Every entrepreneur is familiar with fear. It is, after all, a crucible through which those who wish to mount a new business venture must pass. And further, it is a central driver behind all success. In the world of commerce, fear of failure is a double-edged sword that can either bring business owners down or frees them of the shackles that limit their success. Understanding and managing fear is thus a crucial aspect of all entrepreneurial ambitions.
Research by the Harvard Review of Business finds that fear both inhibits and motivates. Every business will concoct its own complicated mixture of fear and yet seven sources are common to every endeavor. These are:
- Fear of (lacking) financial security
- Fear of (in)ability to fund the venture
- Fear of individual (in)ability
- Fear of success (or lack thereof)
- Fear of (loss of) social esteem
- Fear of opportunity costs (or gains)
- Fear of the (in)ability to execute
Those who understand the sources of these fears are able to convert them into motivation. Those who don’t are inevitably crippled by the experience. Overcoming fear of failure is therefore a misguided notion. Instead of dominating fear, successful entrepreneurs lean into the experience and in so doing harness fear as yet another element that sets them apart from the vast majority who fail in their ambitions.
To understand how fear acts as both a supportive and destructive force it is important to understand fear, itself. All business coaching services worth their salt place special emphasis on this subject because when properly framed, fear becomes a potent tool.
Upon recognizing fear, your amygdala lights up. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are released, your blood pressure increases and, if your body and mind are calibrated to respond productively, you are driven to fight and find abilities that you could not conjure in any other context. Think: a parent who lifts a car off of a trapped child or a hiker who fights off a charging black bear. In the world of business, the equivalent is meteoric success of the type all of us want but few attain. Unexamined fear, on the other hand, has the opposite effect, leading the sufferer to experience paralysis that results in the unlucky hiker being eaten by the bear or the ill-prepared entrepreneur being eaten by their own anxiety.
Embracing the fear of failure (or fear of success) is easier said than done, however. It takes practice, deep self-knowing, and, most of all, help. Again, this is where business coaching becomes a crucial player. A good coach or consultant does more than provide an outside assessment of your business’ mechanics; they also assist in reshaping your relationship to fear such that you harness one of nature’s strongest drivers in the interest of empowering (instead of debilitating) your ambitions.
To learn more about the powerful role fear plays in determining business success, consider signing up for Hiring & Empowering Solution’s 66-Day Law Firm Turnaround program or simply reaching out to founder Molly McGrath for more insight into the subject.
