Fear Management

By: Erin Tamberella

Date: 1/04/06

What can rob you of your self-esteem, confidence and even your destiny faster than anything else? What is the number one reason financial advisors don’t pick up the phone or ask for referrals or pursue bigger accounts or call a client who’s losing money or in general, achieve all they’re capable of? Whether you’re a million dollar producer or a rookie just starting out, whether you care to admit it or not, it’s FEAR. And if you think you’re immune, think again.

 

In the brokerage business, fear is barely acknowledged to exist much less discussed. From day one, financial advisors are expected to be fearless in all they do—developing prospects, making recommendations, giving presentations, dealing with objections and servicing clients. In a business where fear thrives but is a skeleton in the closet, how much is it holding you back?

 

In this issue of FA Coach, we’re going to break taboo and take a look at the anatomy of fear, its symptoms and what it’s capable of doing to you and your business. Then, I’ll prescribe a daily treatment plan to battle this formidable opponent.

 

Symptoms

Fear at its best is actually an internal warning signal that tells us rather emphatically, that danger is near and we’d better do something about it–fast. If fear only happened when it was really needed—cliff jumping in Hawaii or being chased down a dark alley by a maniacal serial killer, then it would be a good thing. Unfortunately, fear doesn’t always work that way. It often strikes at rather inopportune times—when it’s neither wanted nor helpful and often becomes paralyzing instead of motivating. Paralysis is a primary symptom of fear and is a fairly quick death certificate in the brokerage business. Whether it’s sporadic or habitual, to a financial advisor fear is the Eighth Deadly Sin.

 

Financial advisors in general are gifted, talented and well-liked. Yet many lack self-esteem and/or self-confidence even when they’re apparently successful and accomplished. If you were to analyze self-esteem closely, you’d discover that it can really be reduced down to a single concept. When you’re faced with a difficult challenge, how do you handle it? Do you face the problem directly and take action or do you avoid it and hope it goes away on its own?

 

In most cases how you respond is more important than the final outcome. If you attack it head on and do the difficult things, even if it doesn’t turn out exactly the way you would have liked, you beat fear and build self-esteem all at the same time. If on the other hand you avoid, even if things turn out better than expected, you do just the opposite. Fear grows a little stronger and self-esteem a little weaker because you know you took the easy way out.

 

Because of the nature of the business, all financial advisors at some or many points in their career suffer from feelings of self-doubt. These feelings of self-doubt and fear manifest themselves through avoidance behavior. Avoidance results in a slower, more prolonged death in the business, but death nevertheless. Financial advisors can survive a little longer in avoidance mode than paralysis mode because they usually are doing something. They’re just avoiding the difficult and unfortunately, it’s those difficult things that are always the most productive.

 

Avoiders are also masters at “impression management” pretending to be what they think will be acceptable to managers and peers. However, even when they are successful at managing others’ perceptions, receiving praise and recognition, they internally discount it. Often they entertain thoughts of being a fake, feeling that people around them only see what they want them to see and if they saw them for who they really were, there wouldn’t be any praise or recognition involved. Internally, they die just a little and over time, avoidance can become a very dangerous pattern leading to chronic fear and anxiety and ultimately paralysis and death in the business.

 

Avoiders also suffer the frustration of knowing they are capable of so much more than their actions represent. They’re plagued with thoughts of what might have been and what they might have become if somehow, someway they could just make themselves do what they know they should be doing. However, when you do the difficult things and meet a challenge head on, it builds the core of who you are even if you don’t perform perfectly.

Of course, no discussion of fear in the brokerage business would be complete without touching on a universal fear–the fear of failure. It’s a fear that all of us, and I do mean all of us carry to some degree throughout our entire lives. Our perceptions of and responses to failure are primary factors in predicting success—more than IQ, beauty, charm, wit and money combined.

All of us fail at something, usually many things throughout our lifetime. For some, failure fosters a deeper commitment and determination to succeed. For others, it simply results in discouragement and reinforces the pattern of fear. The key here is to learn from your failure, realize that failing is an inevitable part of being human, recognize that failing at something does not make you a failure and then move on.

