigate fear.  Embrace it, say the experts. 

--Create a "psychologically safe workplace," one where it is safe to question the status quo

--Learn how to manage your fear --- the big one.  Everyone learns in their own way and time but if you are willing to try, you will figure it out.