Introduction
Imagine yourself 20 years from now, looking back on the intervening time.What would you love to have accomplished in your career and life? What impact would you like to have made? What kind of person would you like to have become by making it?
Twenty years from now there will be people no smarter or more capable than you who will have accomplished extraordinary things across all spheres of life. While it’s impossible to know who they will be, what is certain is that they will all have made courageous choices, taken bold actions and refused to succumb to the fear that drives so many to think small and play safe.
Life is the lump sum of our choices. Too often though, our choices are driven by fear, self-doubt and insecurity rather than a clear sense of purpose, confidence and courage. Fear drives us to avoid risk, play safe and settle for the status quo, however unrewarding or miserable it is.
Sombre economic forecasts, corporate cutbacks, natural disasters, fundamentalist extremism, international conflict — look at what’s making news today and chances are at least one headline is fuelling fear and feeding insecurity.While this may not have you racing to stock up your pantry on canned tomatoes and bottled water, there’s no escaping that we live in a culture that breeds fear and drives us to play safe, avoid change and settle for less than we want.
Research shows that our brains are wired to overestimate risk, exaggerate its consequences and underestimate our ability to handle it. Confronted with ongoing economic instability and mounting global competition, fear in the workplace has grown so pervasive that playing safe and avoiding risk has
become the norm.Yet history has shown that when fear runs most rampant, courageous action reaps the greatest rewards. And nowhere is courage more needed right now than in the work we do, and the way we do it.
I wrote my first book, Find Your Courage, to help people overcome the doubts and fears that were undermining their relationships and wellbeing, and confining them to their lives of quiet desperation, immaculate mediocrity or both. Meanwhile, the world has suffered its worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, and the fear that stifled people’s personal lives has infiltrated into the corners of organisations globally.We live in a complex, competitive and fast-changing world. The actions that got you to where you are today will not be sufficient to take you to where you want to be 10 years from now. As the world has changed, so you too must change how you engage in it.
I have written this book because I have a passionate belief in the potential of human beings to create lives rich in meaning and contribution. In my work within organisations around the world, I constantly encounter people trapped inside prisons of their own making, failing to utilise their potential — people whose experience of going to work every day is marred with anxiety, resentment and resignation. Perhaps you relate.
What you do matters. How you do it matters even more. Sadly, global surveys on employee engagement tell us that many people don’t believe so.The cost to the bottom line runs into the billions.The cost to the human spirit is immeasurable. Underlying this disengagement is the fundamental fear of failing, of looking foolish, of not having enough and not being enough.
The fact is you have all the resources available to you for creating a life and a career that fulfil you so that your work not only enables you to make a good living, but also to enjoy a more rewarding everyday experience of life (rather than just weekends and holidays). Research has confirmed what my experience has shown me: when people connect to a deeper purpose in their work they’re not only more engaged and effective in their work, but also more inclined to take the risks essential for success.
There are countless business books filled with strategies for becoming a more proficient networker, strategist, salesperson, negotiator, ‘hi-po’ employee, manager and leader. There are very few that get to the heart of what holds people back from applying them. The reality is that it’s not
a lack of knowledge that prevents most people from doing more and being more—it’s a lack of clarity about what they truly want, and the courage to go and get it.
While this book is written for the individual, the principles, concepts and strategies it contains can benefit any team, group or organisation. After all, while organisations are living entities in their own right, they comprise individuals.An organisation cannot become more competitive, focused or innovative unless the people who work in it are. Indeed, the greatest competitive advantage available to any organisation is its people. But it’s not just their experience, expertise or skills that can give the competitive edge. It’s their commitment to the organisation’s mission, how openly and effectively they communicate with each other, customers and suppliers, and most of all, their willingness to ‘push the envelope’ of possibility. All of this entails a degree of risk and demands a measure of courage. If everyone in your organisation practised the principles in this book, it would propel your organisation forward in every way — from customer service to product innovation, from sales to project execution—building bottom-line outcomes as never before.
This book comprises eight chapters, the first seven of which form The Courage Key model,which you can view in the appendix. The chapters of Part I: Core Courage, form the core foundation of The Courage Key. Part II: Working Courage provides you with concepts and practical strategies to be both more courageous and effective in handling the many challenges and seizing the opportunities in your work and life.The theme of each chapter in Part II — Confront, Adapt, Leverage and Lead — create the CALL acronym and are your ‘call to action’ to stop playing safe. Part III: Take Courage is where the rubber hits the road as you step out of your comfort zone and into action in making the changes and taking the chances needed to experience the success and fulfilment that prompted you to pick up this book in the first place. Part III is focused on helping you set yourself up for success over the longer term, creating an environment that supports you in getting and staying in purposeful and courageous action, no matter what.
