Are you driven by purpose or fear?

Lately, I’ve recognised that whenever I react or interact in a way that doesn’t get the desired result, I can trace my actions back to fear. This isn’t an obvious fear. I’m not visibly nervous. But my underlying driver is fear, or worry about a lack of something. It could be fear of losing my job, my fear of not being good enough, a fear that people won't value the impact I know my team and I can bring, the fear that I’m being judged by people who may not have all the facts… or even fear for my kids, and people misjudging them.

The irony is that fear consistently gets in the way of me achieving what I want. It creates behaviours in me that drive me directly to the result I’m dreading. It makes me snap at my kids when they aren’t listening, which is a guaranteed way to stop them from listening. When I show up to meetings driven by fear, the other people seem to pick up on this, and the result is never what I intended.

I recently went to a meeting of very senior leaders. On the advice of my brilliant coach, I’d taken time to clear my fear and set a purpose driven goal for the meeting. Guess what happened? The agenda was delayed and I didn’t get to speak … but by setting myself up to be free of my fears, I was free to observe that the other attendees spent the meeting defending their own positions, and undermining each other. They all appeared to be acting out of fear. No one got heard or got support for the great ideas they had. Little to no progress was made in that meeting. Sound familiar?

Is your company or team being hampered by a culture of fear? An environment where employees spend so much energy managing their fears, that they rarely focus on moving the company forward?

Do you have any stories you can share here, where you’ve experienced the difference between teams driven by fear or purpose?

If you are a leader who wants to create an environment where your people can feel brave and change things for the better, get in touch to find out how we can work together.