Dr. TC North, Co-author of Fearless Leaders, on ColoradoBiz TV with Associate Editor Lisa Ryckman. Act With Inspiring Courage.
I am very excited about this four-part ColoradoBiz TV series on my Fearless Leaders book. Here is the first interview on the first Fearless Leaders’ defining characteristic, “Act with inspiring courage”.
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Lisa Ryckman: So tell us about your book.
Dr. North: I’m very excited about the book. Fearless Leaders is based around four defining characteristics and 12 success secrets of fearless leaders. It was originally written for business leaders, but what we found is that because it’s different than most leadership books – it’s really about how do you lead yourself, and how do you think to lead yourself well so that you can be a great leader for others – that actually works for leaders in all arenas, whether not-for-profit, any team or group or whatever. This has been a really interesting finding.
Lisa: So when you talk about fearless leaders, tell us, how do you define that? What’s a fearless leader?
Dr. North: Thanks for that question. A fearless is leader is not somebody without fear, because everybody has fears. As you know, I’ve worked with some of the best people in the world at what they do – hundreds of them – and they all have fears. So it’s not about being fearless in that sense of no fear, it’s about – is fear in control of you from the subconscious mind or are you consciously in control because you know what your fears are and then you can handle them?
Lisa: So when you’re talking about having worked with people that are really excellent at what they do, but they also have these fears. Can you talk a little bit about some of the individuals that you’ve worked with and how they overcome those fears and how they use it to their advantage?
Dr. North: My work with individuals is confidential, so I can’t use names. What I can tell you is, it’s how they frame them. And the first part of being fearless is you have to know what fears you have. And most of us, we talk about being stressed, we talk about being anxious, we have all these other words for fear, we don’t recognize that it’s a fear-based process. So once you get your hands around, “What am I afraid of?” and what people tell me all the time when they do my work is, “I didn’t realize I had so many fears, but this is really helpful because now I know how to manage and work with the fear, now that I understand that that’s what it is.”
Lisa: Let’s talk about that first defining characteristic that fearless leaders have. What is that?
Dr. North: The first characteristic is having inspiring courage. We really want our leaders to have courage. We really need our leaders to have courage, to think more globally and to think on a broader base, rather than just profit. And there are different parts to having inspiring courage. Mastering fear – as we just said, the first part of mastering fear is identifying fear. Learn to develop the parts of your mind that are courageous and that are confident. There are actual processes. It’s like training different muscles of your body. It’s a different part of your mind, and you can learn how to train it and strengthen it.
Lisa: Can you give us some ideas about how you might go about doing that?
Dr. North: One of the simplest ways is – it’s like a super computer, you just enter a file. So if you remember a time you were courageous, you literally have gone into a part of the brain, it’s called the neural network, which is a group of neurons, you’ve gone into that neural network that’s connected to all the courageous memories. Each time you go into that neural network, that neural network– like a muscle – gets bigger, stronger and makes more connections. So it literally becomes a bigger part of your mind.
The road to success is filled with the potholes of failure. It’s real important to have a lot of courage because you have to be willing to fail a lot in order to be successful.
Dr. TC North is a small business coach and speaker. He is also the co-author of the best selling book, Fearless Leaders. This post is partially exerted from the Fearless Leaders book.
