Chapter 4
Harness Fear
Courage is knowing what not to fear.
Plato
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
Ambrose Redmoon
Why do some people move toward their fears, while others move away from them? It is precisely this question that I grappled with during the writing of my first book, Right Risk. It might surprise you to learn that a lot of authors don’t write about what they know; they write about what they want to know. And I wanted to know why I chose to deal with my fear of heights by becoming a high diver. When confronted with fear, why did I move toward it instead of away from it?
If you judge Right Risk by its cover, you might draw the inaccurate conclusion that the book is opinion-based—an ex-athlete’s lopsided treatise on the importance of risk taking. In reality, the book is quite research-based. To discover the answer to my question, I searched out all the information I could find on subjects related to risk, fear, and courage. Eventually I found the Rosetta stone I was looking for, and it came from the work of Michael J. Apter.
Apter is a psychologist and the author of several books, including a terrific tome called Danger: Our Love of Living on the Edge (Oneworld Publications, 2007). A Ph.D. and visiting professor at several major universities, Apter is best known as the codeveloper of Reversal Theory—a motivational theory that explains why individuals often behave in contradictory ways (such as why a guy who’s afraid of heights becomes a high diver!).
I was so taken with Apter’s work that I tracked him down on the Internet. After enjoying a pleasant exchange by e-mail, I noticed his phone number at the bottom of his message, so I gave him a call. Seemingly delighted that I had taken such an interest in his work, he kindly offered to have lunch with me if I was ever in the Washington, D.C., area, where he lives. Reflecting back on it, I’m sure that he was just being nice. But because I was hell-bent on finding out the answer to my fear facers and avoiders question, I called Apter again the next day and asked if I could fly up to D.C. to meet with him. I also invited myself to stay at his house!
When I told my wife that I had invited myself to Apter’s house and that he had said yes, she shook her head, saying, “What if this Apter guy is a serial killer with a collection of heads in his basement?!”
Fortunately, Apter turned out to be one of the most fascinating and generous people I’ve ever met—a warm, eccentric, and slightly disheveled British chap. Everything you’d expect in a university professor. Apter and I spent two days musing about the function of danger and risk in people’s lives. In the process, I learned this critical secret: All of us are both fear facers and fear avoiders. You might have no problem at all asserting yourself to people in positions of authority. I, on the other hand, might become a tongue-tied buffoon when talking to the boss. Conversely, you might get petrified at the thought of going whitewater kayaking, something I do for sport. As discussed in the previous chapter, you’ll pursue fearful situations when you perceive yourself to have at least some degree of safety, and you’ll avoid them when you don’t.
Caging the Tiger
The willingness to face fear hinges on what Apter calls a “protective frame.” As he explained it to me, a protective frame is like a cage you can build around your fear so as to contain it. When facing a fearful situation, you can build a robust protective frame by doing such things as gathering all the facts surrounding the situation, getting mentored by others who have faced similar challenges, and acquiring the skills you’ll need to competently face the task. As you strengthen your protective frame, you become capable of withstanding greater amounts of fear.
Apter explained the concept to me this way: “Think about going to a zoo and seeing an empty cage. You’d be bored out of your wits. Now imagine going to the same zoo and seeing a tiger prowling around after escaping its cage. You’d freeze with fright or you’d run like bloody hell. To convert fear into excitement, you need both a tiger and a cage. When your tiger (fear) is contained in a strong cage (protective frame), you’ll enjoy the zoo!”
Protective frames are not safety nets. Safety nets are essentially about lowering workers’ risks (and fear) by lessening the consequences of failure. They are about shrinking the tiger. Protective frames, on the other hand, are about increasing workers’ capacity for dealing with big tigers. Protective frames have to do with backbone. Rather than reduce fear, protective frames build workers’ confidence and capabilities to help them withstand, and match, the tiger’s intensity. With a robust protective frame, the size of the tiger stays the same but the size of one’s confidence gets bigger.
