It’s been said that courage is not the absence of fear, but acting in spite of the fear. This being the week of Memorial Day, such words take on many different meanings. All weekend, perhaps because of the holiday, I’ve had the 70’s song from Paper Lace running through my head: “Billy Don’t Be a Hero.” Don’t take a risk, the song basically says. Play it safe, come back and make me your wife, sings the words of the narrator.
There something I’ve noticed lately about leadership, one responsibility that Leadership has which sets it apart from management. If we manage tasks and we lead people, then leadership has a responsibility to face and address fear. If we want people to join us, if we want to scale new mountains, discover new worlds, to Boldy Go… it can’t happen without paying due respect to fears, both ours as a leader and those of whom we lead.
All the great leaders, whether world-renowned, office-renowned, community renowned or family renowned, have something in common. They face fear head on. Mind you: This doesn’t mean that they’re not afraid. We all feel fear, but a leader faces it. And the beautiful thing is that in facing our fear and in being willing to face other people’s fear with them, we can give them the courage to do the same. So how do you do this? You name it and in doing so, you take its power away.
There is Chinese story about a young boy who wakes up from a bad dream night after night, where a frightening and mysterious something chases him through the dark woods. Each night it gets closer, and each night he awakens and runs to he father who says the same thing to him: “Go back to sleep son, what is in your dream can’t hurt you.” The final night he could feel the breath on his neck as he awoken in the night. This time he father said the same thing, but added: “This time, son, at the first presence of the beast, turn and face what you fear, name it.” He went back to sleep that night and the creature returned. Remembering his father’s words, he stopped, he turned around and he faced the creature. “Name it,” his father’s words whispered in his mind. “You’re a tiger,” said the boy, and the tiger laid down in the grass in peace.
Things remain scary in the dark of the unknown, that mysterious place where we cannot clearly see or know. Turn on the light, see it and name it because what is in our mind is usually way more scary than reality. Oprah said “Whatever you fear most has no power. It is your fear that has the power.” Fear can block you from precious opportunities, and worse — when a leader gives into fear, they give others permission to be less than who they are. When a leader has the courage to face the fear rather then running from it, or naming it instead of pretending it doesn’t exist, they give others permission to do the same: to face their fear, to summon their courage, to feel the fear and do it anyway.