Interspersed through all eight chapters are case studies of numerous people—from CEOs of global organisations to trail blazing entrepreneurs—whom I’ve interviewed while writing this book for their insights and experiences of acting with courage. Finally, I have also included
Courage Keys and Courage Challenges to help you apply the concepts I discuss to the challenges and opportunities you face today. I encourage you to invest the time to do the challenges as you go along.Together, the following eight chapters will help you to rethink risk and unlock the power of courage in your life so that you can soar above the fears and beliefs that have kept you from achieving the level of success you want.
While I hope this book will equip you with practical tools for engaging in courageous conversations and taking brave actions that will elevate the trajectory of your career, my greater hope is that it will elevate the trajectory of your life. By unlocking the power of courage in your life, you’ll tap into the unbridled potential within you and enjoy the genuine satisfaction that flows from working hard at work worth doing.
I hope you’ll return to this book again and again as you navigate your way through the maze of choices, changes and challenges that are certain to unfold before you in the years ahead. May it become a trusted guide for unlocking your courage in a fearful and fast-changing world and for finding the clarity to make smart decision, not just safe ones. I hope also that you’ll be able to seize opportunity in your adversity so you can add the full quota of your contribution and enjoy the full quota of rewards and satisfaction you’ll earn by doing so.
Chapter 5
Learn, unlearn and relearn
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” ~ Charles Darwin
In 1993 about 1600 people belonged to the International Flat Earth Research Society of America. I kid you not.
Their president, Charles K. Johnson, stated publicly that he had been a proud ‘Flat Earther’ all his life: ‘When I saw the globe in grade school I didn’t accept it then and I don’t accept it now’.
Needless to say, there are people you might call ‘late adapters’!
Of course, when it comes to adapting to changes in the world around us, whether they be changes in the prevailing beliefs or changes in the actual environment in which we live, learning how to adapt to change can be difficult. For some, such as Charles K. Johnson, who died in 2001 still adamant that the moon landings had been staged, it can be more difficult than others.
While it’s easy to mock someone who maintains the world is flat hundreds of years after it’s been proven otherwise, there are many respected people who have made similar statements that, with hindsight, now seem equally short-sighted. For example, this comment made by Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, in 1946:‘Television won’t be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.’
Change before you have to
To succeed in today’s world, it’s vital for you to remain open- minded about what’s changing around you and how those changes, including the almost imperceptible ones, will reshape the world we live in five or 25 years from now. Don’t walk into the future blindfolded.The more attention you pay to what’s changing around you today, the better you’ll adapt to the challenges of tomorrow, find opportunities within them and capitalise on them.
My kids can’t comprehend how I ever organised a social life back in the ancient pre-Facebook era.Their digital brains boggle even further trying to imagine how anyone ever did their job without computers, email or mobile phones.
‘We used to send smoke signals,’ I chide them.
In their world, as they sit on the couch with their iPads skyping their friends on the far side of the globe, that may as well have been how we communicated.What they don’t realise is that by the time they become parents, their children will think the technology they use today is as antiquated as the pagers so many relied on to do their job just 20 years ago.
Adult education experts estimate that up to 40 per cent of what tertiary students are learning will be obsolete a decade from now when they will be working in jobs that have yet to be created. Indeed, the top 10 most in-demand jobs today didn’t even exist 10 years ago.To say that we live in a changing world understates its pace and its vast scope.
Of course it’s not just technology that’s changing the world. Profound changes in demography and longevity have experts predicting that by 2020 there will be more people aged over 65 than under 15 in the world’s developed countries.Add to this the social changes in family structure, the globalisation of talent and continued innovation in technology, and it’s hard to imagine just what the world and its increasingly mobile workforce will look like 20 years from now.You can’t do either by playing safe and avoiding change. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote,‘Standing still is deadly’.
Yes, the world is changing fast, and there is no sign of it slowing anytime soon. For the three-plus billion people in the workforce
it’s not just about keeping up with the rate of change and the nature of the work we do, but how we do it and where.
When anyone can work from anywhere, it changes the nature of work everywhere.Traditional boundaries disappearing and the global talent pool becoming more skilled and mobile presents challenges for people in developed countries to adapt faster in order to simply stay competitive. There’s no two ways about it: your ability to adapt to change and proactively make changes in your career is what will make a crucial difference to where you find yourself even just five years from now.
