I hear all the time in discussions about leadership or community how it’s super important to be cheerleaders of one another. Leaders need to be their people’s biggest fans, their biggest supporters and encouragers.
And I’m not going to disagree with that. There’s a great discussion to be had regarding people who think they are coaches, but they are really just cheerleaders, but I’ll save that for another day.
But in some discussions lately with the current leadership learning community I’m facilitating, I’ve thought of many situations and examples where people were in need of support and encouragement from a key person or key leader, but then often unintentionally or maybe due to blind spots or character deficiencies the “support” that is received ends up reinforcing people’s worst fears and deepest insecurities.
I thought about people like this that tend to reinforce performance and people pleasing by how they “cheerlead”. I thought of a new name for this type of presence that people can have in others’ lives and “fearleaders” to me pretty much captured it. “Fearleaders” are people who through their support and attempts at encouragement end up tapping into people’s fears, which then becomes their basis for action. Again – intentionality is not the issue. I’m sure there’s some, but I’ve never met anyone who clearly sought to have that kind of impact.
By the way I googled “fearleaders” to see if I was original, but of course I wasn’t. Turns out Los Angeles has a roller derby team or cheerleading team called..yes, “The Fearleaders.” So if anyone was thinking of a trademark, it’s already been taken!
But the above dynamic stresses the need to understand our power in leadership. Would it occur to any of us if we are trying to be supportive and motivational with the best of intentions that we could end up inspiring people’s wounds, fears, and dysfunctions? Over time, when those are the things motivating people to work and get things done it shapes an overall culture and it’s not going to be a very lifegiving one.
This reinforces for me the importance of wedding self-awareness and basic knowledge of power dynamics. If we want to be coaches, good leaders, and even cheerleaders – we need to learn how to know what is going to strengthen one of your people for the challenges ahead, and what is going to cause them to work hard out of psychological fears that they aren’t doing enough, aren’t liked enough, aren’t good enough.
So maybe your boss is a fearleader, maybe it’s your husband, or your wife, or some other authority figure. Or maybe you recognize this in yourself. I know I can recognize ways in which my efforts to motivate or coach can at times dip into the role of fearleader.
If we fear anything, let’s fear the long term impact of a human soul and community by being motivated in such ways and seek to strengthen and empower wherever we can – learning how people experience our power as leaders and people along the way.
How do you handle any potential “fearleaders” in your life that don’t see the realities of how they are trying to motivate, coach, or supervise you? How do you motivate others without reinforcing those fears?
