Discover how to transform the paralysis of fear into a driving force for leadership success, as we welcome Dave Nirchi to share his insights alongside the powerful experiences of Ben Horowitz from "The Hard Thing About Hard Things." This episode is an enlightening journey through the landscape of fear in leadership, offering you the tools to not only face your fears but to use them as a catalyst for growth and improved communication within your team.
Embrace a newfound perspective on the duality of fear, where we dissect its potential to either impede progress or reflect deep care and commitment to excellence. We discuss strategies for transparent leadership communication, the importance of a proactive mindset, and the transformative power of harnessing fear for personal and team achievements.
Discover how to transform the paralysis of fear into a driving force for leadership success, as we welcome Dave Nirchi to share his insights alongside the powerful experiences of Ben Horowitz from "The Hard Thing About Hard Things." This episode is an enlightening journey through the landscape of fear in leadership, offering you the tools to not only face your fears but to use them as a catalyst for growth and improved communication within your team.
Embrace a newfound perspective on the duality of fear, where we dissect its potential to either impede progress or reflect deep care and commitment to excellence. We discuss strategies for transparent leadership communication, the importance of a proactive mindset, and the transformative power of harnessing fear for personal and team achievements.
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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, with our Season 5 special guest, dave Nurchi. As we get after the lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz and Dave, we've got our point for today that we're bringing up. This is brought to us by Seed Planning Group. Seed Planning Group is fee-only fiduciaries, a wealth management firm that helps people overcome the challenges that are keeping them from personal fulfillment. You can find them at wwwseedpgcom. And so back to our point, though, because that's what we're here for today.
Speaker 1:
Our point is being scared doesn't make you gutless, and laying this out I'm thinking about when you read the book you hear all about, I mean, some really big sleepless nights that Ben's going through. He is talking about, you know, borderline bankruptcy, losing his parents' money, his in-laws' money. You know having to go on a roadshow and basically beg for people to invest, doing things that you know. He's looking at the hundreds of people that have supported him the whole way, all of his engineers and stuff, and saying, hey, you know, we're just going to do a sharp left turn and become something completely different than we are, and you know he's talking about these monumental decisions that have to be made in leadership. So whether you're leading a company or leading a family, moving them across country or whatever you're doing, maybe you're making a major career change, big changes. There is like I think there are very few people who are not actually scared Right there, because when you look at uprooting your life or uprooting I mean, if you're not, if you don't feel intimidation with some of the things that you're gonna face as a leader, then you're probably a psychopath. Because I mean, when you're blazing a trail and you're out in front, there are sleepless nights. There are days where you're like maybe I'm confident, I can get through the week, I don't know how I'm going to get through the month, and you're just grinding and trying to figure out how to do it and think about your personal life. Well, business is no different. If there's been points in your life where you're feeling like man, I'm just trying to grind through this and get through through this, and maybe somebody's sick or something and you're just going week to week or whatever, you get scared. And his point is that doesn't make you gutless. What makes you gutless, I think, is when you quit and run away or when you stop trying to take chances to improve your situation.
Speaker 1:
It's like, I think of it kind of like you're sitting on an iceberg and when the iceberg first broke off you jumped on it and it's a big iceberg. And the iceberg starts to float away and the further and further the iceberg goes, the smaller and smaller it becomes. And you're floating by all these other islands and stuff and you're like, wow, you know, if I, if I jump off the iceberg now, I could swim over to that island and you know, then I could maybe not drown or something down the road here, right, or I could wait for that next island to come along, and maybe, you know, I'll just happen to bump into it, or maybe the last little bit of the iceberg won't melt away. Um, but you just sit there and you're afraid. You're afraid of, you know, through paralysis I'm not going to take a risk because I'm afraid of losing what I have. Meanwhile, I'm afraid of losing what I have and know having some kind of catastrophe on my hands.
Speaker 1:
That's gutless, right? That is like I am frozen by fear. That's what being gutless is. Being afraid itself is not the issue. You know. Use the fear to make you do something and then, with that, have confidence. I mean, there's, you know, some stuff in his writing about having hope and looking out for the future. But you know, being afraid is just an insecurity and it's part of the process of becoming stronger. But when you don't address fear I think that that's what he's kind of getting at is like like if you don't do something just because you're afraid, you kind of are gutless yeah, yeah, addressing.
Speaker 2:
it's the big point there to me, and and there's the two types of scares which you, you covered, but to to kind of put it in my own words, it's there's the scared, and you either paralyze yourself or you run from it, and there's the scare that drives you to do better and keep pushing forward. Right, and that's the scare that we're talking about. That's the good scared, right. It doesn't make you gutless, it makes you a leader and it means you care. To me, scared always means you care and you have people's livelihood on the line, right, your own, the people that work for you, right, when we're talking business here, like that is scary. So it means you care about them.
