639 | How to Lead a Team Member Out of Fear-Based Decision-Making

Do you have a team member who hesitates to make decisions, second guesses themselves, or plays it safe when bold action is needed?

Today we're unpacking how to spot fear based decision making and how to lead someone out of it and into confidence. That is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.

Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are. Today we are talking about something that hides beneath the surface for a lot of people and that is, especially on your team, that is fear based decision making.

You probably notice this in every aspect of your life, whether it is you, a spouse, children. Interestingly enough, when we get to business, sometimes we can see it and sometimes it absolutely escapes us.

We don't recognize it, we don't see that it's actually happening. So you may not hear them say, hey, I'm afraid of this. But the signs are probably there, right?

They constantly ask for permission. Instead of taking initiative, they hesitate to make even simple calls. There's a lot of times I have leaders that are like, why can't this person just do this?

And they're missing out that there is a big fear element that's holding that person back.

It's just something simple. This should be something they can do. And yet we don't dig in deep enough and find out why they're afraid of making even a simple call.

Many times they overanalyze or underperform because they're playing not to lose, if you will. They're afraid of not having enough information to make the call.

So instead they overanalyze the living daylights out of it, trying to make sure that they get rid of every possible thing that could cause them to fail.

Once again, fear of failure right there. Right? So let me tell you, this isn't always a skill issue. Many times they, they have the skill. Many times they can do the skill. It's a belief issue.

They don't trust themselves. Maybe they don't trust you, right? Maybe they think you don't trust them. There is a trust issue that lives inside of this person and you shouldn't take it personally.

Now maybe you can take it personally, maybe it's something that you've done, but chances are this is something that they've experienced multiple times in their lives and it's become part of their DNA.

And so that's what we're working on today. But here's the thing. Fear will kill confidence it will kill initiative. It will definitely kill growth on your team.

It will hold back your team's growth if one or many people are living in this fear of failure.

But great leadership can draw people out of fear and into a mindset of ownership. I will tell you, this is not an overnight thing. This isn't a one and done.

Nothing that we talk about here, nothing that we talk about on this show is every one and done right. This is something. And that's the great thing about leadership.

Leadership isn't you just tell somebody to do something once and then all of a sudden they change.

If it was that simple, we wouldn't need leaders. We would just need tellers.

Parable: Yeshua Calms the Storm (Mark 4:35–41) (00:03:43)

So let me kind of frame this, and for many of you, a familiar story, which is Mark 4, 35, 41, where Yeshua calms the storm, Yeshua being the Hebrew name of Jesus.

So in Mark 4, Yeshua and his disciples are crossing the Sea of Galilee when a violent storm hits. The disciples, seasoned fishermen--

Now there-- There's a lot into this. If you don't understand the Hebrew mindset and water and chaos, there's a lot more that we can dive into but still understand.

These are seasoned fishermen, and they panic. They wake Yeshua up shouting, don't you even care if we drown? What does he do? He calms the storm with a word and then turns to them and asks an incredibly important question. Why are you so afraid?

Do you still have no faith? So this story isn't about weather. It's about leadership and fear. Yeshua confronts fear not with shame. Listen to me, people.

Many times we can see somebody struggling with something, and the way we respond can be very shameful to that person because maybe we're shocked, maybe we're struggling with, why are you struggling with this thing?

And some people can really respond with, you know, shame and guilt.

That is not what he does. Instead, he challenges them. He asks them the question, where is your faith? And think about it. You know, it definitely makes sense.

If I am on a sea, which this is, Sea of Galilee, is a very large, large lake. That's not an actual sea, but they call them seas over there. If I'm on this massive lake. And. And by the way, I've been there.

I've been up above the Sea of Galilee in the Golan Heights, when the wind comes through at nighttime, and it is incredibly strong, Incredibly strong, like, stunningly so.

It was a phenomenal moment for us to stand up on this ridge looking down over the Sea of Galilee, and this wind just comes out of nowhere and doesn't stop for quite some time. So it makes sense that that would be fearful.

If you're down on that water and that wind blows on down and starts rocking you all over the place and you're in the middle of it and you're wondering, what in the world am I going to do?

