Page 139 - Fearless Leadership

126 FEARLESS LEADERSHIP

wait for a better time, or the right moment, when the other party will be
more receptive and you will feel more confident. So you wait, but the right
moment never appears, and you do not feel comfortable having the con-
versation anywhere but inside your head.
The quandary is that you cannot feel comfortable or safe until you have
a responsible and forthright conversation with the appropriate person. It
is the act of having a frank conversation that creates safety in your rela-
tionship with others.
Let’s take another example of counterintuitive thinking: how we relate
to taking accountability and apologizing. Conventional thinking leads us
to believe that an apology is an admission of guilt or a sign of weakness.
The words “I’m sorry” or “I apologize” catch in our throat and come out
as a constricted sound that embarrasses us or others, and we quickly move
on to another topic. But here again, apologizing and taking accountabil-
ity are not admissions of blame, weakness, or frailty. They are, in fact, the
opposite. When you apologize for your impact, you demonstrate courage
and offer the gift of recovery. You reach out to others to repair possible
damage and restore the relationship.
Another small but telling act is how you listen to others. You may think,
as many do, that listening means paying greater attention to exactly what
is being said, the content of the story. By focusing on the literal message,
you get to be right and say, “That’s not what you said—I heard your pre-
cise words, and you can’t weasel out of them now.” By not listening to the
real message—the emotional content and commitment—you miss what
is really being said. In Chapter 6, we explore listening for positive inten-
tion which is a method for listening beyond the words to the commitment
and contribution being expressed. As with all extraordinary behaviors of
fearless leaders, you must lean into your discomfort—for example, by lis-
tening for emotional meaning—in order to expand your capability and
effectiveness.
There is also a natural aversion to commit, a fear that we will be locked
into something or trapped in some way. That explains why we have mul-
tiple types of “casual promises” and only one type of commitment, which
we explore in detail in Chapter 7. Our avoidance of committing is mul-
tifaceted: we don’t want to get trapped, look bad, fail, be embarrassed, or
lose the support and respect of others.