Catalysts for career change
There are many reasons why people choose to change their jobs and careers. Being able to predict the changes you’ll make one or five years from now can help you prepare for them. Look at these key reasons for considering a job or career change and think about how relevant they are to you, or how they may become more relevant in the future.
- Life changes.Your life has changed and the career you started out on isn’t compatible with your life today.This is something I’ve seen happen to people whose jobs require a lot of travel, or who are on call 24/7 or working family-unfriendly shifts. They usually end up in careers that offer greater flexibility, enabling them to honour the commitments and values in other areas of their life outside the workplace.
- Maturing preferences. We’re often expected to make career choices in our late teens and early 20s, even though it’s often not until we reach our 30s that our preferences really solidify. By then many people feel so invested in a particular career path that changing it seems too costly. But it’s important to be honest with yourself about the cost of not changing too, and why. While you once loved going to work and enjoyed the challenges and responsibilities of your job, you no longer do. Perhaps your work no longer challenges you as it once did, taking the reward out of it. Or perhaps it simply doesn’t interest or energise you any more.As we age and evolve so too do our preferences.
- Money. It’s no surprise that money is usually not the reason why people change careers. However, sometimes low-paying work can be the catalyst for people to make a career change, particularly as they have children and financial pressures mount. If you chose a career that’s traditionally low paying to begin with, it’s likely because you felt it would be rewarding. So be careful when making a decision to change career for money alone.Working in a high paying job that isn’t fulfilling is not a recipe for success at work or in life. Hopefully the career you change to will be one that leverages your unique talents and expertise and is meaningful to you beyond improving your bank balance.
- Stress. Some jobs are naturally more stressful than others. While the pressure of some roles can be exciting and adrenaline-pumping in the beginning, after a time the stress can take a toll and people can suffer an adrenaline burnout. To preserve mental and physical health it can be worth looking for a less stressful job or career.
- Market/industry changes. The outlook in your field was optimistic when you started out, but due to changes in technology, the economy or the industry, job and advancement opportunities are shrinking.You want to work in a field or industry that provides greater opportunities for growth, development and experience in a variety of interesting yet challenging roles.Whatever reasons drive your decision to make a change, it doesn’t change the fact that change — even change for the better—can be difficult.While my first 18 years of life involved relatively little change, ever since then it’s been constant. Some of it I’ve eagerly pursued, albeit with moments of nervous apprehension. Some of it I’ve tripped through, awkwardly yet openly. And some of it I’ve really struggled with, often overwhelmed and sometimes resentful.All of it I’ve grown from. Whether spending a year backpacking around the world with no more than a few nights in the same bed, having four children in five years across three countries in seven homes, or starting down a new and unknown career path in the middle of all those moves and babies, change is something I’ve become intimately
acquainted with. Needless to say, when it comes to adapting — to learning, unlearning and relearning — I’ve learned plenty by trial and error. As my husband and I support each other in pursuing our respective callings, and our children venture out into the world to explore and pursue theirs, I’m confident plenty more learning awaits.You cannot become who you aspire to be by staying who you are.We all want certainty and predictability, because our brains look for patterns. However, because life is the way it is, it can never stay the way it is.Whether in the form of a change of plans or a change of heart, change can be very unsettling and uncomfortable. Just because you’ve chosen to leave a job, relocate for a new job, taken on a bigger role or transitioned into an entirely new career, doesn’t mean it will, by default, be easy. If change were easy, everyone would be doing it.But here’s the deal: you can’t become who you want to become by staying who you are. Which is what this chapter is about: helping you become more comfortable with the inherent discomfort of change so you can find hidden opportunities in the changes that are out of your control, and be more proactive in initiating the changes that you can control.
The more adept you are at initiating, navigating and managing change, the more successful you’ll be in your job today and in the future.As social psychologist Daniel Spurk found in his research on adaptability in the workplace, employees who are more adaptable are far more likely to leapfrog over those who aren’t. The cost of rigidity and resistance grows steeper by the day. Sociologist Benjamin Barber wrote, ‘I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures…I divide the world into the learners and non-learners’.
