INsight/ Fear of Failure

Photo by Jonathan Mabey on Unsplash.

Manila, 13 July 2022 — Why your transition can look like a failure in the middle.

Story

It happened this week. Some of the leaders I am working with were practicing new communication styles, and it felt like the going was tough and didn’t work out as they expected. Others felt the fear of failure as they experienced an unexpected bout of impostor syndrome while navigating a career transition. I remember feeling the fear of failure myself as my team and I broke new ground to drive positive changes in a former workplace. When success remained elusive for a long time in the face of inertia and resistance to the change we brought, it was at times a struggle to not feel overwhelmed by the powerful fear of failure.

A decade later, I learned that this fear of failure is an integral part of the leader’s journey. And while we wouldn’t wish it on anyone, the reality is that we frequently encounter the fear of failure on our journey of leading a change. For me, an Aha! moment on how to deal with this fear came as I learned about the fifth key to leading positive change, which is to Never Give Up. This fifth key is a response to what is known as Kanter’s Law, named after Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School. It says that “in the middle, everything looks like a failure.”

When I discovered Kanter’s Law, it spoke to my head and heart. I felt its truth from the experiences I had gone through myself. Every project, innovation, and change initiative can indeed look — and feel — like a failure in the middle. In my coaching work, I realized how much Kanter’s Law can affect the hard work of leaders to adopt new behaviors. Almost always, their efforts are aimed at gaining confidence that the changes will work. And that is where the fear of failure can hit the hardest, when you have put yourself ‘out there’ to make a change happen and the next steps are taking you way outside your comfort zone. 

Challenge

Kanter’s Law highlights an essential difference between the challenges that managers and leaders take on. A manager’s challenge is to optimize the use of resources to ensure a satisfactory outcome in a given situation. That’s already difficult enough. A leader’s challenge, however, is to drive change, to make something happen that hasn’t been done before, and to overcome the resistance that inevitably accompanies that change. That’s more difficult, especially in the middle of the project.

Leaders love to design and start new projects and initiatives. They tend to focus on the beginning and on the end, and start the project with the desired end in mind. And then, Kanter’s Law kicks in to call attention to the unglamorous middle. The challenge of the middle and the fear of failure are rarely anticipated by leaders. Furthermore, the middle can take longer to navigate than you might expect. Sometimes, it already arrives soon after the high-energy beginning of your new initiative. And it can stretch longer than expected until, at last, a happy ending stage arrives.

Just like the leaders I work with, I love to cheer as they start a transition full of positive energy. And to be there as they reach the finish line and experience success. As a coach, however, I know that my greatest contribution may come in helping them work their way through the middle. It’s in the trenches and behind the scenes that we lay the foundations for success. That’s why the focus of our coaching is on helping leaders in the practice of change, rather than dwelling on a theory of change. The way to get success is to get through the middle, with lots of practice and perseverance, as shown by the men in the photo who practice in the driving rain.

Question

My question for you this week is about realizing that there is going to be ‘a middle’ in the process of driving the positive change you want to see in your organization or in your career. As you look forward to driving that change, what have you done to prepare yourself for the challenges of ‘the middle’ and put yourself in the best position to get through it?

While Kanter’s Law and the truth about the middle may come as bad news, the good news is that there are many coaching tools to help leaders who face the fear of failure and are committed to practicing their way through the middle of their project or transition. 

If the leader’s challenge appeals to you, book a free strategy call so that we can discuss the next transition you want to lead, and explore what it will take to get you there, making it all the way through ‘the middle.’