Master coach instructor, creator of Metacognitive Programming, a coaching and therapeutic technique. Founder and CEO of Think Meta.
getty
Most people have something they fear, even if that fear isn't so marked or out of proportion to actual danger to be considered a phobia. And it may not cause clinically significant distress or impairment that interferes with our daily functioning, as a phobia would do. And yet, it might make us anxious about certain objects and situations we would prefer not to be worried about.
Through my personal experience working with business leaders, I've learned that some of their most common fears include responsibility, taking risks, making decisions, making mistakes, and failing or disappointing others. When we deeply care about something, as leaders care about their businesses, a certain level of worry is expected and quite normal. But fear that paralyzes us and interferes with our ability to lead successfully is not.
Psychological Interventions To Leave Your Fears Behind
Regardless of what you might fear, there are well-established interventions you can use to leave your fears behind. Let’s take systematic desensitization (also called graduated exposure therapy) as an example. Wolpe, a South African psychiatrist and behavioral psychotherapist, developed systematic desensitization over 70 years ago while trying to figure out how to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in World War II veterans. Despite being developed many years ago, systematic desensitization is still considered the gold standard for working with phobias and anxiety disorders of various kinds.
Now, although this intervention is drawn from behavioral psychology, and although I often use it in formal psychotherapy and coaching sessions, people can and do use variations of this approach to confront their fears outside of psychotherapy and coaching. There is no magic to it. Below, I'll explain each step of Wolpe's method as well as how you can adapt it to work on your own business-related fears.
Desensitization In Five Steps
1. Understand
The first step is becoming familiar with the theoretical rationale behind desensitization. Basically, people cannot be tense and relaxed at the same time. It’s called mutual inhibition—you can be either tense or relaxed, not both. Thus, if you learn to remain relaxed as you face the feared situation, you will no longer be tense. But how do you learn to do this?
2. Relax
In the second step, you teach yourself relaxation techniques. My personal preference is progressive muscle relaxation, but other methods work equally well, including breathwork and meditation. Some also like the 5-4-3-2-1 method ("find five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell and one thing you can taste"). Note that the progressive muscle relaxation technique is not indicated for those with a history of back issues, muscle spasms or serious injuries.
3. Identify
Now that we have introduced some tools that may help you relax, we proceed to the third step: identifying the fear hierarchy. In this step, you make a list of situations that trigger your fear. Then you line them up, in order. from small thrills to big scares. Sometimes, there is only a single situation one fears. In that case, line up the scary moments in this situation, from smaller to bigger.
For instance, imagine a leader who fears decision-making. He is currently avoiding making any decisions, and his business is seriously suffering. This leader would list the specific decisions he fears and, consequently, avoids. The list might include deciding which cleaning company to hire for his building, deciding whether to hire/fire a particular (prospective) manager, deciding whether to expand his business to a new market, deciding whether to sign an important contract, etc.
Clearly, not all these decisions are equally frightening. As he and his partners really appreciate tidiness, he is afraid of hiring a cleaning company that would do sloppy work. Yet this is a minor decision compared to decisions like whether to expand his business, and would probably be assigned the lowest ranking in the hierarchy. On the other hand, a decision about hiring, expanding the business or signing a high-level contract would likely get the highest rank.
4. Exposure
The fourth step involves exposure. In this step, you go through your list of scares, imagining each one in detail, and practice keeping your body relaxed while being exposed to what you fear. You start with the least scary ones, and move from there. In the example above, our business leader would first practice staying relaxed while imagining deciding on the cleaning service. Importantly, you only proceed to the higher fear-inducing levels once you have managed to remain relaxed during the lower ones.
5. Repetition
The fifth and final step is consolidating the lessons learned through repeating this process.
Final Thoughts
Although this article mainly focuses on business leaders and their fears, a similar approach can be used for very different workplace scenarios and by people holding very different positions within the corporate world—managers who fear public speaking, employees who fear saying no to management, etc.
There is no doubt that systematic desensitization works. It has worked for me, the people I work with and some people who have tried it on their own. The emphasis here, though, is on "some." I do want to note that systematic desensitization is usually done with a therapist, and a therapist’s support might be particularly valuable during exposure (the fourth step).
However, some people successfully use this method without professional assistance. Thus, I encourage you to try it on your own and follow your own internal cues. If you find that even exposure to the most benign scares is too overwhelming, I advise you not to torture yourself but to seek professional help. Psychotherapists and coaches are trained in these interventions and can help you along the way.
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