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A protective frame is a mechanism for harnessing your fear. The stronger your protective frame, the more fear you can withstand.
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Turning Fear into Fun
Protective frames allow workers to harness and transform their fear. It turns out that there is hardly any neurological difference between intense feelings of fear and intense feelings of excitement. They are known to be neurological correlates. Think, for example, about what happens to you when you’re really afraid. Your palms sweat, your heart races, your breath gets short, and your stomach teems with butterflies. Well, guess what? Those same things happen to you when you’re going to have sex! Or ride on a roller coaster, or watch a scary movie, or splash through rapids in a kayak. As far as scientists can tell, human beings are the only creatures to purposely seek out dangerous situations just for fun. But that fun is contingent upon having a strong enough internal constitution that you can withstand the fear’s intensity.
Though fear and excitement are neurologically similar, there is one critical difference between them. Fear is experienced as displeasure and excitement is experienced as pleasure. This explains why some people move toward fear and others move away. Fear facers draw at least some level of excitement (and therefore pleasure) from the situation. Simply put, people seek out situations that are pleasurable and avoid those that cause displeasure. But the key is this: What is pleasurable or displeasureable isn’t determined by the situation; it’s determined by the strength of the cage. When a person’s confidence exceeds his fear, the feelings prompted by the situation start to skew toward pleasure. A worker who has built a strong cage (by doing such things as gathering all the facts, practicing and rehearsing, or seeking out coaching) will view a challenge far more positively than someone who hasn’t. In other words, having a strong cage helps a worker to convert fear into excitement. Perhaps more important, when challenges are experienced as pleasurable, workers will start seeking them out instead of avoiding them.
For managers, one key takeaway from Apter’s work is that reducing people’s fear is sometimes exactly the wrong thing to focus on. When you reduce people’s fear, you stand the chance of reducing their intensity as well. A better approach is to increase their confidence through preparation. When Sarah Hughes thrillingly (and unexpectedly) won the 2002 Olympic women’s figure skating competition, for example, it wasn’t because she reduced her fear. Rather, it was because she matched the intensity of the moment. By being exceedingly well prepared and rehearsed, she built a well-fortified cage that helped her to contain her fear. For you as a manager, when it comes to the fears of your workers, it is more important to contain the tigers than to tame them.
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People seek out situations that cause pleasure and avoid those that don’t. The stronger a person’s protective frame, the more likely he or she is to experience a challenging situation as pleasurable.
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All of this comes back to courage and the critical question I had posed to Michael Apter: Why do some people face their fears and others avoid them? People face their fears when they have enough internal strength, in the form of physical and psychological preparedness, to view the experience as enjoyable.
Three Ways to Harness Fear
The goal of harnessing fear is putting fear’s energy to good use. Fear, like electricity, can be paralyzing. But properly harnessed, it can provide workers with the energy they’ll need to sustain them when facing challenging situations. Here are three things you can do to get the most out of fear:
• Normalize it.
• Tie it to courage.
• Use its energy.
Normalize Fear
Worse than fear is its emotional corollary, shame. Workers, particularly men, feel embarrassed about feeling fearful. When comparing themselves with more confident coworkers, fearful workers see themselves as inadequate, wondering, “What’s wrong with me that I can’t be more fearless?” When shame enters the room, confidence walks out the door.
In dealing with fearful workers, it is tempting to want to discount their fears by telling them, “Don’t be afraid.” But doing so is silly and ineffective. They are afraid. So why not acknowledge that instead? Acknowledging fear makes it more ordinary, lessening workers’ feelings of shame. “Of course you’re afraid,” you might say, “why wouldn’t you be?”
