Developing mindsets and habits that fuel high performance.
Using Stories to Overcome Fear
In our last newsletter, we shared tips and strategies from Mandalay Entertainment and Mandalay Baseball Properties CEO, board chair, movie producer, owner of the Golden State Warriors, and author of the book Tell to Win, Mr. Peter Guber, regarding how you can share your story to inspire and motivate others. We continue where we left off and share some more of Peter Guber’s advice on how you can also use stories to help yourself and others overcome fear.
On the downside, you probably have already seen firsthand how fear can paralyze you or your team. On the other hand, you’ve experienced how fear can be used in a positive way and serve to energize you or your team to take action. In that sense, fear can be used as an ally, not as an adversary. The way you can do this as a team leader involves you telling stories that convey the message to your teammates that fear is nothing more than F.E.A.R. – or – False Evidence Appearing Real.
During his career, Peter Guber learned to tell stories that turn fear into a powerful motivator. How? He strategically decided to emotionally transport his colleagues (teammates) through the ‘oohs’ and “aahs” of a story rather than just sharing with them a laundry list of data, facts, statistics, and other bland and boring information as he was trying to get them to let go of fearful thoughts.
Good team members who are also team leaders, like you, use stories on a daily basis. They tell stories that cast themselves and their teams as brave winners rather than fearful losers. As a team leader, you cannot totally eliminate fear from everyone’s minds, but you can use it as a leverage tool and use it to your greatest advantage by telling a ‘purposeful’ story (like we discussed in our last newsletter) to help reduce, if not eliminate fear in a given situation.
What makes an effective story that helps us overcome fear? Remember first that a story is a vehicle that puts facts, figures, and statistics into an emotional context. There’s lots of facts, figures, and statistics in baseball, so it’s not too hard to put them into the emotional context of a story. The difference here is that the information in a story doesn’t just sit there as it would in a list or stats chart of a pitcher’s ERA or a batter’s on base percentage. Instead, the story puts the facts, figures, and stats in a ‘purposeful’ story built by you to create suspense and engage your listeners in your story’s call to action—which in this case is to overcome fear. Facts, figures, and stats are memorable to computers, not to your teammates. Stories are.
Peter Guber refers to this ‘call to action’ as emotional transportation. Your story and its supporting facts, figures, and statistics transport your listeners to carry your story forward. It encourages your listeners to let go of fear and press onward toward victory. Good stories, well told by you, turn your teammates into messengers of good news as they retell the story forward to others.
It’s important to keep in mind that the content of your story can come from anywhere and at any time in your history. Think about a time when you experienced fear as we defined it earlier-False Evidence Appearing Real. When was a time that you thought you saw something or thought you knew something that at the time was clear evidence of danger, when in actuality, there was no reason for fear. It was only in your mind and not ‘real’ at all. Remember the famous quote by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt? He was the one who said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself; nameless, unreasoning, unjustified.”
As you consider what story to tell your teammates to overcome fear, keep in mind that first-person stories are best (things that you personally experienced), but if you don’t have one of those stories, tell one about an event that you observed or one that someone told you. Like we said in our last issue, tell your story to your teammates today!
Take Care,
Jerry Hairston, Jr. Lynn R. Miller, Ed.D.
Board Chair & Co-Founder President & Co-Founder
Source: Using Stories to Overcome Fear; HBR Blog, Feb. 15, 2011.
In our next issue we will continue with the theme of communication as we provide you with five easy steps to building your network of individuals who can both support and challenge you as your progress to the next level in your career.
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