Is this going to just knock us over and cause us to drown now, no matter how good of a swimmer you are? And again, there is more to the story about how Hebrews face chaos and water.

So it gets deeper. But just take the situation of being in the middle of a massive lake with huge waves that are tossing you around. Would you want to try and swim to shore?

No matter how good of a swimmer you are, that's a scary place to be. So it's understandable in these moments that we lack faith. But what Yeshua is pointing out is you are in the boat with me.

You know that God has a greater plan for you. So have some faith that he's going to save us through this. So many times I'm a pretty big risk taker.

I've done some pretty risky things and put myself in situations where I'm just praying like crazy that I get out of it.

Whether it's, you know, racing or heavy equipment stuff or whatever, there's all kinds of situations that I put myself in that all of a sudden I realize, well, I'm pretty much beyond.

I'm in a bad situation here. And that faith that God's going to save me through this isn't always the first thought. Usually it's begging, get me out of this situation, please.

And then on the other side, there's this, oh, my gosh, of course you're going to take care of me. Of course you're going to take care. Of course you have bigger plans or things that you're going to do. Right?

Doesn't mean that it's not going to end up in a bad situation. I've also ended up in some pretty decent crashes on the race course and some, you know, crazy situations.

But there's still the faith that my God loves me and that he has plans for me and he's going to take care of me. I think if you look at this in the bigger picture, this is what Yeshua is talking about.

Do you not have faith that we're not dying here? This isn't going to be the end here. We've got something going on.

So what he doesn't do is he doesn't shame them, he doesn't make them feel like they're colossal idiots, which so many people do in times like this. Instead, he challenges them.

So as leaders, we're often, you know, in situations where we have team members that are caught in their own storm, that they're in this fear of failure, that they're in this fear of rejection or letting others down.

That's one of the things that, you know, I've always experienced in leadership is people who don't want to let me down. Our job is to calm down.

Our job is to help calm that internal storm if possible by guiding them toward truth, you know, guiding them to ownership of the situation and helping them to believe in who they are and what they're capable of. If we are the ones.

Now think about this with me. I really want you to really process this. If we are freaking out because somebody else is freaking out, what does that say about us as a leader?

What does that say about our ability to lead people? What does it say about our ability to calm a situation? It says that we don't have that ability because now we're freaking out. So just like Yeshua, we lead best when we bring calm, not chaos.

Highlight star, underscore that right there. Bring calm, not chaos. And when we remind our people that fear doesn't get the final say, then we can help them to make better decisions.

So we're going to walk through a series of things that I want you to focus on.

Spot the Patterns of Fear-Based Behavior (00:10:03)

The first thing is spot the patterns of fear based behavior. This may be very difficult because maybe nobody's ever taught you this or maybe it's just doesn't.

It just seems like, you know, maybe there's a bunch of pride that somebody's experiencing, a lot of self protection and so you're picking up on that and you're missing out on the fear base.

So before you can lead somebody out of fear, you have to recognize how it shows up. Now fear based decision making isn't always loud. Many times it can show up as chronic indecision, you know, a lot of times.

So if you, for those of you that have taken your DISC or you have your team doing this and if you have not been done this, go to chrislocurto.com/store and get your DISCs for your team.

Get the the video and walk your team through this so they can communicate so much better. I can tell you a lot of folks look at the high S which 40% of the population make up the High S.

40% and a lot of folks look at the High S and go, well, they just can't make any decisions. And it's a lack, it's ignorance, it's a lack of understanding why the High S is struggling with decision making.

And I will tell you, and we always talk about this maturity and immaturity. It has nothing to do with age. It has to do with how well you know you, how you give information, receive information, act, react to situations, all that kind of fun stuff.

A high S is going to struggle with indecision because of fear of letting somebody down, fear that they're going to affect somebody in a negative way. This is a big deal. You have to understand what their struggle is.

And if you can understand that chronic indecision and if you listen to anything that we talk about when it comes to Root System, then you may understand that they've probably been through a lot in their life where people have responded pretty poorly to, to that person when they make decisions and it doesn't go the other person's way.

