Passion for Innovation. Second Factor: Fear of Failure
Fear may be more or less visible, but it has always been and always will be present. The ancients saw fear as a punishment from the gods. In Greek mythology, Phobos and Deimos, the sons of Ares (the god of war), were the personifications of fear and terror. The Romans named them Pallor and Pavor [Terror]. Different names for versions of the same emotion. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wisely said, “All humans experience fear. All. He who does not experience fear is not normal, and this has nothing to do with courage.” (Delemeau, 1989) Its presence and power are such that even Franklin Roosevelt included it as one of the main pillars of his first speech (1933) after assuming the presidency, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
The Latin word was metus, a term that reflected the circumstances which provoke terror. Its definition is: (a) an anxious perturbation of the mind because of a real or imaginary risk or harm; and (b) a feeling of suspicion or apprehension that something undesired may happen. Its synonyms are: fright, scare, panic, terror, horror, etc.
It is important to differentiate fear from anxiety. Fear develops in the presence of actual danger and is associated with the damage, or supposed damage, this threat may cause. Anxiety, on the other hand, does not arise as the result of danger or a concrete motive. It does not develop as a result of an external stressor. It comes from within.
Fear is one of the primary or basic human emotions, together with happiness, sadness and anger. These are present at birth and are always with us. Fear is an intense and unpleasant emotion that causes us to experience a change in our mental state when faced with possible danger and/or a possible negative event. Implicit in it is the feeling of uncertainty regarding our ability to deal with this danger, and this generates nervous tension and a desire to avoid it. So it is a primary, negative emotion, since it causes negative feelings and paralysis.
When fear is described in this way it may appear to be something bad. However, this is not necessarily the case. Fear has a positive side. It is an indicator that not all is well and an emotional warning sign that physical or psychological danger is near. It is an emotion that can protect us and prevent us from coming to harm. Indeed, Charles Darwin (1872) said that emotions developed because of their importance for adaptation. For him, fear was a clear survival mechanism.
In contrast to healthy fear there is pathological fear. This takes the form of unjustified alarm in regulation and/or activation. In the first case, it occurs in an excessively intense form. In the second its activation is in too low a threshold, which means that it’s been triggered far too often. Naturally, it can also appear as the outcome of a distortion of reality, the product of projections or the subject’s own imagination. This is the dangerous terrain of phobias.
The fear of failure is a very present emotion in the world of business and undoubtedly one of the greatest enemies of innovation. What is it? How does it appear? How does it affect us? What is its operating mechanism?
Fear of failure can be defined as a paralysing thought that something is not going to turn out well and that will lead to negative consequences. A high level of fear of failure leads to deep thoughts of not coming up to standard. People who suffer from this are most concerned about what others say about them, so they restrict themselves and devote valuable energy to seeking excuses and justifications for their actions. Naturally, this includes their failure to act. It’s an emotion that is associated with inaction, as it seeks to avoid pain derived from making a mistake.
The concept is very close to risk aversion, indeed, the dividing line between the two is often very blurred. Risk aversion reflects the attitude of all those people who prefer to undertake sure investments or business activities even though the earnings are low, rather than take a chance and make a bigger profit. In other words, for people who suffer from risk aversion, negative emotions associated with loss are much greater than what is achieved with success.
C.P. Smith’s research (1969) showed that children with higher fear of failure levels are the children of mothers who have great achievement goals and the lowest assessment of their own children’s capabilities. In the same vein, a great deal of research, such as that of Hassan, Inayatullah and Khalique (1977), has shown that stern, authoritarian and punitive parents bring up their children with a greater fear of failure than others. They are not the only ones, and in fact this is a subject about which a great deal could be said. What is important to realize is that our childhoods exert a very serious effect on our fear of failure, something that parents should always bear in mind if they do not want to consolidate it in their children’s personality.
The technical term for a pathological fear of failure is atychiphobia, and when experienced in this form it is seen as an illness. It is defined as an abnormal, persistent and groundless fear of failure. It is obsessive, extreme and irrational when placed against the possibility that the subject could be mistaken. This is a particularly paralysing phobia. Curiously, its polar opposite also exists – the fear of success syndrome.
The level of fear of failure experienced by a management team of a company is a factor that can significantly affect its strategic goals, and hence the path chosen to achieve them. When a management committee member suffers from such a strong fear that something bad may come of attempting to innovate, clearly any attempt at innovation is doomed. Managers in these demanding times must be emotionally prepared to assess risks intelligently, and when necessary, to run them.
