Five famous fears – with Amanda Gore…

I think one of the great things about doing what I do is the people I get to meet. Recently, I was presenting for the Entrepreneur Organization and one of the other speakers was the energetic, enthusiastic, and effervescent Amanda Gore.

Amanda must be one of Australia’s most famous speakers – and it is years since I had seen her in action (she has spent much time wooing audiences in the US). What a delight to listen to her message and to experience her sheer joy in sharing The Joy Project. Thanks Amanda for being so wonderfully generous with the group.

She of course has a no nonsense approach to wellbeing and all things human. She spoke a few words on the attributes of leadership and how fear gets in our way. What stops us having these attributes – how would you rate yourself out of 10 on each of them?

1. Vision/purpose
2. Listening
3. Humility
4. Clarity
5. Perseverance/focus
6. Courage

Leadership is very much a matter of getting out of our own way. To give up our FEARS – and the little voice in our heads which tells us to “slow down and be careful”.

She outlined five famous fears:

1. Humiliation: which is the fear of what other people think; the irony is that people are too busy thinking about themselves to worry about thinking about you.
2. Separation: being different, separated from those that are important to us, being disconnected.
3. Poverty: the “I haven’t got enough” concept… yet money does not bring security.
4. Unknown: the fear of new things – or lacking of faith, hope and trust.
5. Missing out: the fear of keeping up with the “Joneses” – continually making comparisons (if you win the rat race you are still a rat).

To thrive as a leader is to give up these fears (but we all have them), it is difficult to eradicate them, but at least identifying where they stop you will help.

The first thing to reduce fear is to discover which fear drives you (or all of them) – discovering what the fear is – where the need for that fear has come from – and then to create the appropriate behaviors to compensate for that fear.

We don’t often talk about fear in business, but to have true happiness and joy then fear needs to be managed.

It is difficult to be a great leader when operating from a space of fear.

Naomi Simson is considered one of Australia’s ‘Best Bosses’. She is an employee engagement advocate and practices what she preaches in her own business. RedBalloon has been named as one of only six Hewitt Best Employers in Australia and New Zealand for 2009 and awarded an engagement scorecard of over 90% two years in a row – the average in Australian businesses is 55%. RedBalloon has also been nominated by BRW as being in the top 10 Best Places to Work in Australia behind the likes of Google. One of Australia’s outstanding female entrepreneurs, Naomi regularly entertains as a passionate speaker inspiring people on employer branding, engagement and reward and recognition. Naomi writes a blog and is a published author – and has received many accolades and awards for the business she founded – RedBalloon.com.au.