I like to say for the High S, if there was a hundred people and we were going out to dinner and the High S makes a decision and picks a restaurant and 99 people say, this is the best meal I've ever had. And one person goes, this totally sucked.

That one person that sets the reality for that high square man, this was a bad decision. That person didn't like it.

Now again, that's in immaturity. A more mature person will go, well, you can't please them all. At least we got 99 people were happy. Right.

There's a big difference in that. But what you have to understand is a lot of folks don't take the DISC profile. They don't dig in and learn and understand their personality style and how they act and react and all that kind of fun stuff.

So they live in this chronic indecision. And then as a leader, what a leader tends to do is try and tell them what they need to do differently. Try to talk them out of their indecision.

You just need to make a decision. You're just taking too much time. You're just whatever. That doesn't work because it doesn't change their potential outcome. Right. Another way that you can see this is the constant second guessing.

You know, well, what if I did this? What if I did this? Now, I don't want you to confuse this. I am somebody now, I am an 88S. I'm a very high S. But I'm also somebody who I hate.

Regret totally makes sense. I can't stand regret. But I'm somebody who is a massive perspective gatherer. So I want you to notice the difference. I'm somebody who's going to ask questions so that I get to the best answer.

That is not the same thing as somebody who's constantly second guessing. Is that going to work? That's probably not going to work. Should we do that differently? I don't think that's the way that that should go.

We probably should. Maybe we should just scrap this whole thing. I wonder if this is going to create a problem for so and so. All of that second guessing that comes up is another sign that there is a fear based, you know, fear of failure situation that is brewing.

Right? Another aspect is obsessing over getting it perfect. Now, many of you may be hearing this. A lot of the Cs that are listening to this might be going, -high Cs- or are going, well, it just needs to be the best it possibly can.

Now, there's a difference in making something fantastic, by the way. Nothing's ever gonna get perfect. You're not gonna get to perfection. Not, not on this side of life.

You're not gonna get to perfection, right? So the key is, is that if you're spending so much time trying to make it perfect, you've got to ask yourself why.

If you see a team member that is obsessing over something not being good enough, you need to ask the question why? What's holding them back? Is this thing really not good enough? Maybe it's not.

Maybe they're seeing something that you're not seeing and dig in and gain quality perspective and you just might learn that they're correct.

But what if it's not about that? What if the struggle is they are spending so much time trying to make it perfect because they're afraid that it's going to fail? There's the fear of failure.

There's the struggle, right? Another thing you will see is repeating kind of safe, outdated methods. What do I mean by that? Sometimes we will put new things in place, new processes, and a person is afraid to fail.

So they keep going back to the thing that they know. That is another one that just kind of drives me nuts because there is this fear of the risk.

Now, if it's trained well and it's understood well, then don't go back to outdated methods. Rock on with what we've got. But when you see them going back to those outdated methods, that is a signal to you. We've got to have a conversation.

We've got to walk through this. Why are we doing this again? Why are, you know, what's the struggle? What are you experiencing. And what you just may find is it's the fear of failure.

They're afraid of doing the new stuff that could fail, and they don't want to do that. Now, you could also find that somebody is just not paying attention enough, you know, which. That's a different response, right?

That requires some, some different accountability. But there's a really good chance that the reason why somebody's going back to something that's safe is because they're afraid to fail.

Another thing you might see is avoiding feedback or risk. It is. You know, it is funny to me. I'm somebody who was constantly asking healthy people, people that I trust, not just anybody. Again, you've heard me say that a bajillion times.

I'm the type of person who will ask, hey, how. How am I doing there? What do you see there? What? Guide me on something. Teach me something. You know, I'm always looking for coaching from healthy people, people that I trust, right?

People that don't want to take me down a notch, don't think that they want to, you know, have some crazy power situation, but want to help. That is who I am.

I'm the type of person who always wants to help. If I can help, I'm going to jump in and try and help out, right? If I see somebody who actually wants to learn and wants help, that is me.

I'm always looking for people that are willing to give me feedback. I'm always looking to, you know, folks, you know, coaches in areas. As I'm doing something that I'm learning and I'm not the expert in it, I want to see, what do you think?

