I’ve become convinced that fear is the single factor most capable of derailing a leader’s effectiveness. Responsibilities, pressure, visibility – all of these factors tend of “pile on” over time. Sooner or later we all need to come to grips with the fears inherent with the position.

Fear is a given. Our response to fear determines the outcome. It takes courage to lead.

Below are a sample of common fears leaders face – along with some common reactions and opportunities for response.

Uncertainty

Reaction: Refusing to acknowledge reality

The unknown can be a crippling fear for many leaders. Think about how much we’re unsure of. We only experience life moment by moment, therefore the future is ultimately unknown – no matter how we plan for it. We’ve never had more information (or more access to information), yet it’s almost impossible to be sure we have all of the right information to guarantee an outcome. Change is a part of life and the speed of change has never been faster.

Instead of avoiding change or stalling important decisions, accept it. We don’t have to embrace change – but unless we embrace the reality of change, we’ll stunt our personal and organizational growth.

Responses: Accept the reality that change and uncertainty are part of life; make decisions

Appearing Naive (or Incompetent)

Reaction: Lack of candor; working in silos

No one wants to look dumb. (I know I don’t!) This puts me at odds in the instances I feel dumb – when encountering a new project or comparing myself to other people in a given situation. It’s often the feeling (rather than the fact) that is the real barrier.

No one has all the answers. Each of us have a different level of experience and development. It’s the candid sharing of our opinions and feedback (in appropriate ways) that provide enough input for the team to make informed decisions. Group think is dangerous, but it’s the status quo when team members are afraid to appear naive. Not only that, it’s a massive impediment to the creative process.

Responses: Demonstrate vulnerability; go first; ask for help; acknowledge weaknesses

Criticism

Reaction: Playing it safe, abdicating responsibility

I’ve noticed that the fear of criticism often exceeds the fear of failure. Whether it’s a critical moment in a sports game, boardroom or political office, leaders opt to play it safe instead of doing what creates the greatest chance to be successful. When the plan fails, the blame is easier to handle (or at least deflect).

This simply isn’t leadership.

Response: Take counsel from trusted sources; refuse to entertain the naysayers

Being Wrong

Reaction: Refusing to make decisions

Our reaction to decisions is an interesting phenomenon. We’re often tempted to determine their correctness immediately the fact. The outcome determines whether the decision was “correct” or not. But the result of a decision usually isn’t binary (e.g. simply “right” or “wrong”) – and there are so often additional factors at play, including random chance. That being said, so many times the consequences of our decisions are short-term in nature. It takes courage to make a decision that could result in a bad outcome. But refusing to make decisions (and therefore pushing them up to the next level) creates a bottleneck at the top of the chain of command and limits the effectiveness of the individual leader.

Responses: Have a decision-making process; have the courage to make the decisions that are appropriate at your leadership level

Limited Opportunities

Reaction: Excuses; comparing with others; victim mentality

Each person has a unique background. We have differing levels of intellect, strengths and skills. Some have had every resource at their disposal. Others had to learn the hard way. We all have different ceilings as well.

The problem with focusing on our limitations is that it’s counterproductive. It takes the focus off what we can do and puts it on factors outside our control. Get more information, create an Individual Development Plan and keep working hard.

Responses: Create goals; focus on continuous growth

Failure

Reaction: Refusing to try; excuses; self-sabotage

Ultimately, the fear of failure prevents far too leaders from even leaving the starting gate. Unfortunately, failure is pervasive. Playing it safe won’t inoculate us from the reality of potential failure. As Jim Carrey famously said, “You can fail at something you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance doing something you love.” Leadership may not be “what you love” when the going gets tough, but your love of the people you lead – and responsibility to see the job to its conclusion – should be enough to move you to act.

Responses: Act

Colin Powell famously advised, “Never take counsel from your fears.” He knew firsthand the difficulties of leading when the stakes were high – in a high pressure and visible role. If you are a leader, you will experience fear. How you respond will determine your effectiveness.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

Bold Leaders Don’t Wait Until They Know the All the Answers

Author Andy Stanley explained that while vision AND strategy are both important aspects of leadership, vision always comes first. “Clarity around and unreasonable commitment to what should be,” precedes every bold endeavor. But “how” always comes later on. In fact, the quickest way to stifle a vision is to insist on knowing all the answers before getting started. You usually only figure things out one step at a time.

