Fear in the leadership team: A dangerous taboo for future planning

Jan David Ott is Facilitator for Longterm Strategic Decision-Making & Change at the Futurewise Company. On his LinkedIn account he takes us along on topics related to change management, leadership, and foresight. Here we publish excerpts of his experiences.

You lead a company – and you sense the worries and fears of your leadership team regarding the future?

We all know this sentence: “Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is acting despite fear.”

But in reality, doesn’t a different expectation actually apply? Leaders don’t have fears, they have solutions. They are the sponges of the company – soaking up everyone else’s worries, and “with one wipe” it’s all gone. How? With the right mindset, of course.

The mindset list keeps getting longer

Growth mindset, agile mindset, inclusive mindset, entrepreneurial mindset…

The list is long. Mindset seems like the universal tool – whoever just has the right attitude masters everything.

A study by GP Strategies (“Great Leaders Think Differently”) breaks with this image. Because when top performers lack something, it is often not the skills required for the respective mindset. Those they acquire. What is missing is the right way of dealing with a feeling that is not allowed to occur: fear.

And now it gets interesting – also for corporate foresight

When executives have to develop long-term future strategies, they need a futures mindset. And the key to success for this is not knowledge and methods. What is decisive is the way of dealing with critical uncertainties:

What are the forces that will radically change the world in 10 to 15 years? How do they interact – and where are we headed beyond the next bend?

You can face these uncertainties. Or you can look away – and focus on what seems certain. Two years. Four years. Or rather just six months?

But here you can usually only optimize and rarely shape.

Three steps in futures sparring

That is why, in my #FuturesSparring with company leaders, I rely on three steps:

➤ First, spell out the fears – because they are an important indicator: What presumably will not stay the way it has been?

➤ Then unleash your own curiosity – long-term strategy is a vast, as yet uncultivated space for shaping. Those who engage early with critical uncertainties can look out for signals of change and see patterns. Can discover new possibilities before others see them. #Zukunftsmusik (dreams of the future) whets the appetite.

➤ And then arises courage fueled by enthusiasm and filled with energy – because the goal is no longer to lose nothing, but to gain something new.