Even if I am the expert in it, help me. Show me something. I don't know, take a look at what I'm doing. Give me some feedback.

When you see that people avoid feedback, you know, doing what I do for a living, it is funny to me and being somebody who always asks for feedback, that there's only a handful of people who will ask me for my feedback on certain things.

Why is that a struggle? Well, what's the fear? He might tell me something about me that I don't like to see. He might tell me something about me that I have to change.

Whatever it is, there is a fear of failure by asking for feedback. And unfortunately, it holds people down when you are willing to get feedback. And again, it doesn't mean that you have to take all of it, right?

It might be some stuff that you're just like, I don't know if I agree with that. But the key is to have an open mind. What if they are right?

You know, as I teach, I'm a Bible teacher as well as I teach things about God and I teach things in Bible study or just have conversations with folks.

One of the things I've noticed over the many, many years is that a person who doesn't want to change will engage in the conversation, but everything you say is wrong.

It doesn't matter. There's no open mind. There's no, you know, almost never any scriptural referencing. There is just a, I don't believe that. That's not what I. That's not what I believe.

That's not what I've been told. That's not. It's never a. Let's dig in and find that and get to the actual answer. What they struggle with is, what if I'm wrong? What if what he's saying is correct and I'm wrong?

And people can't handle that. It is cognitive dissonance. People can't handle hearing something that they have based their belief system in and finding out that it's wrong or just needs to be adjusted or whatever, right?

That cognitive dissonance is a painful, difficult thing because if you're not willing to receive, then what happens is you shut your mind off and stay exactly where you are. When you do that, guess what?

You're not going to take. You're not going to take any risks whatsoever. You're not going to change, you're not going to adjust, you're not going to seek more perspective, you're not going to seek more feedback.

You are done because you can't allow yourself to change. So red flag for you.

If you are somebody who consistently shoots down something that is new to you or new information or new teaching, and it's just always wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

You might be the one with the problem because it should be a quality discussion with information from both sides, facts from both sides, Right?

Whatever it is, it should be a quality discussion. But if everything is this other person is just wrong no matter what, and there's no quality conversation, then you're probably struggling heavily with fear, fear of failure.

So train yourself to spot these patterns and ask, is this a confidence issue or a competency issue?

Now, when I say train yourself, here's what I want you to understand. If you are struggling with the fear of failure as a leader of not knowing how to lead somebody through this or not knowing how to walk somebody through this, well, guess what?

You're not going to focus on the other person. Listen to me. Leaders listen to me. It's your job to make them successful in the moment.

So if you're just hung up on your own. And I get it, I am somebody who's incredibly long suffering, at least I believe that I am. But I have my. You know, I have a limitation too.

I can get to a point where it's like, for the love, we've had this conversation 400 times. I get it. I understand. But if on the onset you're struggling and you're not willing to help and willing to walk somebody through something, then you've got an issue too.

And it's that fear of failure as a leader. So you should be able to not be taking it personally. Again, I'm not saying that after 400 times, you're not going to struggle.

I get there, it is me. But in the onset, what does it look like to go, what is this person struggling instead of you struggling, instead of you being coming defensive, any of that. What is this person struggling with?

Is it a confidence issue or is it a competency issue?

Address the Root, Not Just the Results (00:22:41)

Number two, address the root, not just the results. So you, you have to understand that if you correct the behavior without addressing the fear, you're only going to create more fear.

You can't just say to somebody, you need to be faster. You need to change the way. You don't do it that way. You shouldn't have a problem here.

Just make a decision. I don't know why you can't make a decision. You just need to snap a decision. All of those things don't actually help a person change the level of fear because you're not addressing the actual fear.

You're just telling them to get to the outcome faster. So if their fear is failure and you're telling them just make the decision, and they make the decision and it's wrong.

You just proved them right. It's funny because we've all probably had that situation where we do push somebody into making a decision. The decision comes out well, and then it's like, see, I told you.

But what's the percentage of that? Right? If you help them and guide them to getting to the decision by facing the fear, that's a different story. If you just tell them to do it, it's not going to change that root fear, right?

