The High-FF manager – not such a contradiction in terms

High-FFs (as I call those with a high fear of failure in What’s Stopping You?) are the opposite to High-AMs (those with high achievement motivation) and they have a major problem when it comes to management. But also a major opportunity.

Their High-FF status is likely to have dogged them all the way up the organisation, so High-FFs that have not dealt with their insecurities will rarely make it to the top. Yet, from sheer longevity, many will make it to management positions that require leadership skills.

The question is – will they exercise those skills based on their faulty reactions to the “neural hijackings” many High-FFs suffer from when their fears are triggered (making them defensive and paranoid)? Or will they “step through the mirror” and develop a strong understanding – based on their experiences on the way up – of the potential insecurities of their team? An understanding, what’s more, that will make them an “inspiring” leader in the modern office.

Certainly, High-FF leadership can seem like a contradiction in terms. Our fears mean we distrust those both above and below us in the hierarchy and we can make poor judgements based on our insecurities. Our creativity (a strong High-FF trait) will be switched towards defensiveness, which will curtail the team’s growth, make us a reactive manager and a suspicious hirer. Unenlightened High-FFs, it seems, cannot take instruction from above or lead the team below.

Yet leadership is possible for the “recovering” (there is no final victory – fear of failure is a hardwired condition from early childhood) High-FF as long as we are prepared to accept who we are – including our faulty wiring – and externalise and depersonalize our experiences.

Leadership is no more than goal achievement for a group of individuals, so if we are fully onboard with those goals – if they are our goals – then leadership is no more than the recruitment of others in pursuit of our goals. Of course, this is a fantastic turnaround for High-FFs more used to being recruited by others to help pursue their goals.

And, luckily, modern leadership is moving the way of the High-FF – as long as they can learn from their experiences. Most people now work in the knowledge economy. This is the world of the office or studio and it involves people who possess both skills and choices. Productivity is the modern economy involves qualitative measurements such as creativity, thought leadership, analysis and mental processing. And this requires workers who are emotionally – as well as intellectually – capable of performing such tasks. It also requires leaders who can motivate workers through emotional awareness and intelligence: traits High-FFs usually have in abundance.

Yet our self-obsession may prevent us from seeing that, as High-FFs, our previous weaknesses – of being too emotional, too sensitive, of being overly concerned with not losing face, of giving too much credence to external opinions – becomes our strengths. To lead, however, we must externalise these experiences and see it from the viewpoint of those we manage.

Our ability to empathise with the emotional needs of others is crucial in the modern world of work – an essential building block in business leadership that underlies our ability to be a mentor and to navigate sometimes conflicting workplace personalities.

A key point is that the people we lead are at least as important as the people we follow, despite their lower position in the hierarchy. And this means that – just for once – our insecurities as High-FFs, where we are so often concerned about what people think of us or how we are being perceived, is on-the-money when it comes to leadership.

Those with achievement motivation (High-AMs), meanwhile, are clueless. In what’s known in management circles as the “paradox of success” problem leadership behaviours can include, ironically, “winning too much”, which makes us trample over others, “adding too much value”, which prevents others getting any credit, “passing judgement”, which means offering opinions rather than listening, “being straight talking” which means making destructive comments and being too critical, and “telling the world how smart we are”, rather than offering praise to others.

These are all traits that High-AMs have used to get to the top. Now there, however, they can alienate the team below and destroy confidence, creativity, optimism and, ultimately, loyalty. Little wonder that so many High-AMs, when made the boss, simply keep going: acquiring companies, becoming corporate raiders, throwing themselves into maniacal deal-doing and even becoming crooks. Anything but nurture the team beneath them.

Edward Stobart: gentleman trucker, High-FF

Edward Stobart died on March 31st, aged just 56. Britain’s become used to lauding the attributes of its famous entrepreneurs – from James Dyson to Richard Branson to Peter Jones. Yet Stobart – despite his ubiquitous trucks on the UK’s motorway network – died as something of an unknown. Even the lorries carry his father’s name – Eddie – although it was Edward that turned it into the country’s most famous trucking brand.

From the excellent obituary of him in a recent Economist, I think I’ve worked out why. Unlike his contemporary entrepreneurs – who effuse the confidence and chutzpah and sheer certainty that the image of the entrepreneur (incorrectly) insists is a requirement for success – Edward Stobart, in my view, appeared to suffer from fear of failure.

I’m only going on the obituary – so this could well be wide of the mark – but here’s my evidence that Edward Stobart was, indeed, a High-FF (as I call those with a high fear of failure in What’s Stopping You?):

• He had a stammer, brought about by a traumatic childhood event – in his case a fall through a roof. As I write in What’s Stopping You? and recently on this blog, traumatic childhood events can induce a mild form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that generates a fearful response from tangentially-similar incidents in adulthood. And while a fall through a roof is not the usual public humiliation for triggering fear of failure, the resultant stammer is a classic fear-triggered response.

• No matter how large the business became, the persona of Eddie Stobart Ltd was through the trucks rather than himself. Mostly, he was the man eating egg and chips in the lorry-park café, with his fellow diners oblivious to the fact he was by far the most famous name in UK haulage (non-UK readers may be amazed to learn that “spot the Eddie Stobart truck” is now a more popular children’s travel game than eye-spy, or that there are more than 25,000 registered “spotters”, with many times that number unregistered).

• Stobart was always polite and always smart but he shied away from meeting strangers – a trait which prevented a public flotation of the company until after he sold his majority stake to his brother. My guess (and it is only a guess) was that he distrusted financial advisers and shareholders – perhaps fearing that their intrusion would reveal his personally-perceived (but deeply-held) self-belief in his own inadequacies.

• Trust was certainly an issue. As a child he showed entrepreneurial flair but kept all his savings in his trouser pocket. And he forced upon his drivers a rigid dress and conduct code (including wearing ties – something unheard of in the oil-n-nicotine stained trucking community). In fact his lack of trust in his workforce went as far as washing many of the trucks himself.

• Of course, both the tie wearing and manual truck-washing may suggest – not distrust – but a strong desire to project an upright professional image in a world renowned for sloppiness and poor manners. Such a desire to over-compensate can of course, be based on perceived insecurities regarding how the world might judge him or his brand.

• Indeed, he confessed that a lot of the brand’s power was down to image. He “didn’t hesitate to lie about how many lorries he had,” stated The Economist obituary. Again, this could show chutzpah but could equally reveal deeply-held feelings of inadequacy – as The Economist writes: “With his stammer, it was much easier to say, ‘no problem’ than to start picking difficulties.”

• Stobart’s first job, at 14, was on a JCB – planting roadsigns on the new M6 motorway. Apparently, he preferred spotting these to his own lorries. And he claimed they were both 10-feet high and 10-feet deep, which both The Economist thought and I think an apt analogy for the quiet man of trucking.