Another thing to always remember is if you can learn from your perceived failure and be better equipped to handle a similar situation in the future, then it really wasn’t a failure at all. It was simply a necessary learning experience. It’s a fact of life that we always learn much more from mistakes than successes. Think back over your life at your own key learning experiences. Did they involve what seemed like a failure or mistake at the time or something that worked out flawlessly? Chances are they revolved around the former.

 

Treatment Plan

Regardless of whether your fear is subtle and tends to creep into your business in seemingly insignificant ways or is blatantly obvious (at least to you), the treatment plan is the same. For maximum effectiveness in battling fear and all its symptoms, like all prescriptions it takes a certain degree of commitment on your part. However, as a FA coach who talks to financial advisors all day everyday, I know this treatment plan works. Think for a minute how different your business and your life would look if fear were just a periodic minor annoyance rather than a chronic terminal problem. Follow these steps and it can be.

 

1. Be Aware: Become aware and completely honest with yourself as to how your fear manifests itself. Ask yourself the following questions and write down your answers to gain the clarity you need to change. Once you have these answers, be keenly aware of when fear is creeping in and preventing you from being as effective as you know you can be. Notice and then follow the remaining steps to beat it.

• Does your fear tend to be subtle or obvious?
• What are your personal primary symptoms?
• Are you an avoider or do you shut down?
• If fear weren’t an issue, what would you be doing differently?
• What is your typical response to a perceived failure?

2.Take Every Thought Captive: The entire process of conquering fear is going to take active mind control on your part. Approaching fear passively never, never works. Whenever you find yourself thinking thoughts such as: this is never going to work, I’m wasting my time, let me just do this (busy work thing) today and I’ll do that (important difficult task) tomorrow, recognize that these are all self-defeating thoughts and usually indicative of some sort of underlying fear. At this point, you must break this thought pattern by not allowing yourself to dwell there and force yourself to think a positive thought. No matter how insignificant or unrelated that positive thought may be—force yourself to think about something positive and eventually force yourself to think something positive about the issue at hand. When tempted to do the easy thing today and put off the difficult thing until tomorrow, do not succumb. You do that by following the next step.

 

3. Take Some Action: No matter how small the action, take some action even if it’s just making a list of all the things that will need to be done before you start on the actual task. Then do the first thing on that list. You need some action to get you moving again. The most destructive thing you can do when battling fear is nothing. Remember a primary symptom of fear is avoidance and if allowed to go unchecked, it can ultimately lead to paralysis and the death of your business. When you do nothing, it leads to distorted thinking and feeling like you’re hopeless, helpless and will never be able to change. Negative behaviors reinforce negative thoughts and the cycle spirals downward at an exponential rate. If you continue to do nothing, you’ll find eventually you have less energy, motivation and feelings of overwhelm. Doing nothing taken to the extreme can actually result in a state of learned helplessness or giving up, which stems from the belief that whatever you do doesn’t matter. One small action step is often better than 100 internal pep talks and even more effective than reading several motivational books.

4. Approach Failure Analytically Not Emotionally: When dealing with a perceived failure, always approach it from an analytical standpoint and keep emotions to a minimum. You can diffuse the emotional component by making a habit of asking yourself the following questions. Write down your answers and you’ll find that this exercise gives you a new enthusiasm and drive to move on rather than staying stuck or giving up. Then do exactly that—move on!

 

• What did you set out to accomplish?
• What went right?
• What went wrong?
• What will you do differently next time?

 

In this issue of FA Coach, we touched on just a few of the signs and symptoms of fear. Fear can also manifest itself in many other ways including procrastination, a lack of organization and even in destructive physical ways such as overeating, undereating or drug and alcohol abuse. Use these tools to get a handle on the Eighth Deadly Sin and realize that your battle with fear will be an ongoing process. However, if you commit yourself in 2006 to the treatment plan I’ve outlined, nothing will have a more significant impact on your business.