The #1 theme in Executive Coaching
Do you know what the #1 theme that comes up with clients in my coaching practice is?
Amongst all my clients, from different industries, different levels, different roles, different demographics? The theme that comes up the MOST across the board is this:
FEAR OF FAILURE.
The fear of failure is pervasive across most people I speak to, and it lurks right under the surface outside of our awareness. Leaders, despite their obvious successes, still feel apprehensive about their ability to “succeed”, thus affecting their confidence and their decision-making at work and in life. This is true for men and women in my practice and it is true for Millennials, GenZ, and even my GenX clients at the height of their careers.
Fear of failure paralyzes us. It stunts our growth opportunities. It perpetuates a cycle of self-doubt and perfectionism. For some, the fear of failure feels as terrifying as death.
So what’s underneath that, and what can we do about it?
The fear of failure can come from any number of root causes and messaging. For some, its pressure from parents as children, for others it’s their schooling, and for others still its their professional endeavors, working in high-pressure environments with toxic cultures and low tolerance for mistakes.
But failure is an important part of human learning and growth. To become the person you are today, you were required to fail at absolutely every single thing you know how to do at least a few times before you learned to do it right. As babies, we learn to walk by falling down. As kids, we learn to count by counting incorrectly. As teens we learn to drive by stalling out the car a few times. So why are we allowed and encouraged to ‘fail’ as children but as adults it becomes our most devastating fear?
A few perspectives on this:
Capitalism: A system that is built for corporate gain is by design intolerant of creativity. Creativity and failure are inextricable from one another and when push comes to shove, financial gain will always trump creativity and innovation, despite what your corporate values and company culture say.
Traumatic experiences: Maybe, at one point in your life, someone who had not “done the work” on themselves to know they were activated allowed themselves to react in a way that was incongruent with your own well-being, leaving a lasting mark on you and planting a seed for the fear of failure to fester.
Our own brain: Our brains job is not to help us be thriving, successful, and self-actualized. Our brain’s job is to keep us alive and safe, and if you’re reading this then your brain has done an excellent job so far. However, safety and survival are in some ways also incongruent with creativity, expansion, growth, and exploration all of which lead to actualization. The path to get there is designed with failure as a feature, not a bug, and sometimes we have to work through our own hardwiring to see past ourselves.
There are many more reasons for why fear of failure manifests so strongly in most of us, and each person will have their own story of how they arrived there. What matters is first, knowing your origin story, and second, learning how to rewrite it.
In coaching, we may rewrite this story through a number of different techniques. We may take a cognitive approach to help ourselves see the flaws in our logic, or we may take a family systems approach and connect with our inner child to provide them the comfort they seek when they’re afraid. We may also look at a social-systemic view and understand how the systems around us have created an environment where the fear of failure was adaptive and well-fed, and we can learn to internalize and externalize the elements that are, and are not, ours to carry. Whatever approach we take, it will be tailored to you, to your story, to your particular relationship with failure, and we will regularly revisit and develop a new relationship for you to ground on that is intentional and Self-Led.
And why is working through your fear of failure so important? Because the thing you want most is exactly on the other side of failure. Because you will absolutely never achieve what it is that you seek without first confronting this ubiquitous human experience. Because in order to maximize your potential, make more money, grow in your career, find balance and joy in work and life, work with your strengths, set boundaries, advocate for yourself, know yourself, live a creative life and career, or find any amount of self actualization, you must look in the mirror first and overcome the thing that is keeping you stuck. If it were easy, everyone would have done it by now.
A few coaching questions to get you thinking:
Where did you first hear the messaging that failure was something bad and to be feared?
Where does the fear of failure show up for you at work? Where did it show up this week?
What is one way you can re-write the narrative around failure in order to support your goals this week?
Fear of failure is normal. Letting it control your life is not. Coaching can help.
To learn more or get started on your growth journey, email me at cat@catalinafries.com.