You Will Face Adversity

Former Navy SEAL commander Rorke Denver admitted that the only response to fear that works is to face it. Avoiding pain won’t allow you to get to the final destination. That’s a tough decision for each individual to make. But it doesn’t have to be a solo experience. Bravery is much easier with a team around you.

Bravery is YOUR Responsibility

Nobel Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai delivered perhaps the bottom line for the entire event: “It is our duty to speak out for what is true and right.” Malala has unparalleled credibility on this sentiment since she survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban for speaking out on behalf of education rights for all children. She continues her work as an advocate, but also as an encourager. “We should not wait for someone else,” she said. “Be brave wherever you are. Bravery has no limits. Stand up. Speak out.”

It Takes Courage to Create Change

Peyton Manning famously said that “Anyone who waits for someone else to make the change is automatically a follower.” If no change is required, there’s no need for leaders. Unfortunately, change is difficult, unsettling and unpredictable. Therefore, Manning added that leaders should expect – and even learn to thrive in –  situations with ambiguity.

A Good Team is Better than a Good Idea

Pixar president Ed Catmull shared that a bad team will ruin a good idea, but a good team will take a bad idea and turn it into a good one. Therefore, we must develop our teams. We can do this by removing barriers to collaboration and sharing in team (rather than individual) successes.

We’ll Never Be Fully Ready

One of the themes throughout the event was that preparation not only greatly enhances the probability of success, it replaces fear with a measure of confidence. However, Seth Godin reminded everyone that many times we cannot be fully ready for the change we seek to crate. Many new ideas, products and technologies were built before the “market” was ready for them (such as the fax machine, printing press, automobiles or Apple products). To create any such change means accepting the possibility that it will fail.

Leaders Must be Optimists

This wasn’t a new sentiment at Leadercast. Both Jack Welch and Condelizza Rice noted the need for optimists at previous Leadercast events. This year, Rudy Giuliani explained again that no one lines up to follow a pessimist. Napoleon once claimed, “Leaders are dealers of hope.” If there is no reason to hope, there is no reason to follow.

If you attended Leadercast this year, what was your biggest takeaway?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

One of the first mistakes we often make is assuming that the person in charge is always the leader. Then, when it turns out they aren’t, we give up. But what if leadership doesn’t have anything to do with having a title? In that case, it would be possible to have an organization filled with leaders at every level.

So how can we tell who the real leaders are? Here’s a start. Real leaders do each of the following – and then some:

Take Responsibility

Great followers do what they’re told. Leaders take initiative and responsibility for solving problems. Have you ever tried to resolve a problem with someone who told you, “that’s not my job?” Contrast that with a person who went the extra mile to resolve your issue, or at least get you pointed in the right direction. Which one will you prefer to work with in the future? There’s no substitute for having defined processes, but leaders gain influence each time they take responsibility.

Have the Courage to Take Risks

One of the reasons people are so reluctant to take additional responsibility is their fear of consequences if things don’t work out. In unhealthy organizations, this is a legitimate fear. But leaders don’t take risks for just for the fun of it – they understand the differences between blind risks and acceptable risks – and they accept the responsibility to take the appropriate risks at their level. At some point, someone has to make a decision. It’s always easier to push risk up the organizational chart, but organizations tend to reward those who are willing to manage risk themselves. Leadership always requires courage.

Collaborate

In today’s information age, collaboration isn’t just a nice sentiment or corporate buzzword that goes in and out of vogue. It’s an organizational deal-breaker. Leaders are aware of how their part fits in the context of the larger picture – and they go out of their way to anticipate who needs the information they have. Then they work proactively to make that information available.

Develop Others

I got to work on a project with the FBI once and I will never forget what the Executive Assistant Director told us one day. She stated that the organization needed leaders who were good at… making other people look good. This flies in the face of the assumption that leadership is 100% about individual performance. A high performer who can’t develop others will soon be leading a low-performing team – and won’t be doing it for long.

True leaders don’t wait until they are in charge to develop others. They constantly look for ways to help others improve – or to make something better for everyone.

Set a Positive Example

Unfortunately, the best examples of positive behavior don’t always come from the top of the organizational chart. But people can’t help but take notice of a worthwhile example, no matter where it comes from. Leaders understand they are never too unqualified to set a good example – and that includes a good leadership example.

Create Positive Change

The whole point of leadership is change. If things were good enough the way they are, leadership would be unnecessary and irrelevant. Change is difficult to initiate and harder to sustain. There are often many barriers. But leaders don’t let what they can’t do prevent them from doing what they can do. And what they can do is enough.