Speaker 2:
I wouldn't want to work for somebody that wasn't a little scared, because that probably means we are going to be getting comfortable or someone's going to pass us along the way. Um, so to me, the scared is a good thing and I always. My comparison is to sports. You know, when I played baseball, every game, I'd get those. You know the butterflies in the stomach, right, and you kind of get nervous and you do this every day. You practice, you play games. It's not the first time you go out there, but you still get nervous and it means you care that you want to go out there and play your best and do your best and get better. You know, show up for your teammates, and when that stops happening, it's probably time to look for an exit yeah, my, my dad used to tell me growing up don't play not to lose.
Speaker 1:
Right, you need to play to win, not not to lose, and I think that that's what scared does. That's the scare. Yeah, yeah, you're playing, not to lose.
Speaker 2:
right, that's the scared that you're running away or you're frozen. Right, you're paralyzed. The playing to win is the good scared. Right, you might make a mistake, you might fail, but you got to go out there and try, or else why are you doing it?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I think you lose when you play. Not to lose, actually, I mean I, if you watch any kind of sports or anything like that, and when, when you're sitting there going, I'm just afraid to lose. I just don't want to lose, you know, or you're coming from a place of fear. You watch teams always lose. It's like prevent defense never prevents anybody from scoring.
Speaker 1:
You know it's you're either you're either on the attack or you're on the scoring. You know it's. You're either on the attack or you're on the defense. I mean it's one of the two. And if you're on the defense, there better be a strategic reason, right? Not just to you know.
Speaker 1:
I hope that I won't have to deal with an issue, because normally, if we're where's fear really come from, I think when we're talking about leadership, we're talking about dealing with an issue. I'm afraid about the outcome of a particular issue, right, like, if I make this decision, I might have to lay people off. If I make this decision, it might impact somebody else's livelihood. Or if I make this decision and it doesn't turn out right, the business could collapse. You know, or you know or I don't make. Basically, we can be. I think we can be afraid to the point of of of almost being like not. I think. I think fear and intimidation are probably two different things. But we can take fear and turn it into intimidation, like it just seems like a mountain that I can't possibly get over. And then you, if you use that for motivation though, if you're like, well, I have to get through this and people get through this all the time and you get through it. Then you look back and you're like, oh, that wasn't so bad. You know, like, like, oh, I was afraid of that, but, um, I definitely could conquer that and I did conquer it. Now I know that I'm more capable and I just, you know, we, like you were saying, we, we need to use it for motivation, right, and we need to realize that it's a part of it.
Speaker 1:
And, and even our people, our people, are going to be afraid sometimes, right, because everybody's got something to lose. You know, I have a job, I have a paycheck, I have a community, I have relationships, you know a family, that kind of stuff. And when something happens and it threatens the potential of loss or of pain or discomfort, that's a lot of times where being afraid comes in. But, and again, it's not bad to be afraid. It's bad to quit because you're afraid, you know, or bad to push people away because you're afraid. Like, you have to embrace fear. You have to look at the fear and say this is a natural occurrence. I need to be aware that it's here. You can't ignore the fact that it's there, but I also need to keep it in perspective and I think that that's maybe the most difficult part.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and that's a good point with you know, the your people are also going to be scared, and I think that's where you step up as a leader, right To to have one. Maybe, you know, let them know that it's good that they're a little scared, right, because this is, you know, this is a journey that we're all on as we're growing and building this business, but at the same time, that means they're going to understand some of the decisions being made better, because you're also letting them know if we don't take these risks or make these decisions that are a little bit scary, we're going to stay right where we are. We're going to lose anyway because somebody else is going to be moving forward or getting better because they're making these moves.
Speaker 1:
So you're talking about one big thing and then we can wrap this up, but you're talking about communication. So you're saying like if you're afraid, you don't have to pretend that you're not afraid. If you're leading others and you're afraid, one of the best ways to deal with your fear and I think that they get into this in the book is to bring your team into it, to actually talk to your team about. This is what I'm afraid about and this is what we have to work towards for the betterment of the organization, the mission, everybody as a whole, or whatever customers you know, whatever, whatever that pain point is. But I think admitting it and being like I'm afraid or I'm nervous or I'm scared or whatever term you want to use, but we're going to work on a solution, is the difference of I'm afraid and because of that I'm not going to talk to anybody ever again. Yep Right.