How to Push Fear Away from Your Strategy

How to NOT Execute Your Strategy (Episode 29): Damon Lembi

Damon Lembi is a 2-time bestselling author, the host of The Learn-It-All Podcast, and the CEO of Learnit – a live learning platform that has upskilled over 2 million people. Drawing from his prior baseball career, Damon brings an athlete’s perspective to leadership. Through his journey, he has gained invaluable insights into what helps organizations grow, how great leaders learn, and why learn-it-all companies outpace their competitors every time. In this episode, Damon shares the lessons he learned when his strategy was literally destroyed and how he and his team avoided the fear trap to create a radical company transformation instead.

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Three key concepts:

1. When stressful situations happen, serve first. This puts you in servant leadership mode – which automatically taps into the best part of your brain. If you go into survival mode, your decision-making will be fear-driven, which is never good.
2. Being strategic is about making the best decision for the moment – right now. If you cannot let go of your plan, you will miss the growth opportunities that the chaos might have just given you. You will literally be clinging to the past at the expense of your future.
3. Transparency will actually reduce fear – not increase it. We often think that bad news will cause a negative reaction. On the contrary, communicating in tough times not only increases understanding, it increases confidence. When our teams have understanding and confidence in the “why” – they will figure out the “how.”

BONUS – Leader guide: Use the following questions for (a) self-reflection as a leader and/or (b) a great discussion with your team.

1) Listen to the full episode before this discussion.
2) Damon and Tim talked about how fear impacts decision-making. Why do you think fear is such a powerful factor during times of disruption?
3) In 10 words or less, define what disruption means. Share your answers.
4) Disruption can be both positive and negative. Compare and contrast positive disruption with negative disruption. Share your answers
5) There will always be disruption (both positive and negative) to any strategic plan. What should be done to make sure that the disruption does not trigger unnecessary fear?
6) Looking at our efforts now, have we allowed fear to hijack what we are working on? Why or why not? What leadership advice does this generate?
7) Option: Take time right now to define exactly what following that advice looks like (the outcome(s), metrics, and requirements).

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with at least one person. And leave me a review on whatever platform you engaged this podcast. Your feedback is invaluable to me.

Holomua. Onward and upward.

All the best ~ Tim

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