It’s not easy being a leader. If it was, everyone would be doing it. But it matters – for individuals, teams and organizations as a whole. So if you are trying to figure out who the real leaders are, start looking for these factors. If you are trying to determine if someone is a leader, look for past evidence of them. And if you are trying to become a leader, this is a great place to start.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

In other words, there is a great reluctance to take a stand in ambiguous or unpopular situations and declare, “If this doesn’t work, I’ll be the one who goes down with the ship.”

The great tragedy is that the opportunity for true leadership, the kind that welcomes responsibility and takes courageous and necessary risks in spite of the unknown – that kind of leadership, has never been in higher demand. Worse still, the kind of leadership that takes a stand is exactly the prerequisite to rallying others to unite and follow.

Is it so bad to be wrong, after all? The lengths “leaders” go to avoid blame many times far exceeds the amount of damage actually caused by a mistake. A business executive continues with a risky plan in spite of damning information in hopes it will work out because to turn back would be to appear to admit defeat. An education official gives in to a new testing standard, confident that it will fail but unwilling to propose an alternative. A politician refuses to support a bill drafted by an opponent because to do so would be to appear weak.

In the meantime, there is a long wake of losers. Shareholders lose. Customers lose. Employees lose. Students lose. Constituents all lose. And leaders lose their credibility in the process. The only people who win are the critics who say, “I told you so.” But is it really a win?

Additionally, many times the “fault” is actually no fault at all except a change in the external environment. Sometimes it can be anticipated, but many times not. The market changes, a new technology comes along, the weather fails to cooperate. (What do you think happens to the construction industry when winters run long?)

No matter how sure you are of success, something could come along and derail it. But that shouldn’t stop us from making the decisions that need to be made today. That’s what sets those of us who would be leaders apart. After all, it takes an exceeding amount of courage to lead.

So what can we do about it? Here are some thoughts:

• Do a risk assessment.
• Have a plan and a contingency plan.
• In Colin Powell’s words, “Don’t take counsel of your fears.”
• Set a good leadership example; when you make a mistake, admit it publicly.
• Create environments where others feel secure in admitting their own mistakes. In Dale Carnegie’s words, “Make the fault seem easy to correct.”
• Focus on lessons learned from both successes and failures. Then share them so they aren’t repeated.
• Win and lose as teams, not as individuals. (The problem with “pin the tail on the donkey” is that no one wants to be the target).
• Applaud people for adjusting course when they recognize that a situation has changed. Go a step further by lending your support when it’s needed.
• Practice answering difficult questions with conviction and transparency. (You can’t appeal to noble motives unless you have them to begin with).
• Explain what happened, but don’t make excuses. Take responsibility instead.
• Offer hope.

If you’ve never had the finger pointed at you before, you’re a risky person for others to follow. Don’t be afraid. You will fall down and you will collect scars along the way. Will always be worth it? Unfortunately, there are no guarantees. But there’s no other way to lead than by example.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

I can’t think of a better example to share than this month’s leadership profile Malala Yousafzai.

I first heard of Malala when it was reported the Taliban in Pakistan’s Swat Valley had attempted to assassinate the then 15 year-old girl on her way home from school, shooting her in the face at point blank range in October, 2012. Her only “crime” was standing up and speaking out for the education rights of girls in the region. After an amazing recovery in Birmingham, England, Malala slowly but surely redoubled her efforts to speak out on behalf of education equality. Her book I Am Malala was released one year after her assassination attempt and she was the youngest person ever to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Malala’s media story has yet to peak, but I believe there are several takeaways from a leadership front as well, particularly for young leaders. Here they are:

Take Intiative

If there’s one thing young leaders (or any of us) need to hear, it’s this: you are never to unqualified to set a good example. Unfortunately, age can be one of the biggest excuses for not taking initiative when the opportunity arises. Encouraged by her father when she was 11 years old, Malala began writing a blog for the BBC under a pseudonym describing her experience under Taliban occupation. But it wasn’t because she was the most qualified. She was simply the only one willing to do it after the 15 year-old who had been selected backed out at the last minute.

Taking initiative isn’t about position or authority or attempting to make huge, sweeping changes. It’s about doing what we can in the circumstances we’re in.

Take Courage

If you’re advocating for any kind of change at all, you WILL face opposition at some point. This was certainly the case with Malala. Because she did so well with her BBC blog, additional media opportunities came her way. Eventually, the Taliban figured out who she was an issued threats against her and her family.

