Does fearless mean the absence of fear?
In the dictionary yes, in business, no. Fearless leaders actually befriend fear, and incorporate its energy into their leadership style and team dynamics.
Imagine two skiers atop a challenging black diamond run. They sport upscale apparel and top of the line gear. One is having the best day ever; the other, the worst day ever. Why is one in a euphoric state, while the other trembles in cold sweat, about to soil those designer pants?
One is in the grip of fear – the other has befriended fear — and utilizes its energy.
What happens when your executives, sales teams, and key players actually face, embrace and befriend the fear of innovation and its inevitable disruption? What will that look like? A winning culture driven by extraordinary leadership teams; fearless, focused, interdependent, profitable.
Barry Moniak brings lessons learned about fear as a certified ski instructor for 22 years, along with 30 years as a business consultant assisting executives to develop a healthy and functional relationship with fear. He helps leaders transform debilitating team dynamics into creative energy and robust performance.
There are speakers who consult and consultants who speak. Barry Moniak is both. His customized presentations promote your theme and bring your event to life. In his engaging and insightful platform presentations, and innovative training sessions, you enjoy delightful personal experience and profound professional discovery.
FEAR … Friend or Foe?
How to be a leader with fear as your friend!
Program: Keynote | Breakout | Training
Best Audience: Leadership | Sales | Management | Customer/Client Relations
Length: 45-90 min Keynote | 1-2 hr Breakout | 1/2 – 2 day Training
With the mindset/skillset of “fear is my friend,” we can transform mindless destructive reaction into mindful constructive response.
We’ve all felt the powerful force of fear. It limits our ability to function, even paralyzes us – or gives us temporary super-human speed and strength (like someone lifting a heavy object off a trapped child).
The first step to befriending a fear is determining whether the fear is real or projected – even though our emotional experience of fear is exactly the same either way. Regardless if our fear is real or imagined, the feeling is very real. In either case the experience of fear, and how we process it, is unique to each of us.
This applies to leaders, managers, sellers, buyers, tech support and customer service. In the fearless leadership process the question is: Does fear work for or against us? Is it our friend – or our foe?
The truth is, real or imagined, fear is always our friend. It either warns and protects us – or inspires us to acquire the knowledge and skill we may currently be lacking.
The neurological response to fear produces the same chemical response in our physiology as enthusiasm or excitement. So, having a friendship with fear can be invigorating – even fun – when we welcome and honor it. Fear is never our foe when we face, embrace and befriend it.
Fearless Team Dynamics
How to create mindful leadership relationships!
Program: Keynote | Breakout | Training
Best Audience: Leadership | Sales | Management | Customer/Client Relations
Length: 45-90 min Keynote | 1-2 hr Breakout | 1/2 – 2 day Training
When mindful relationships are built with both teammates and clients – everyone wins.
Mindful leaders create mutually beneficial, long term, profitable relationships. An organizations leadership, their teams, and their clients/customers, are intrinsically interconnected in mutually respectful, and supportive ways.
Business relationships should and can be mindful – if they’re created that way. Mindful relationships treat past, present and future events as having influence over the well-being of all involved parties. Fearless leaders create mindful relationships with both fellow teammates – and customers
By creating both internal and external mindful leadership relationships, an organization is positioned to face, embrace and befriend fear. They lean into challenges together, and become unstoppable. They are inspired, driven by the “befriend fear” mindset/skillset.
Progressive, powerful business leaders recognize team members’ bias and fears. They build team trust, an essential component of a profitable leadership culture.
These innovative leaders exhibit personal power, not just position power. They create mutually supportive winning teams that produce mindful sales, not just greater numbers.
Fearless Critical Thinking
How to be a critical thinker in leadership!
Program: Keynote | Breakout | Training
Best Audience: Leadership | Sales | Management | Customer/Client Relations
Length: 45-90 min Keynote | 1-2 hr Breakout | 1/2 – 2 day Training
Extraordinary leaders use critical thinking to understand, not assume, the ideas and feelings of others without fear or judgement. They ask pertinent questions, without fear of the answers, to discover who they’re talking to.
All relationships, personal, interpersonal and organizational (both internal to the operation and external), are enhanced by using disciplined, rational, open-minded, informed thinking.
We challenge others’ thinking, don’t we? Are we afraid to challenge our own? Are we willing to vacate familiar preconceptions that we’ve always relied on in making vital decisions?
Do we believe in those we do business with, or are we afraid to see who they truly are and how they really think?
Critical thinking faces and embraces fear of the unknown. It de-villainizes and befriends differences as it values the unique traits, talents, mindset/skillset of others – especially our prospects and clients. This is crucial to fearless leadership.
Fearless Leadership Communication
How to say what needs to be said – and live to tell about it!
Program: Keynote | Breakout | Training
Best Audience: Leadership | Sales | Management | Customer/Client Relations
Length: 45-90 min Keynote | 1-2 hr Breakout | 1/2 – 2 day Training
When you incorporate fearless leadership communication into the fabric of your organization, you are creating mutually reliant teams and building trusting customer relationships that produce outstanding results.
Leaders who say what needs to be said, not just what people want to hear, are most often seen as straightforward and empowering – or jerks. It all depends on the tone, language, time and place they choose to say it – which is dependent on how those receiving the communication need to hear it.
Do we have the courage to ask the hard questions? Are we courageous enough to mindfully listen to the responses? Can we befriend the fear of being open, genuine and honest, or are we too afraid of being unpopular or, god forbid, loosing face?
Fearless leaders don’t have to choose between being effective or popular – they’re both. They welcome a diversity of ideas both internally and from the marketplace – and handle resistant push-back by understanding and befriending the fear encountered in a fearless leadership process.
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