Increasing Employee & Client Engagement

With Halloween this past weekend, it got me thinking about Fear.  Fear of the unknown.  Fear of a future event.  I wanted to share some of my learnings from my past as a collegiate athlete and golf professional. 

When we have fear… we tighten up, our heart rate & pulse speeds up, we stop breathing (sometimes literally) and we focus on the future and unknown rather than the task at hand.  So instead of focusing on the execution we get stuck in fear.

The best athletes and gamblers in the world know that to conquer fear… you have to stay in the moment.  The best know how to look at the current situation for only that, the current situation.  They do not get caught up in what ifs and they do not place value on the moment.  They do not make it bigger than it is. 

Just because the atmosphere is louder or larger… does not make the actual act any different. 
A five foot putt whether you have $5 riding on it or $1 million is still just a 5 foot putt.  A free throw in your backyard, or in a game or to win a championship is still just a free throw.  The hoop is the same height, the distance is the same, but the circumstance is different.  However, when you couple the act with the circumstances, it changes everything…  The expectation changes within yourself and with the fans or spectators.

The best athletes in the world know… how to stay in the moment and not get ahead of themselves.  They treat a championship game mentally the same they would a regular game at the park.  It is a way of devaluing it mentally so they can perform at their greatest peak performance. 

I see fear in business all the time…  Employees, managers & owners are faced with decisions all the time and fear is bound to set in.  Will the decision they made be successful?  How will people look at the decision they made?

I have seen grown men afraid of “prospecting or cold calling”…  I say to them… you are afraid of picking up the phone and speaking into it?  Of course not, they are afraid of the result.  I have to teach them to separate the act from the result.   What is the absolute worst thing that could happen… they can hang up.  Whoa that is scary…

I love speaking in front of groups & audiences…  I know tons of people who are truly afraid of getting in front of a group and speaking.   I have seen them speak to me so I know they have the ability & are capable.  We know the problem is not that they are afraid of opening their mouth, but rather they fear the result.  They fear the result of saying something wrong or what people will think of them etc.   So when I teach people to get in front of a group of 10 or 100 they have to separate the act from the result.  Then apply tactics.  One thing I have seen work is to connect eyes with one person and feel as if you are speaking to them only and then moving your eyes to another person to deliver the next line etc.  Then no matter the size of the audience you are still speaking one on one…

Here are a few things I believe you can do in business or anything in life to help conquer fear.

1. Have a Routine… Even Tiger Woods feels nervous and has butterflies.  He knows how to channel it.  He is one of the strongest mental athletes alive.  He relies on a very strict routine that keeps him in that moment’s process rather than the future. When making a decision, preparing for a presentation, client meeting, or a call have a set routine.

2. Stay Objective… Keep things objective and away from subjective.  Most fear comes from a first person perspective.  By keeping things objective then it will also keep it from the first person perspective.  Everyone in that same position would make that same decision based on that set of information.  That belief also can instill confidence.

3. Stay in the Present… Anything you face with fear will have some future consequence facing you.  Strip away the future result and look at the situation from the present state.

4. Unbundle… Take the information and the decision and unbundle it. Most decisions are based on multiple sets of wrapped information.   If you took all the crap out of the decision and just looked at the core of the decision would you still make the same decision?  Does it have more or less fear attached to it?