New Training (and How Anxiety Impacts Success) | 120 Seconds to Better Leadership

What I’m working on now is actually a collaborative project with a clinical psychologist and an outdoor survivalist to develop some really intensive team experiential training.

The Ropes Course

We’re looking at kind of a two-day model of high ropes courses, and room clearing, and tying it all back to what happens at work. So, still early days, probably a 2019 project that will come into fruition. But it’s been really interesting to bring our three perspectives into how we support teams and what we know about how teams’ function.

Anxiety Can Equal Success

One of the things that I learned, and this is why I like to collaborate, I’m always learning from other people, is that anxious people tend to be more successful. And I can be kind of an anxious person, and I know for me that fear of failing really makes me work extra hard. And I didn’t know that that was a thing.

The clinical psychologist was sharing that anxious people, because they worry about failure, and they really want to make sure they do you know, the right thing and do the best, that they try really hard and so they’re more invested in the outcomes of their work. And people that are less anxious tend to not be as successful because they don’t have that fear driving them. So they don’t put quite as much effort into making sure everything’s wonderful, in whatever it is that they do. That was something new for me that I had not heard before.

I thought I’d share it. I’d love to know what your experience is with anxiety, and if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

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