How much of our business meeting agendas, especially those meetings which go on for hours, are filled up with information substantiating and confirming what we already know?
Whilst meetings such as these may make us feel good about our progress, proving that we are worth the money and rewards we earn each month, they are in actual fact diverting attention away from the real issues we need to tackle. Issues, that are more often than not deeply buried amongst the frivolous magnitude of paper work and prepared presentations, the real fears which face our organisations each day.
No easy way out
Growing up, my mother insisted that every dinner will be served with three different types of vegetables. This meant that once a week brussel sprouts would be on my plate - my least favourite of all the different types of vegetables, and they were never served diluted with cheese sauce like some of the other horrible tasting vegetables.
Eventually, I learnt that the only way through this dreadful experience was to eat my brussel sprouts first, and then enjoy the rest of the food on my plate.
Applying this life lesson learnt to business, we look to start every meeting or discussion, whether it is internally or with external parties like regulators, our business partners, suppliers, or shareholders with our greatest fears - the horrible tasting brussel sprouts on the agenda. What form do your brussel sprouts take?
Classifying fear
The following, I have observed, are some of the top five which cause a great amount of fear amongst managers in business these days:
• Dealing with a team member who is not performing;
• Asking a major customer to pay their invoices on time;
• Launching a new product or innovative idea;
• Realising and knowing that your current IT system is obsolete; and
• Realising and knowing that one of your key executives is obsolete.
Taking the bull by the horns
I have learned that it is important to establish whether or not it is normal anxiety you experience over the issues you fear - which is good because it creates awareness and consciousness on the matters - versus an overwhelming fear, which usually prevents and inhibits effective action.
It also helps to unpack what it is you are really fearful of in these situations. This process will become a self-discovery process, and you will find that the real fear has mostly to do with something that is within us that we need to overcome and deal with. Some of those fears are:
• The fear that we will no longer have the approval of that team member who we need to tell that their performance is well below expectation, or:
• We are too afraid of failing, so we find reasons not to launch that new product or idea; or
• We don’t want to be the reason for upsetting everyone’s comfort zone and so we keep the obsolete IT system for another year.
That being said, it is best to go through our fears; and remind ourselves constantly that courage is not the absence of fear, it is the perception that some things are more important to us than what we fear.
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