When opposition comes, it can often seem perfectly reasonable to quit. Many leaders do. Some are justified, but for the ones who stick with it, opposition is essentially a gut check. How much are they willing to put on the line? How important is the vision they are trying to accomplish? What is it worth?

For Malala, opposition simply added fuel to her efforts. The Taliban threats made it obvious she was making a difference. As Dale Carnegie says, criticism is often a disguised compliment. You don’t get it unless you are doing something noteworthy.

Serve Your Purpose

One of the questions author Mark Miller asks is this: are you a serving leader or a self-serving leader? In other words, are you in it for others or only yourself? I’ll admit this is always a tough question for me because I have so many personal and professional goals. Malala was the same way. Education was very personal for her and she worked extremely hard to win top honors as a child. But through her work as an education advocate, it became clear to her that education shouldn’t be a privilege, it should be a universal right. Her efforts (and circumstances) led to the passage of Pakistan’s first Right to Education Bill.

There comes a time when serving our purpose dwarfs the importance of self-promotion. To press that point, I’d like to share Malala’s own thoughts in this brief clip from her recent interview with Jon Stewart. When it became apparent Malala was literally fighting for everyone – even the very people who had tried to kill her – it left me just as speechless as it did Stewart.

You don’t need to be old enough or important enough to make a difference. Malala didn’t set out to become a revolutionary. She simply did the next right thing and didn’t give up, despite the pressure. You and I can do this too, right where we stand. Let’s join in.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

I distinctly remember the first time I ever heard Captain Tucker tell us that he loved us. Captain Tucker was the platoon commander charged with instilling in us the art and science of becoming Officers in the Marine Corps. As you might imagine, this raised some eyebrows. Captain Tucker is still to this day the hardest Marine I have ever met. As a Purple Heart recipient, he could have ordered us to follow him to hell and back, and none of us would have hesitated. So why would such a man openly tell a bunch of new Lieutenants that he loved us?

When We Talk About Service and Sacrifice, We Really Mean Love

When one thinks of the military, the idea of service and sacrifice appropriately come to mind. Any Marine would quickly tell you that his motivation comes from a duty to serve his fellow Marines and fellow Americans. Love, however, is perhaps a more powerful and apt identifier of what it means to be a Marine – and also to be a leader. At its most fundamental level, love implies sacrifice, and conversely, genuine sacrifice or service cannot exist absent of love. What good are our claims of loving our neighbor (or followers) if they don’t translate into sacrifice?

Love very naturally translates into the core values on which our Marine ethos is built, that is: Honor, Courage, and Commitment. Honor recognizes, endorses, and protects the dignity inherent in every human being. Courage is the ability to act honorably, even when it seems impossible. Commitment is the resolve to hold on to the other two at all costs. For an elite warrior class where effective leadership is a matter of life and death, we sure do talk a lot about love.

Without Love, Effective Leadership Is Impossible

Anyone with more than a tertiary knowledge of leadership knows the value of servant leadership, which defines the most effective leader as the one who serves those he leads. This isn’t just “a” form of leadership, it is “the” form of leadership. A true leader isn’t driven by what’s in it for him. He cares about how he can develop those around him for their sake and for the team’s sake, rather than his own sake. The leader who cares more about what his men can do for him than what he can do for them isn’t a leader, he’s a manipulator. A non-servant leader does such things as lie, unjustly accuse, and cut corners in order to enhance his position for the most profitable gain – all at the expense of those he is supposed to lead. Unfortunately, in many occupations this is such a subtle deviation from true leadership that it has become normalized and acceptable. In my occupation, dishonesty, a lack of justice, and cutting corners means Marines die. In your occupation, inept leadership may not result in lost lives, but rather losing the breath of life that powers your organization. The price is simply too high not to love and sacrifice for those you lead.

True Leadership Isn’t About You

As an Officer of Marines, my sole purpose for existence is to accomplish the mission and to serve my Marines. Enlisted Marines (i.e. non-officers) are the ones who get stuff done. To not serve them undermines both justifications for my existence (i.e. the mission and my Marines). Ask any enlisted Marine and he will tell you that if you care about him, he’ll follow you to hell and back. My job as an officer is to set the parameters (e.g. timing, tactics, rules of engagement, etc…) within which they can work and then support them in every way possible. In the same way, a healthy organization doesn’t run simply on the competence of senior leadership. It runs because the average employees have enough buy-in to put their nose to the grindstone and get the job done. I promise you that if you let Joe Employee know you sincerely care about him (and by that I mean support as well as sentiment), you’ll see a level of buy-in and output that you never knew was possible.