Why we resist change
How often have you heard people make reference to ‘the good old days?’ It’s generally not because life was any better 10 or 30 years ago than it is now but it reflects the affection most of us have for
the past, and our innate aversion to what’s new, untested, unfamiliar and unpredictable.When casting your mind back to days gone by, your selective recall filters out the anxiety and stress you felt in ‘the good old days’ and focuses instead on the happier memories, the irony being that you will one day look back on today as ‘the good old days’.Why wait?As difficult as change can sometimes be, we don’t always fear it. Most people I know enjoy variety. Many actively seek it. Even the most timid, change-averse people enjoy some semblance of it.We wear different clothes every day. Even men who wear dark suits and white shirts to work each day still change their tie just to mix things up a bit. I’ve been known to rearrange the furniture in my living room for no other reason than I grew tired of its configuration.After all, ‘change is as good as holiday’, and often far cheaper. Likewise, there are many people who never go to the same holiday destination twice because they want to explore new places and experience different cultures and climates: mountains one year; beaches the next.
Bold action in the face of uncertainty is not only terrifying, but necessary in the pursuit of great work. Jonathan Fields
The reason why so many people enjoy variety in their personal lives yet struggle with change in the workplace largely boils down to control. We like to feel that we have some control over our circumstances and yet in our jobs we often feel anything but. It’s our lack of control over the variables, and our uncertainty about what lies ahead,that can overwhelm us and trigger fear and anxiety. We like to make plans based on a future we can predict. When the terrain grows unfamiliar, undermining our ability to plan and predict, it gives rise to stress, chips away at our confidence and fuels our fear. Intellectualising why any change is good is not sufficient to arrest our fear. Emotions will trump logic every time. Unless you confront them, they will continue to fuel any residual resistance and rigidity. So as you read through the four main fears — fear of the unknown, failure, success and loss — consider which ones are at play as you look towards making the changes needed to create the career you truly want, and get off the default path that’s taking you somewhere you don’t want to be.
Fear of the unknown
‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.’ It’s a common adage I’ve heard people say when considering changing something about their lives they’re unhappy with, the logic being that it is better to stick with the status quo — however miserable it happens to be—than to risk it for something that may be worse. The unknown makes us feel vulnerable because, quite simply, we don’t know what it holds.We’re not sure what threats it may have in store nor how it will shake up our safe, secure and familiar world. It’s why people hold firm to beliefs long after they’ve been proven wrong. It’s why people stay in marriages long after they’ve grown devoid of any joy or intimacy. It’s why people stay in jobs they hate:
- What if my job is outsourced?
- What if I’m not employable elsewhere?
- What if my company restructures and there isn’t a role for me in the new organisation?
- What if the market keeps shrinking and we lose market share? What then?‘What if?’ indeed! This question quickly follows any time we contemplate making a change — from our hairstyle to our address. But when it comes to changing careers, our fear of the ‘What if?’ increases exponentially. It’s what stops so many people from moving from a job they find miserable and starting over in a new field, no matter how right it may be. Fear can be paralysing. Learning how to sit with ambiguity and accept the discomfort of uncertainty takes practice.What’s important when you’re looking at making a job or career change is to acknowledge your fears as valid and normal, but not to let them run the show.In reality, when it comes to making a big change you should expect a file drawer bulging with fears listed under most categories. Sometimes we’re afraid of making career changes even when we know it’s time for a change. It should be exciting to do something you’ve always wanted to do or you’re passionate about but even if the changes we seek are ones we want, we still feel anxious because, in the end, change holds uncertainty and involves loss in some way.
Fear of failure
Fear of failure (and losing face) is one of the most fundamental fears we face in life. It keeps us in our comfort zone, where it’s a pretty sure bet we won’t mess up or fall short.Adapting to change requires being willing to let go of your hold on guaranteed success and trying something you may never have done before. It means stepping out of your comfort zone and into the possibility that you may not have what it takes, that you may make a mistake, or worse, that you may fall flat on your face in front of the people you most want to impress.As Seth Godin wrote in his book Tribes, often fear of failure isn’t actually a fear of failure at all, but rather a fear of criticism or looking foolish and losing face in front of those whose approval and admiration we value.That is, we’re more afraid of being judged for our failure than of the failure itself.
Allowing what other people may think, or say — or what you think they may think or say—to run your life is a powerless way to live. In other words, letting your fear of criticism keep you from proactively making changes that you believe would be in your best interest is essentially handing over the reins for running your life to other people.
Fear of success
The concept of being afraid of success will seem like an anathema to some people, and odd to most. I recall the first time I read about ‘fear of success’: I thought it was a typo. I mean, who could be afraid of succeeding? However, over the years I’ve realised that fear of success isn’t really that we’re afraid of success, but that we’re afraid of how that success will impact our life.