In other words, if a manager wishes to deploy all of the creative potential of the team, they must run the risk of failing as well, and learn to pick up the pieces after each time it happens, having learnt a fresh lesson. If that manager spends their life besieged by fear, there’s no hope that the team will be otherwise.
2. Innova 3DX for the Fear of Failure
The second step is to find an explanation. If you can find out why it arises, why it invades you and paralyses you, you can reduce its intensity. Marie Curie, the only woman to have ever received two Nobel prizes actually said, “We cease to fear something which we have learnt to understand.”
In this process, your breathing plays an essential part. If you can manage to control it and get it back to normal you’ll have reduced the level of fear and possibly even overcome it. If you complement this with a physical activity that generates endorphins (walking or running), you can liberate the hormones that cause you to be tense.
You must do the same on the fear of failure front. The steps are to recognize it, understand it, attempt to move beyond it and then overcome it. If it forms part of your life or that of your team’s, you now know how to begin: breathe.
Figure 11.1 Fear Test
To manage and monitor fear you must make use of a double measurement. First, you measure fear in general terms: Are you living with fear? Does it affect your behaviour? To what extent? Is the fear rational or out or proportion? Let’s measure your orientation towards a healthy form of fear.
And second, focus your attention on fear of failure, to see if you’re dealing with a form of fear that is more or less acceptable or if it occupies a central position in your life. You can work on your tolerance for failure.
Instructions: score your opinion on each statement from 0 – 10, with 0 being the lowest score and 10 the highest. You may use decimals if you wish.
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Orientation towards healthy fear |
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1. |
I am aware of my fears. |
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2. |
I can recognize my fears. |
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3. |
I do not allow myself to be carried away by my fears. |
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4. |
I do not live with fear. |
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5. |
I learn a great deal from my fears. |
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Average score |
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Tolerance for failure |
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1. |
Failure is part of the road to success. |
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2. |
After failure come successes. |
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3. |
Failure is a risk that has to be taken. |
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4. |
I have learnt a great deal from my failures. |
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5. |
I feel no fear of the possibility of making a mistake. |
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Average score |
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Result: from 0 – 3.5 (inclusive) very low, from 3.5 – 5 (inclusive) low, from 5 – 6.5 (inclusive) adequate, from 6.5 – 10 (inclusive) very high.
Figure 11.2 The Fear of Failure Quadrant
In the first and third quadrants you’ll find “frightened” people, people who experience a great deal of fear that holds them back and drains their alertness and energy. Next to them, in the second quadrant, you’ll find people who are blocked by their “fear of failure”. If you form a part of these groups, then you know where to start.
Fear is human, but allowing yourself to be devastated by it is not. Don’t waste your adrenalin, it has a much more valuable function. It develops into “healthy fear” (quadrant four). You will find that much more profitable.
3. Insight Management and Fear
If I were to write a book on fear, I would use a title such as “Welcome Fear!” to demonstrate that you never have to deny the existence of fear, because it’s like the monster in the wardrobe. The deeper you bury yourself in the bedclothes denying it, the more it grows and terrorises you. So the magic phrase would be, “OK, fear, talk to me – I’m listening.” And as you’d listen, your fear would become smaller, because once you listen to its warnings, it stops calling your attention.
Refusing to listen improves nothing. Taking account of what you’re facing is vital for you to be able to respond/react in time and correctly. The opposite, to freeze, leads to financial and emotional death.
On other occasions what lies behind fear is paradoxically a more or less conscious desire. “I’m afraid you want to leave me” might also be, “I would like you to leave me because I’m incapable of taking the decision, and that’s what I need.” Identifying a projection and taking responsibility for the reality you generate is essential to happiness and gives you the feeling of being in control without the sensation of having a chip on your shoulder or being the world’s victim.
Other confusions might be, “I’m afraid you’re attacking me because in reality it’s me who wants to attack you.” I have special experience of this case because of a huge Dutch client who came to tell me that he lived in terror, certain that he was about to be mugged in the street at any moment. He could barely sleep at night, and when he managed to, he would suffer from terrible nightmares.