So you could say things like, hey, I noticed that you hesitate. What's going through your head when you're making these decisions? Like, what are you processing? What are you thinking?

Is there a fear of making this decision? Is there a fear of letting somebody down?

If you can help them get to what the fear is, if you can help them to recognize it, then and only then can they start to make better decisions to change the fear.

But if you don't, then you can't be surprised that they can't make the change. So actions that you need to take use coaching questions like, what's the worst thing that could happen if you made the wrong call?

I, I am huge on this. So think about this as a leader looking at the situation. Hopefully you have some ability to go, well, what's the worst thing? You ask yourself, what's the worst thing that could happen here?

You know, if they make the wrong decision, what's the worst thing? If you can get there and you can see that it is not a fatal failure, then ask them, hey, what's the worst thing that could happen if you made the wrong call?

And let them process through this. This helps them to process through the fear of failure. One of the things I'll usually ask in, in situations is, hey, on a scale of 0 to 10, if this fails, how bad could it be?

And almost always the answer is seven or eight. Almost always. And then I will walk somebody through processes of thinking about the failure and what it looks like.

And then I say, okay, now let's be realistic. If this does fail, how bad is it? Oh, gosh, it's probably only a two or three. Okay, now you have different perspective, but the fear that you had ahead of time told you it's going to be horrific.

Seven or eight on a scale of zero to ten, that's a lot. That's pretty bad. But when we get to perspective and we walk through it, it changes the way they look at it.

So it's a simple question, hey, and do it gently and kindly and lovingly, hey, what's the worst thing that could happen at this. If you make the wrong call here and allow them to respond now, probably a lot of folks will respond with you tell me, don't allow that.

Stop and say, no, I want you to come up with the answer. What's the worst possible thing that could happen?

And allow them to get to an answer, because when they do, they will have discovered that they overthought it, that they built this fear up, that they have this anxiety of anticipation, not facts.

So when you're that freaked out and you're struggling, you're really considering what might happen, not what's going to happen, you're positing in your brain that this is going to be bad, not what does it even look like?

What could bad be? Right? So what's the worst thing that could possibly happen if you make the wrong call? Another question. Where do you feel uncertain in this so you know that somebody's struggling?

Coach, guide, direct. Hey, where are you struggling? Where do you feel uncertain? Where do you feel like you don't have enough skill? Answers, facts. Where do you feel uncertain? And help them to get there?

If they can voice that, if they can get that out, that's easy for you to guide them to a proper answer.

Another question you could ask is what would it take for you to feel more confident in this situation, in this decision making process, in whatever.

What would it take to make you feel more confident? Now, if you translate this into being a parent, how do you help kids overcome fear?

So something that. Oh goodness. Listen. You need to either listen to or read the book the Anxious Generation, folks, and especially parents for the love, listen to this book or read this book, the Anxious Generation. It is a must.

It is something that will blow your mind. Everybody knows how bad cell phones are and tablets and all these things for your kids and social media. And you've heard me harp on this a bajillion times.

As much as I have claimed and thrown out facts and talked about stuff about how bad it is, it is actually worse than I have ever said it to be. The studies that are Jonathan Haidt, H A I D T is his name, Jonathan Haidt.

The Anxious Generation, the studies that they have done, I mean, I've studied this a decent amount in my life. And the stuff that they've come out with over the last handful of years, going backwards and reviewing and restudying what's happened will blow your mind.

So get that. If you are a parent, you need to make decisions. I almost said different decisions because I'm making assumptions.

You may have already made decisions that you need to start calling back. And once you see this, you will understand why what you're allowing to happen will.

What you're allowing other people, other corporations, what you're allowing to happen to your kids. But you have to recognize that you're allowing it to happen to you.

When you get this and you discover anxiety and where it's coming from and you know, so many things that are, are coming from your phones, your social media, your, your inability to take risks in life and not being able to walk out, difficult situation.

There's so much in this that will just blow your mind. So one of the things that is just so powerful is that for kids, kids are antifragile.

Now, for those of you that parented in the 90s, 90s parents did a terrible job of making their kids not experience potential dangers.

For those of us that are Gen X, we grew up making decisions that might have broken an arm, might have hurt us, we might have fallen out of a tree.

