We Say Control, but We Mean Confidence

Every morning I start my day by taking a 2-mile walk with my dog, Remy while listening to Brene Brown's Dare to Lead podcast.

In almost every episode I've listened to recently, Brene mentions her need for control when things are scary or uncertain. It's a natural experience for most humans.

What that looks like in our business, financial coaching for small business owners, is:

• Hyperfocus on small details like the office supplies account within QuickBooks.

• Inserting oneself into a project at an inappropriate time and causing chaos

• Micromanaging the organization's leaders in every aspect of their work like team building, forecasting, priority setting, meeting rhythms, etc.

• Demanding more and more reports that offer fewer and fewer insights

• Scheduling impromptu meetings on "strategy" that end up as shaming sessions

• Out of the blue, "left field" ideas and decisions

And the list could go on and on. The unfortunate fact is when we start to "control" things out of fear, we just create more fear in ourselves and distrust in our teams. Which in turn makes us clamp down tighter and tighter and try to control smaller and smaller decision points. It's a downward spiral that could be catastrophic for an organization or family, or relationship.....

The way we break this cycle of fear and control is by asking a simple question, "what would make me feel confident in this situation?" Asking this curious question breaks the control cycle and brings us back up to see the forest for the trees.

Maybe what would make you feel confident is a weekly cash flow statement, a project Gantt chart with on/off schedule reporting, bi-weekly one-on-one leadership check-ins, monthly results debriefs to unpack what went well and could go better, a strategic planning system, and rhythm or a roundtable of peers to ideate and imagine with.

When your sense of fear creeps in, and it will. It always will. Pause, identify what is causing the fear, and instead of acting, question. Over time you will move your instinctive reactivity from control to confidence.