My own feeling in his presence was also one of fear, but it was very different, because what caused the fear was the man himself. He was racked with internal fury mixed with aggressive paranoia, which gave me the feeling that he really might attack me. This information was important, because it helped me get him to see that the attitude he projected in the streets was frightening for everybody else too. He was nearly seven feet tall, had tight spiky hair, dreadful tattoos, and sudden movements; to make it worse the heavy rock that burst from his earphones made communication with him impossible. You could see that inside, he really thought the world had it in for him but that in reality he was poised to attack, so that his greatest fear was actually of harming others if he lost control.
Fortunately he had enough self-awareness to realize something was wrong with his perception and that he couldn’t manage it by himself. What triggered him to seek help was when, pushed by his father, he accepted a job as a night-time security officer. The job was performed alone and he felt even more frightened. Soon he was offered to carry a gun, skipping the mandatory psychological tests. At that point he was sensibly scared enough to resign. He sought my help, got better and recovered his sleep, peace and love.
This story describes the journey he made from darkness to light. In the darkness lay the reasons for being so frightened and which he couldn’t understand (his size alone meant he could kill someone with just a blow, and they gave him a gun!). Having the courage to stop and face his fear, take ownership of his anger, meant that he was beginning to express and place limits on his life, that he was growing out of being the wounded and threatened child and becoming an adult, easing the pressure cooker of his life so as to live in peace. People who just repress it, run the risk of ending up like so many tragic cases we’ve heard about who explode one day and murder people senselessly in a supermarket or a school.
In many situations involving politics, business, the stockmarket and even more personal matters, this example of fear of one’s own projected violence is a daily occurrence. The world teems with false rumours, manipulations, aggression, and the tension that must be borne to avoid preventive or responsive aggression. History shows us the example of how Nazism used the natural fear felt by its leader, which echoed throughout Germany, trembling behind sanctions of war to invade and expand with the excuse that this would prevent the invaded nations from invading Germany. It was insane, and the Holocaust was the greatest madness in history, but at the time the Germans didn’t see it like that. They felt that, as victims, it was justified, and the Nazi party was even democratically elected. You have to bear in mind the fact that in conflict, the party that is the most aggressive always sees itself as the victim.
Hold. That’s the key word when it comes to fear: whoever feels frightened should open their eyes wide and hold tight to the hammer to defend themselves, but hold it still, don’t swing first. History is full of battles where neither side accepts starting it; they always think it was the other who made the first move. If you read versions of the same war according to historians from opposing countries, you will be amazed. Holding means not only holding back, but having the maturity to continue feeling emotion and perceiving reality and at the same time being able to not explode. You mustn’t confuse holding with repressing, because repressive energy is against movement, it adds more tension and conflict.
However, what is more normal and humane is the initial reaction of triggering aggression and control mechanisms instead of accommodating the fear. This is much more understandable, and all the more so if the party reacting is the government of a recently attacked superpower, but this does not mean that greater control is more efficient, certainly not at the cost of such action and the prices we must all pay. Control is necessary, efficient and must be present when there is implied risk or threat. It’s crucial to trust in institutions, authority and people and yet many actions where “control” is exercised reveal a false sense of control.
President Obama (June 19 2013) declared: “threats to freedom can arise from our own fears”. From my point of view he took a huge step forward in a process of emotional maturation which his own nation has been in need of taking since it suffered the grotesque aggression of the Twin Towers. Realising that now is the moment to hold the fear without implementing fresh coercive freedom-focused measures is definitely a demonstration that you have done the work and a good example for us all to follow in our own small field of activity.
If you want energy to flow, you must resist raising barriers to its movement. You cannot ask your department to be more agile if at the same time, you are imposing supervision in the forms of checks and audits, etc. How would it be if every passenger wanted to perform their own blood alcohol level test on the pilot before take-off, just to be sure? You would never get off the ground. The line between control and mistrust is very fine and can be inadvertently crossed in a second. Control taken to the extreme is paranoid and highly dysfunctional. The thought police described by George Orwell in his brilliant novel 1984 not only put an end to creativity and innovation, but also to any hint of colour, life and light.