I remember jumping over a ditch and not making it. Hello. That was not fun. There's these things with kids that we are.

We are made with our ability to look at fear and failure and risk and assess what we are able to do. So much of that was taken away in the 90s, and it still is being done to this day, or that's being taken away from people.

Why is this important for you to understand?

You may have somebody on your team, you may be doing this to your own kids, you may struggle with this because maybe you came from a 90s parent, you know, maybe you're a kid of the 90s that taking risks and not being fragile is a struggle.

And because of that, there is a massive lack of confidence. We see it all the time with the younger generations that there is this difficulty in, you know, making decisions. I'll never forget my godson, Josiah, Joel's son.

When they were still up in D.C. I went up to visit and I was in the house, and Josiah was just. I mean, a little monkey just climbing all over everything, jumping all over the place.

And I remember he got up on the couch and I turned to look at Joseph, at Joel and Marybeth, and I was talking to them, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw this thing flying through the air, and it was Josiah.

And I happened to just Jedi reflex, turn and catch him just at the right time. And I'm holding this little boy going, what are you doing?

You didn't even. I wasn't even looking in your direction. And because he was raised with not having the fear of being able to fall down and get hurt and being able to test things and experience things, he had no fear of jumping through that air.

He was trusting I was going to catch him. But if I didn't catch him, what's the worst thing that was going to happen?

Well, he would have fallen to the ground, probably would have gotten hurt pretty badly, but he had gotten over it, and he would have been fine.

But I remember in that moment just going the. This is an example of the parenting of Joel and Marybeth, of them allowing him to make decisions like that.

So help them to find out what would make them feel more confident. Do not allow it to be not making the decision.

Well, I'd feel much more confident if you made the decision. That's not an option here. What would help you to be more confident in making the decision?

Create Safe Spaces for Calculated Risk (00:33:28)

Number three, create safe spaces for calculated risk. This is what I'm talking about. Confidence grows through action, not just encouragement.

You need to give people the opportunities to make decisions, to take risks, to fail without punishment. Right? This is what I'm talking about.

I am somebody who is a calculated risk taker. I'm somebody who's raced formula cars for many years. I've crushed some of those.

One of them I flipped three times in the air, two twice in the air and once on the ground. And I've taken some calculated risks. I've gone into the wall at a pretty high rate of speed. I've done stuff like that. I grew up racing in skiing.

I took some crazy risks. There's lots of risks that I've taken in my life. You have to create the opportunity. And why do I do those things? Because I grew up. I'm a Gen Xer. I grew up taking risk.

I grew up calculating, going, what's the worst thing that could happen here? How badly could I get hurt here? Well, I'll go ahead and take that risk. And then getting hurt in a situation and going, okay, that really sucked, but I'm going to try it again.

Right? You have to create those safe spaces. You have to make it where somebody can take risks. You have to make it where somebody can fail without punishment.

In our business, we are very clear, do not make fatal failures. Right? You can fail. We expect you to fail. If you're not failing, that means you're not trying. And if you're not trying, I don't need to pay you, right?

So it's okay if you fail. We have certain caveats with this. If you fail, learn how not to do the same failure again. And make sure that you're not taking a risk that's so big that it ends up in a fatal failure. Right?

Calculate that. If it's going. If. If you're taking such a huge risk that it could really affect something horridly. Don't do it. Change, adjust, get some insight, get some help.

But when you do not create those opportunities for people to take risks and discover. And this is one of the things that Jonathan Haidt is talking about in this book.

This is just one of 14 billion fantastic pieces of information that when kids are not allowed. When they are protected and they are not allowed to take risks, they live a life in defense, everything is in defense.

Where those of us who were raised with the ability, and I'm talking about thousands of years before the 90s, if you will, we grew up in what's called discovery mode.

We would go and discover, can we do that? Is that going to hurt? How badly is it going to hurt?

And we, we grew basing our decisions and we grew stronger in making decisions about things that could hurt, could be bad, could have failure. That was a big, big piece.

Now I'm not saying I'm somebody who comes from a pretty jacked up Root System where, you know, I was told plenty of times of things that I was a failure at or responsible for that had nothing to do with me.

