Speaking with an employee of a client of mine during Christmas drinks, they were telling me how much anxiety they had about work at the moment. It had been tough but the pressure was on, and they had been achieving decent enough results; however sure enough their performance had waned recently and was worsening, thus creating more fear and so less results. When asked if they had talked to their boss about it they said they didn’t feel comfortable. Having witnessed this it prompted me to put the spotlight today on fear.

When I was young I spent a lot of time doing sports (in particular martial arts), and there was an occasion when a very senior and very famous teacher (Senseii Enoeda) was taking the class. At this stage I was highly accomplished with 10 years training under my belt, and awards for my technical abilities and achievements in the sport, however that night was very different. I was afraid. No reason to be, but i remember the sick empty fear i felt about screwing up before I went into the class. And guess what?... I did.  I had a shocker. Everything went wrong. My legs felt like lead and my arms like someone had poured concrete in them. No rational reason for this other than I let my anxiety overtake me.

My point being is that we all experience fear, rational or irrational. And when it strikes it can paralyze the best of us. So, what gives you anxiety at the moment? Is it a deadline? A family member? Finances?  Is it someone, or something, that has an influence over you? A boss, responsibilities or a role you have?

Have you admitted this to anyone directly associated with the thing that worries you?

So what's the big deal with a little fear?

The truth is fear is a pretty big deal. The facts are that 25% of all adults will experience mental ill health this year, with anxiety being by far and away the greatest challenge associated to it [Source: ONS]; anxiety so severe that it that it will be recorded by health professionals as a diagnosed disorder. In fact it is estimated that over 40% of you reading this will suffer anxiety so severe that it will require some form of health intervention over the course of your careers.

These figures make for sad reading, but they really are the tip of the iceberg. Fear is much more prevalent than these suggest. Think of all of the anxieties and fears so many of us regularly deal with but rarely disclose: The weekends where we begin to dread the Monday ahead; The times when we suffer personal challenge and sleepless nights; Those occasions where we worry about the outcomes of what we did or did not do at work. The fact is that fear, in some shape or form, often raises its head in everybody’s lives.

And any sustained fear inhibits performance.

Fear in the workplace

One area rarely addressed to the extent it should be is with fear attached to our objectives at the workplace.  It is both rife and detrimental to achieving success. Our own FRAMES data suggests approximately two thirds of people have an unhealthy level of fear or anxiety attached to their goals. This correlates with large scale employee engagement survey data almost exactly, with two thirds of employees not being actively engaged [Gallup]. I would suggest this is certainly more than a coincidence.

Left unchecked, fear demotivates, de-energizes, and disempowers us from taking the actions required to gain the results we seek, and can put us in a vicious cycle. Have you ever felt hesitation in taking an action because you are worried about the outcome, despite knowing it is the best thing to do? It’s pretty common and rarely helps us achieve the things we either know we need to, or would like to.

Hidden in plain sight

Engagement in the workplace is particularly vulnerable to fear and anxiety. Why? Because it is so often hidden from sight. This means it’s hard to put the necessary steps in place to work effectively through it. We are cultured to suppress our fears, to swallow our anxieties, to feel the fear and do it anyway. We are taught to show no fear because it makes us look weak, incapable, or vulnerable. Too often people keep their real fears hidden because they lack the confidence and trust to share them with colleagues/bosses, and often through fear of

negative judgement. This is neither healthy for performance nor productive. An unseen problem is one that cannot be resolved effectively; and the real scale of fear in relation to a person’s performance is rarely known in order to address it successfully.

Think about it for a moment. Do you truly know how much fear and anxiety might really be getting in the way of your employees achieving the desired results? Do you really expect them to tell you? And if they did, what would you really do about it?

Do you have the level of trust from your employees that they can tell you what’s giving them sleepless nights and how badly it is affecting them? International Gallup Survey data suggests that at least 70% of us are unlikely to have that level of trust in our bosses; and however much fear and anxiety you think your employees have regarding their key objectives, you are likely to be underestimating it. It is a chronic problem that persists and is not really being addressed.

Don't Judge Me

Fear of negative judgement is one that crops up often, and is often a reason anxiety, stress and fear persists unseen. If you fear the response to sharing your specific anxieties with a person connected to that environment, then it both compounds the problem and lays unresolved. It can brew over time and become so much greater than it actually is.

Any high performing athlete will tell you that fear over a certain level, or sustained over time, can lock them up. It inhibits decision making. It creates tunnel vision and affects finer physical processes [too much adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine, etc can wreak havoc on mental and physical processes]. Ultimately, any fear response that occurs with frequency and consistency diminishes performance. This is a physiological response to our fight-flight-freeze survival response to imminent danger, being felt in today’s world at the prospect of not meeting a deadline.  Over time it is debilitating, harmful and counter-productive.

So what can you do?

1. Understand the real scale of the problem

2. Accept that people’s fears, although possibly unfounded, are definitely real to them

3. Create a trusted non-judgmental space to communicate in

4. Learn the triggers, and if there are common themes (e.g. redundancy fears)

5. Rationalise and ensure that perspective is maintained (fear so often swells through not keeping it in its true perspective)

6. Communicate, rationalise and commit to working together to get through it

We have a designed a simple and fast system to identify and help people to overcome the challenge of fear, put it in context, and enable the best-fit next steps in order to move forward for any readers interested. Please do get in touch if you wish to discover more.