— by Tom Darden

We often see media reports about the latest survey of people’s fears. These tend to come in two varieties— some are about phobias, while others deal with real-life fears. The phobia stories are fun to read because they remind us of visceral fears that most of us share, such as spiders, heights, or public speaking. But the surveys about real-life fears tell us something about who we are, both psychologically and culturally.

Chapman University asks Americans every year about their leading fears. Some of the top ones in 2018 include corrupt government officials, environmental pollution, contaminated drinking water, and respondents’ own economic futures. The sickness or death of loved ones, environmental extinctions, global warming, and medical bills also rank high, being listed by over half of all respondents. Interestingly, most of these fears are societal as opposed to individual. Other than personal economic outcomes, medical bills, and maybe clean drinking water, Americans mostly are afraid of things that affect society or the planet at large.

These societal fears can be just as intense as personal concerns. Early in high school, I had frequent stomach pains and ultimately saw a gastroenterologist. He found nothing, but he asked questions about my life and whether I worried very much. I told him that I worried all the time, specifically about environmental doom. I felt like I needed to be doing something about it, which created dissonance because I was in no position to do so. The doctor sent me away, saying my stomach was fine but I should stop worrying so much. This was only half-helpful, and it marked the beginning of nearly 50 years of wondering – and even worrying – about worrying.

Over decades of being in business, I have seen that fear is a key factor affecting executives. Search on the words “executive fear” and you can find 4,924 references to articles, cases, etc. in the index of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) alone. You will find titles such as, “Don’t Let Your Inner Fears Limit Your Career,” “How to Overcome Your Fear of Failure,” or “What CEOs Are Afraid Of.”

HBR would not publish thousands of articles about executives’ fear unless it were a real issue, but this would surprise the world at large. Business leaders are viewed as being fearless. Articles and polls about positive or even negative traits of executives do not discuss fear. And no one wants leaders of any kind to be afraid. According to Gallup’s “State of the American Workplace Report,” employees want their company leaders to be inspiring, caring, visionary, enthusiastic, competitive, and intense. The public wants similar traits in the US president, according to Gallup. Clearly these attributes seem inconsistent with fear. It would be difficult for a leader to be inspiring or visionary, much less enthusiastic or intense, while focusing on fear in the background.

While business leaders seem to be as fearful as everyone else, there is one difference. They worry more about themselves than they do about the world or societal issues. Their top fear, according to “What CEOs Are Afraid Of” (HBR), is the imposter syndrome—fear of being found incompetent. Additional leading fears include underachieving, appearing vulnerable, political attacks by peers, and appearing foolish. Others mentioned include retirement, dying, and loss of reputation. About 60% of the executives responding said that at least some of these fears afflicted members of their own teams, impeding honest conversations and causing internal politics, game playing, and bad behavior.

Even though the executives interviewed talked a lot about their fears, 95% of them said their colleagues were unaware of them. Said another way, they believe their own fear is a secret. This is particularly odd since they are aware of the fears of their team members, and they know their fear creates problems in the office. Like the emperor with no clothes, can they possibly believe nobody else is aware, and only they can see it? This suggests that a remarkable level of dysfunctionality is based on fear and the inability of organizations to address it effectively. Fear leads to bad performance, and business executives have a lot of it, but they cannot fix it. Clearly business outcomes would improve if we could find a way to reduce fearfulness.

When fearfulness or its impact on organizations are discussed in business literature, the solutions are predictable. Hire people with high emotional intelligence, which presumably correlates with either lower levels of fear or better coping skills. Train for fearlessness or fear management by encouraging people to be vulnerable. Encourage employees to discuss their backgrounds and fears so they become desensitized to appearing vulnerable. Or follow the advice of a banker friend who once told me, “Ninety- five percent of what people are afraid of won’t actually happen, so you might as well quit worrying.” Whether that’s helpful or not remains unclear to me.

Outside of the context of business, there are many resources for managing fear or worrying, including journaling, hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, and therapy. Presumably these other tactics could have a positive impact on the side effects of fear, like organizational problems. But treating symptoms is less effective than treating root causes. We should be asking, “Why do we fear,” rather than, “What do we fear” or “How should we manage fear?”

Aside from our phobias, our fears arise from our lack of control over outcomes we believe are important to us. For business executives, these tend to relate to how we are perceived, or how we perform relative to some set of expectations. These expectations likely have to do with financial performance, career esteem, physical health, or reputation.

While the answers may seem obvious, we should ask ourselves not only why but also whether we should care about these at all. Businesspeople are especially hard-wired to be responsive to others, and to conform to the expectations of the people and broader cultures around us. Company success correlates to this, and businesses that meet or exceed society’s expectations are rewarded. As individuals, our early socialization motivates us to do a good job, as defined by others. My elementary school report cards included conduct assessments, such as “Takes pride in his work.” I remember being confused about why my school considered this to be a positive behavior. If the work was meaningless, or if I had done a bad job, why should I be proud of it? And in any case, wasn’t it arrogant to be proud of myself? But the point of the conduct grade was to drive children to care about meeting external expectations. The unintended side effect is that we worry about deviations from society’s normal path, and we fear that others might realize we are suboptimal. We believe we will be happy if we meet the norm, and unhappy if we do not.

It is ironic that we believe this so intensely, given that we are not very successful at predicting how contented we will be if our circumstances change—whether for better or for worse. Furthermore, centuries of research on happiness, from Plato to St. Augustine to modern thinkers, conclude that we struggle on hedonic treadmills, with external events in our lives only causing temporary blips upward or downward. Business history is filled with stories of miserable people who “succeeded” and happy people whose companies were upended by unexpected problems. Instead of worrying that our happiness requires following a linear path to a specific outcome, how can we learn to be content in whatever circumstance we are in?

One useful resource on this topic is the Apostle Paul, who addressed it often, and most specifically in his prison letter to the Philippians (4:6–13). His previously- comfortable life was dramatically disrupted, and he suffered almost unimaginably. Yet he ignored all that and stayed on his mission. He wrote that he had learned to be content whether he was rich or poor, hungry or filled, and by implication, even whether he was in prison or not. He was able to dismiss his fears because he knew what mattered; almost none of what we worry about mattered to him. We may never have his strength or suffer from his challenges, but we can learn from Paul how to stop worrying and focus on what is important.

Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ. This article was from a collection of White Papers compiled for attendees of the CEF’s Global Event.

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