Some of you that have been through next level life, you understand this concept that is different than what I'm talking about.

When I'm out there on my own and as a kid playing in the woods and doing whatever, then I'm learning to take risks.

When I was out there skiing by myself, racing and doing stuff without some of this intervention, I was able to make my own decisions and you know, take risks and calculate things right.

That's the way that my brain operated. So when you look at allowing somebody to be in that phase, they're in the discovery mode.

They're discovering what they can do, what they can't do, how big of a problem it could be, how it might not be a problem at all.

For a person who is constantly not allowed to do that, to take those risks, to make changes, to possibly fail, make a decision, to possibly fail, they live in that defensive mode.

What's going to happen if, what's going to happen when, how bad is this going to be? Failure, failure, failure. Fear, fear, fear, fear. So give people the ability and the opportunities to make decisions, take risks and fail without you punishing them.

So for example, you might give them some kind of low, low risk reps, if you will, of here. I want you to make this decision on, you need to come to a decision, you need to, you know, I don't want you to be focused on fear.

I want you to think through and process through and here's your guidelines and whatever help them to make small decisions that have safe consequences.

Here's the worst thing that can happen if you do this and this fails. Here's the situation, here's what's going to happen if you fail, right?

Allow them to know what the safe consequences are, that you're not going to rip their head off, that you're not going to treat them Horribly, because they probably have been treated horribly and they can make a real impact with those small decisions.

As you do this and you allow this and you treat them correctly. I'm not saying, you know, if they do really stupid stuff outside the context of what you're talking about, that they don't have a different consequence for that.

I'm talking about the safe consequences inside the process. Right? When you do that, you will help them to build confidence. You will help them to make better decisions. You will help them to make faster decisions.

You will help them to see fear ahead of time and stomp it out. You will help them to think through what is the worst thing that could possibly happen ahead of time and stomp that out.

So identify areas where the team member or team members, they can make more calls, then support them if things go wrong. Help them, hey, not a problem. How do you fix this? How do you make a better decision next time?

How do you make sure that never happens again? You know, we go through the five steps. What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? How do we fix it?

How do we make sure it never happens again? If you walk through that and they see that's the, the worst that happened is that we solved the problem, then they will make more risky decisions in the future.

Right? They're calculated risk. So the goal is progress. It is definitely not perfection.

Speak Identity and Belief Into Them (00:40:06)

Number four, speak identity and belief into them. And let me say, parents and spouses, for the love do this.

And I'm not talking about blowing somebody's head up with ego and all of that kind of stuff. I'm talking about speak truth.

If you want somebody to stop leading out of fear, you've got to help them believe something new about themselves.

Fear is most often rooted in that past failure, that past shame, you know, rejection that they experienced. Somebody pulling love away from them, distancing themselves from them.

Leaders who call out capability and worth in their team members can literally help replace fear with purpose. You can change the way they think and they can start looking at something instead of it being so fearful, looking at it with purpose.

So let's say, you know, a leader told his team member, you're one of the most observant people on this team. I want you to start trusting that your judgment has value.

By doing that, that reframes that person's entire mindset. The mindset before was, my judgment doesn't have value, my input doesn't have value.

So there's no way I'm going to talk about stuff. But you help them to see, you're so observant and you see things.

One thing I need you to know, there is value in that. There's value for you speaking into this situation. So I don't want you to sit on the sidelines and not say anything. I want you to speak into this.

So make it a part of your leadership rhythm to call out truth. Help them build a new story, if you will. You know, you're capable, you're growing. You have what it takes.

You can do this. Speak up, speak into this, point things out. Well, but what if I say something that is wrong or fails? So what? We all do that. And I think that's one thing.

That's one thing that I just don't have a problem with. I will speak into things. Sometimes I will throw something out. It's just like, that's really ridiculous.

Oh, well, okay. Well, I tried because I'm constantly trying to solve problems and come up with new options.

So it is not uncommon for me to say something to somebody and they just look at me like, where did that even come from?

Well, I'm just trying to figure something out. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. No big deal. I'm not. I'm not going to be, you know, all hurt about that.