We have assumptions (often wrong) about what successful people are like.We fear that we may become like them: materialistic, workaholic, egotistical, shallow and lonely. We fear our ability to maintain the routines we enjoy. We fear the pressures and expectations of success.That people will want something different, or more from us than what we’re able to deliver.That we won’t be able to live up to their expectations.That we’ll be uncovered as
a fraud.We fear that we’ll feel stressed all the time with the extra demands and responsibilities we’ll have to manage, and that we may crumble under their weight. So, in a sense, fear of success is really fear of failure in disguise. Just as it’s much more painful to fall from the roof off your house than to trip from your front doorstep, so too we fear that a fall from the lofty heights of success will be socially humiliating and professionally embarrassing.Fear of loss
As noted in chapter 2, research has proven that human beings are biologically wired to overestimate potential loss and potential gain, and underestimate their ability to handle the consequences if things don’t work out.That is, for most people the fear of losing $100 is more intense than the hope of gaining $150.The observation that losses loom larger than gains tends to run true: we’re naturally averse to loss, and all change involves loss in some way.
In reality, we can’t adapt to new situations without being willing to give up something of our current way of doing and being. Sometimes change means we lose colleagues, our salary or even our parking space. Sometimes change means losing our sense of place in a team, group or organisation. Less evident but equally devastating can be the loss of known routines or the things that define who we are (such as a job title or a position). But instead of asking yourself, ‘What will I lose?’, ask ‘What can I gain?’ Where we put our focus is the major difference between those who change well and those who don’t. Those who embrace change discover opportunities within it that those who are busy resisting it and whining about it miss out on.
Most people who have made a significant change in their career say their only regret is that they didn’t make it sooner. Many have shared with me that they held off making a change until they were either so miserable, or their job had become so untenable, that they could no longer bear it. Or they felt they had to have all their ducks in a row before taking the plunge. Or both.
What fears fuel your resistance to change?
Write down any fears you think of as you answer the questions below. Consider how they may have limited your success and fulfilment up to now and how, by overcoming them, you can make changes to enjoy greater success and fulfilment in the future.
- Fear of the unknown. What is it I’m afraid might happen in the future?
- Fear of failure. What is it I’m afraid I won’t be able to do or learn or become successfully? What mistakes am I scared I’ll make? What am I afraid others might think if I do make those mistakes?
- Fear of success. If I change, what other demands will be made of me? What is it that I’m afraid will change if I achieve what I want? What extra pressures or stressors do I fear will accompany success?
- Fear of loss. What am I afraid of losing? Am I assessing the potential losses disproportionately from the potential gains?
Ask yourself, if I didn’t have any of the fears that I just listed, what would I do differently? What actions would I stop taking? What actions would I start? Who would I speak to? What new skills would I endeavour to learn?
Getting ahead in an accelerating world
While there are many things you need to do in order to succeed in a fast-changing world, I think there are three core skills you must commit to in order to adapt to change.
Together, these core skills will set you up to succeed in a future that you’re unable to predict but can be certain will be different from where you are now (as illustrated in figure 5.1).
- Learn to unlearn: be open-minded. Be ready to unlearn and let go of old rules and assumptions about how things work and what’s possible.
- Think: be flexible. Stretch yourself to adapt to change and be ready to yield to the wind and try new approaches.
- Act: be proactive. Change before you have to, by preparing for future changes, and be open to embracing the new
Learn to unlearn: be open-minded
Early in 2012, after more than 10 years of living in the United States, my family and I returned to live in Melbourne, a city that I’d lived in for only one year over the previous 17 (and that was the year my first child was born, so my memories are encased in a sleep-deprived fog). As I soon discovered, my mental maps of Melbourne’s road system, good cafés, restaurants and shopping centres were in dire need of an update. While I’d kept my old Melway street directory from the 1990s I quickly realised I needn’t have bothered. Not only was my Melway woefully out of date for many parts of the city—which had transformed from industrial wastelands into vibrant urban centres—but several new, big toll roads, complete with tunnels and bridges, had been built, totally changing the routes around the city.
Thank God for the satellite navigation system in my new car! Needless to say, from driving on the other side of the road to enrolling my kids in new school systems and sports, since arriving back in Melbourne I’ve had to do a lot of learning, but I’ve had to do even more ‘unlearning’ in order to undergo the required ‘relearning’. I could never have learned how to navigate around the city had I kept relying on my mental maps or my old street directory. I had to donate the latter to the recycling bin and declare myself a novice navigator before I could once again become a competent one. I’m pleased to say that I can now make my way to the airport without any wrong turns (on a good day!).
TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL 46 page chapter, click on the red button below!
To purchase the book, visit http://www.stopplayingsafe.com/