During Giant Leap’s courage-building workshops, we often include a segment where each participant shares a fear that he or she is facing at work. The ensuing conversations are rich and profound, and for me the most important and gratifying aspects of our work. Fear, when exposed to the light of day, loses its potency. When workers voice their fears, the fears become more normal and mundane. These conversations, which often last a few hours, help mitigate workers’ feelings of shame because they begin to realize that at any moment nearly all people are dealing with some type of work-related fear. By far the most common thing participants tell me after these conversations is that by hearing the fears of their coworkers, they feel “less screwed up” than they did before the workshop. The fact that so many people are contending with a workplace fear shows them that fear is a normal part of the work experience. Once workers start to see fear as normal, they give it less attention, which allows them to shift their focus away from it.
Tie Fear to Courage
Many people wrongly exclude fear from the definition of courage, believing that courage is the absence of fear. Every time such people feel afraid, they assume that they aren’t courageous. The reality, though, is that courage is fearful. When we are acting courageously, we are, most typically, very afraid. But we don’t allow the fear we’re carrying to stop us. Instead, we press on. This is the signature feature of courage: to carry on despite being fearful. Fear, thus, is an essential element in the definition of courage. You can’t be courageous unless you are afraid.
When fear is included in the definition of courage, fearful situations turn into opportunities to demonstrate courage. The best evidence that a worker is being courageous is that she shows all the signs of being afraid but is taking action anyway. The worker whose voice shakes when giving a presentation to the senior team, but who presses on despite being afraid, is being courageous. So is the nervous worker who informs you immediately after making a mistake. Likewise the worker who risks her job by giving you feedback, politely but bluntly, that nobody else had the guts to give you. People who press on despite being full of fear epitomize what it means to be courageous. This is exactly the type of behavior that you as a manager want to acknowledge and reinforce. Few things stiffen the spine with pride as much as hearing your boss say things like “I’m impressed with how courageous you’re being” or “Thanks for being so courageous.”
Great careers are defined by courageous moments. Read the biography of any prominent business figure and you’ll inevitably come across a defining moment that hinged on courageously facing a fear. Workers need to be reminded that any professional worth his salt will be tested by fear-provoking situations. Such situations become invitations for workers to discover their own mettle. This point was brought home to me during a talk I once attended by Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City. He was reflecting on the lessons that his father had given him about courage, and how he drew on those lessons during the days immediately after 9/11. Regardless of your political leanings, Giuliani’s advice was instructive and underscores how closely courage and fear are tied together. He said, “If you don’t have a fear, you’d better go get one. Dealing with fear is how you find your courage.”
Use Fear’s Energy
The best way to deal with fear is to use it against itself. Fear is not inert. It has energy. When properly harnessed, fear’s energy can provide momentum for facing challenging situations. During Giant Leap’s first year in business, we were hired to design a leadership-development program for Accenture and its largest client account. During a one-on-one interview with the senior executive responsible for the program, I asked him what was the most important leadership message he wanted to reinforce with the three hundred managers who would be going through the program. He said, “The most important thing people need to know is that leadership depends on having sweaty palms.”
“Huh?” I said.
He explained, “For our managers to grow, and for our account to be most successful, our managers need to regularly be doing things that are so scary for them that it causes their palms to sweat. Fear comes with challenge, and having sweaty palms shows you, physiologically, that fear is energizing the body. You get sweaty palms by moving outside of your comfort zone and into your courage zone. It’s inside your courage zone where the learning and growing happens.”
For workers, having sweaty palms means learning to carry fear with them when facing challenges. Again, courage is not about being fearless. It’s about taking your fear with you. Part of your job as a manager is to help people to stop fearing fear. Fear is a business reality. Fear is. Harnessing fear helps workers to capitalize on fear’s energy so that they can do challenging and courageous things.
Questions for Reflection
When facing challenging situations, which do you focus on more, reducing people’s fear or increasing their confidence? How might you strengthen people’s cages instead of trying to shrink their tigers?
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Think back to a specific moment in your career that you are particularly proud of. What role did fear play in this episode? What role did courage play? What does this tell you about the relationship between fear, courage, and challenge?
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Describe a recent sweaty-palm example of when one of your employees did something outside his or her comfort zone. How did it pan out? What lessons did your worker likely draw from the experience? What lessons did you draw?
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