Help them to see it's okay to speak into things. If you have somebody or if maybe you are that person who is shutting the person down by telling them how that's just stupid.

That's never going to work. That's whatever. Then you need to recognize that needs to be shut down.

Set Clear Expectations and Accountability—With Support (00:42:49)

Point number five, set clear expectations and accountability with support. Circle star, highlight with support. Helping somebody out of fear doesn't mean removing all challenge.

You're actually not helping them because you remove the challenge. That's actually instilling fear. That's actually showing them you can't do this. That's helping them to stay in that defense mode instead of the discovery mode.

It means pairing expectation with encouragement. Encourage them to do. Encourage them to take a calculated risk and explain to them what a calculated risk is.

This is how we go through this whole situation and we look at potential failures, potential obstacles, potential problems. What's, you know, the worst outcome that could possibly happen?

What are we going to do if this goes wrong? How are we going to solve this when. Help them to take those calculated risks.

But you got to understand that if you give too much grace without the growth aspect, like, you're helping them to fail, but you're removing challenges, you're taking stuff away because you're, you think you're being graceful to them, which is, is not the right word.

But what happens is that they stay stuck. If you're removing these challenges, it's enabling. Let me change it to enabling.

You're removing these challenges, you're, you're allowing them not to fail. That's not grace, that's actually helping somebody to stay stuck, right?

If you put too much pressure and you don't have the support that goes with it, then they collapse. So balance both of them, right?

Don't give them nothing but heavy duty things that create so much pressure that they're, you know, it's a self fulfilling prophecy. Of course they're going to fail.

But also don't remove challenge to the point where they're enabled and they don't have to do anything. So define what success looks like. Provide the guardrails to it.

Coach consistently and celebrate the effort. Don't, don't just hey, all right. And move on. Help them to see that the effort is as important as the outcome. Celebrate the outcome for sure, but celebrate the effort that they put into it.

Action Items (00:45:02)

So here's some action items for you that I want you to start right now. Once again, you have to get you out of the way.

You have to get your personal struggles, your personal fears, your personal fear of failure as the leader out of the way. If you're going to do these five steps. Identify fear based patterns on your team and discover who's playing to lose, not to win.

Have a conversation to uncover what's driving the fear with the person. Create small decision opportunities to build confidence.

Speak truth and identity into their actions and their leadership. Balance challenge with support through structured goals and coaching.

Additional Resources (00:45:44)

So we've got some additional resources for you.

We've got the Blog post: Overcoming Fear: How Leaders Can Empower Teams and Themselves.

And this post explores practical steps leaders can take to create a culture free of fear, enabling teams to thrive and grow. It's a really good blog post you need to read.

Also episode 624 | Fear is the Enemy of Progress: Building the Courage to Lead Change. When leaders allow fear to dictate decisions, they bury their potential. Here's how to confront fear and leadership and lead with boldness instead.

Conclusion (00:46:20)

So fear based decision making folks, is way more common than you think. You know it, you've seen it, but it's even more than you probably experience because you got, you got to know the signs, right?

But it doesn't have to be permanent. So when you lead with clarity, compassion and challenge you can call people out of fear and.

And into faith, into ownership, and into the leader or the person that God created them to be. And that transformation, when they get there, when they do transform, it changes everything.

It changes everything for them. Their life, their family, but it also changes everything for their role in your business.

So if you want help coaching your team out of fear and into greater confidence, we're here to help. Reach out to us. We'd love to walk that journey with you.

And if you want leadership support, we've got you. So join our leadership by text community and get clarity, confidence, and the occasional reminder that you're not crazy. You're just leading. Right? It's free. It's practical. It takes 10 seconds.

www.chrislocurto.com. Just hit the banner at the top of the page. Well, folks, that's all the time that we have for today. I hope this has helped you immensely. Such good information.

You may need to go back and listen to this a time or two, get this to people who need to hear this. Help us to help other folks, right? Help us to reach out and, you know, give us a comment, give us a ranking on iTunes or wherever you're listening to this.

We would love that because our goal is to help as many people as we possibly do. As always, take this information, Change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.