Babies are born with only one fear.
A thought for this Sunday morning post.
Do you know what that fear is?
It is the fear of falling. As soon as I say this, people remember carrying a baby one time when they tripped and stumbled. A baby will always automatically tense up and fear a fall is coming. Every other fear is learned behaviour, behaviour that we as parents teach our children from a young age, then are later added to and reinforced by society.
The brilliant quote above from the comedian Dennis Leary is a brilliant piece of social commentary on hatred being a learned behaviour.
The good news? We can unlearn our fears if we choose to.
Oh, and as this blog is largely centred (even where tangentially) on business and leadership, one other fear is key to “unlearning” as a business leader.
Control.
Control is, yes, a fear. The opposite of control is trust. What holds back businesses from scaling, from growing beyond the control of the founder, owner, leader? The need of that leader or of leadership to control.
I have worked as a leader in businesses from under £/$1m to hundreds of millions, and supported leaders in businesses in the £/$bns. It matters not the size of the company, the need to control is the single biggest reason why businesses fail to achieve their growth visions.
A big part of my role, therefore, is to support businesses and their leaders in “unlearning” these behaviours, of course supporting them all the while with structures, tools, framework, processes to support their ability to trust their business, their team, so that they can release control and focus on the higher-level strategy that their business needs them to centre themselves on in order for the business to achieve their vision and thrive at those higher levels.