Let’s take a look at the physiological side. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that there are five seasons, five elements, five main archetypical animals, etc. In winter, the dominant emotion is fear, and when listened to with wisdom it gives rise to an attitude of recognition, of not wasting energy, of not going out and of exploring inside. Metaphorically one flees from the threat of cold, as one could flee in a crisis from excessive pageantry expenses. Energy is focused by concentrating attention on what is here and now, rather than opening up new centres, projects, fires. Winter energy corresponds to the kidney – vitality and sexuality – as necessary for work as for getting the most out of life. If your fear stops provoking a prudent attitude and becomes an excessive or groundless emotion, it becomes sick and paranoid, sapping vital energy and enjoyment, both yours and your team’s. The antidote to fear is humour. Play the monkey a bit (a powerful archetypical animal), get back your bodily movement, dance, laugh at yourself and relate to others, affectionately and physically. Enjoy. Your energy levels will rise again and your suspicions will fall to a healthy and reasonable level.
So fear and an absence of pleasure go hand-in-hand, interacting. If you aren’t enjoying life, your energy will seep away and you’ll find yourself afraid to launch yourself into life, achieve your desires and develop the projects you want to. Moreover, if you’re scared, you’ll cease to innovate, learn and experience the opportunities in life and you’ll shrink back to what you already know. You must leave your comfort zone. Do things differently. Break away from inertia and routine, come back to life. What happens if one day, instead of scurrying home from work you decide to take a walk and enjoy the evening? What would happen if you had a beer with your colleagues? No doubt a number of people would say, “My husband/wife would kill me”. Or would you say, “What? With all the jobs waiting for me at home?” or “Walk? I have a car – why would I want to walk?” If you take the chance to experience the new every day, you’ll retain the feeling of being alive and the happiness to generate and defend new projects. If you stick with the known, you’ll break the chain that generates hope and happiness, and sooner or later you’ll lose your vitality and desire to do anything.
Some people say that it’s better to develop your understanding of what you do know rather than attempt something new and risk finding nothing. As always, there are no universal rules, but the syndrome of “this has worked until now” becomes increasingly serious – paralysing with devastating consequences as shown by the number of bankruptcies in recent years. Come out of your comfort zone: live, create, innovate and enjoy it.
Another ancient tale recounts that in the Sufi tradition, a man named Nasrudin was looking for his keys under a street light. Assorted passers-by saw him and gave him a hand to find them, until at last, one of them asked him if he was sure he had lost them there. Nasrudin answered cuttingly that he had actually lost them in his house, but his “house” was very dark, while out in the street under the street lamp, it was very light. It seems absurd, but everyone does precisely the same thing. When you prefer to stay with what’s comfortable you carry on, handcuffed to the past, to an image of what’s no longer there. You have to look again without prejudice in order to see reality, discard what has crumbled to make space for the new.
There are two special cases that need to be tackled: fear of failure and fear of success. People who carry a lot of fear of failure move little, don’t take chances and don’t move outside their safety zone. They are also prone to leaving doors open, yet they don’t walk through them. They neither throw anything away nor break anything in case they may need it. They are insecure creators, because when they find something they like they freeze and cease creative activity, fearing that anything they add will ruin what’s been achieved up to that point. I can understand that attitude – it’s very common. I recall my first experiences painting with oils, and when I liked something in my picture, I froze, unable to continue to develop it for fear of destroying it. However, he who wishes to become a great painter must have the nerve to risk the good and pretty in order to achieve the excellent and sublime.
On other occasions I have had clients with a less common type of fear: fear of success, sometimes concealed behind fear of failure or change. In this case there are sure to be psychoanalytical reasons (low self-esteem or childhood traumas) that weigh down the individual’s journey to success. I recall one woman who told me she would prefer not to win a match because she wasn’t sure how long she could keep on doing it. Another woman said she would rather dump her boyfriend before he dumped her, even though she saw no likelihood that he would ever do so. And yet another said that she could not bear the blame of being a professional success and eclipsing her husband who seemed to grow steadily less successful. There’s also the case of a musician who never wanted to interpret the work of his dreams in the concert hall of his dreams because this would spell death – “nothing better could ever follow”.
In conclusion, do not die of fear, or commit suicide, or freeze, or sleep your way through life with “eyelids as heavy as judgement day” (Bennedetti). If you’re frightened, in addition to undertaking self-knowledge exercises to find out why you have this mechanism that leaves you isolated and cold, try to delve deeper into reality beyond what you think it is. Dare to live your life and let those who take part in it express themselves and respond. Shining light on your dark corners and crevices will prevent a lot of problems and facilitate a lot of success.