Fear

Many of us serve in roles where we are not commander in chief, but lieutenants, captains, or even sergeants in terms of where we serve on the hierarchy of the organization chart. If you find yourself in such a role, I want to provide you some wisdom through six influence tactics to help you succeed in leading from second chair (or third, fourth, or fifth).

Here are 6 Ways You Can Better Lead and Influence from Second Chair

For any organization to move forward, they must possess a clear and clarified vision. Even though many organizations do have a clear vision, they fail to reach it. Why?

It’s what I call The Fear Gap.

The distance between the you-are-here point and the vision of where-you-should-be point is what I call The Fear Gap. The farther the vision is from the current status quo, the more room there is for fear to enter and cause us to retreat from accomplishing the vision. We have the potential to interject our personal and organizational fears into this gap, which leads to action paralysis.

What Causes This Fear?

A large part of avoiding or overcoming The Fear Gap is knowing what triggers this response with us.

One of the things that robs us from healthy influence is worry, fear and anxiety. In fact, these often don’t decrease our influence but actually cause us to seek to influence others in unhealthy ways in order to bring quick alleviation to our anxiety.

Anxiety causes us to take the short-term look rather than seeking the best long-term solution. Our primary concern becomes, "Get this feeling of pressure off of me." We then tend to push for whatever we think will make us feel better the fastest, rather than asking, "What is the best long-term solution for this problem?"

We all worry. We all have fears. We all have anxiety. It is simply part of being human. But how we handle our anxiety is what sets apart leaders from those who capitulate to the stress.

In this series, let's take a look at the obstacles to raising up leaders, and how we can overcome them. We’ll also include some practical ways you can coach and inspire future leaders. 

Good leaders lead.
Great leaders raise up other leaders. 

A large part of a leader’s job is developing the leadership and influence potential of the people on their team.

Good leaders lead.
Great leaders raise up other leaders. 

Let's explore the obstacles to raising up leaders, and how we can overcome them.