True leadership isn’t about you. It’s about leveraging your influence to love and serve those you have the privilege to lead. Ruthlessly holding yourself to this standard is your duty to yourself, your coworkers, your family and your country. And it is the lifeblood that makes all of these institutions successful.

Semper Fidelis.

Five short years later, she was called on by authorities as an expert in the initial custody process following the raid of the YFZ Ranch in Texas, which was being run by her ex-husband. The raid proved pivotal in landing the extremist sect’s leader Warren Jeffs in prison with a life sentence on multiple child sexual assault convictions.

I read Jessop’s New York Times bestseller Escape after it had just been released in 2007 as I was training for an overseas deployment to Iraq with the U.S. Army. I’m not sure what prompted me to read her story – or how I even heard about it – but I immediately thought she deserved to win some kind of Outstanding Person of the Year award and wished I could tell her as much. Jessop doesn’t lead a nation, a sports club or a Fortune 500 company, but she embodies some of the most important leadership attributes you or I could ever hope to learn.

Sometimes You Have to Lead By Yourself

Leadership can be a lonely place, but most of us have the benefit of resources, training and a leadership community to support us. But sometimes, in Jessop’s case for instance, we’re standing alone. It’s not pretty and it’s not fair, but it’s reality. How do you react when you’re responsible but isolated? The paralysis of uncertainty and temptation to second-guess can be overwhelming. But the risks of not acting, even with limited information and confidence, can have dire effects. In Jessop’s case, had she lingered, she knew she would have risked having her underage daughters forced into marriage with a FLDS man several decades her senior – as well as risked having her family move to the compound in Texas where anything short of a raid would make it impossible to escape. Being alone doesn’t take away the responsibility to lead well.

Courage Can Take Place in a Single Moment

I’ve written before that the type of courage leaders ought to aspire to includes making responsible decisions (instead of passing them on to others), accepting responsibility and initiating difficult conversations. It’s the opposite of waiting until a fire needs to be put out. It’s a constant and proactive practice. But sometimes, as in Jessop’s case, the situation calls for a sudden act of undeterred bravery. Jessop said in her own words that “at some point nearly everyone, no matter what [their] situation, has to face change that is terrifying and overwhelming.”

In corporate leadership development, we try to build leaders who lead by design and not by demand. In other words, they don’t wait till a fire starts to come to the rescue. In reality, leaders need the courage to do the right thing, no matter how much time they have available.

The Hardest Battle is the One Against Ideology

If there’s one thing we don’t have any control over, it’s the circumstances of our birth: where, when and to whom. That means we likely grew up believing most of the things that were intentionally or unintentionally taught around us. Hopefully along the way, we developed the critical thinking skills to evaluate our own ideology.

This is the reason Jessop’s escape was so incredible. By her admission, she grew up in a closed system which taught their leader had divine and sole inspiration from God and their only means of salvation was to obey their every whim. They were taught that women were essentially property, the outside world was only evil and it was forbidden to use the word “fun” or possess anything colored red. It wasn’t until she accepted that hell (according to FLDS doctrine) would be a better option than the life she and her children were living that she had the courage to make an exodus.

Having a doctrine (a “set of principles or beliefs”) is a good thing. Each military branches has one. The FBI has one (I helped build the “indoctrination” program). Your organization hopefully has a doctrine of some sort and your religion doubtless has many. What’s dangerous is being unaware of what the doctrine is, what indoctrination methods are being used, and not evaluating the merits. If you want to leave one ideology, you need another one to take its place. Otherwise, you will simply return to the old or succumb to disillusionment.

Carolyn Jessop’s story underscores the fact that you don’t need to be “special” to be a leader. You don’t need to be the next Winston Churchill, Vince Lombardi or Jack Welch. No matter who you are, you will encounter a leadership challenge at some point. Following Jessop’s example isn’t easy. But if you do, you’re sure to come out on top.

Carolyn Jessop is the author of Escape and Triumph and has appeared on various media outlets, including CNN and Oprah and testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Additionally, in 2008 Katherine Heigl contracted the rights to produce and star in a movie based on her story.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

The more time I spend with military and national security leaders, the more I’m convinced of the magnitude of a certain leadership quality: courage. That might not surprise you; everyone knows military service members need courage to put their lives on the line every day. There’s no debating that, but the courage I’m talking about applies to all leaders everywhere, whether your organization is made up of hundreds of thousands of people, or just a handful. Let me explain.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.