Feeling the fear could be bad for your career

Jo Faragher

As we enter a new year and many employees are considering their career aspirations for 2016, CV-Library has produced some interesting findings on what motivates workers in their choice of role.

The company found that just over a quarter of workers said they chose their career path to avoid dealing with workplace fears – the most common being public speaking. Other workplace ‘nightmares’ include cold calling, presentations, leading a meeting and missing targets (most of which are ‘musts’ in the recruitment industry).

Some poor souls also admitted to a dislike of speaking on the phone, attending social events or being away from home.

With email and social media so prolific in the workplace, it’s probably easier than ever to avoid these ‘public’ situations, resorting to only communicating electronically and relying on more confident colleagues to deal with more daunting tasks.

But CV-Library did uncover some encouraging statistics on those who do decide to face their fears. More than a quarter that did so said this was through a desire to “tackle it head on” and use the experience as a way to grow their career. The opposite reaction was to call in sick or take annual leave.

As the company points out, one of the best ways to address negative feelings about certain workplace situations is through training. Real-life simulations of phone calls, presentations and the like can make the real thing seem less daunting and also put these experiences into the context of the business.

Once employees know that conquering their fears could actually make their job easier, offer a more satisfying career path and get better results for their employer, taking on these situations day-to-day becomes less something to fear and more something to embrace.

Here are a few practical things you can encourage workers to do to tackle their fears:

• Write things down: can they specify exactly what worries them about a certain situation? Is it what people will think, or is it something physical?
• Then get them to break these worries down and tackle them in chunks, for example by allaying their fears about others’ perceptions of them.
• Consider ways their role can be modified so that they don’t avoid the things they worry about altogether, but feel more comfortable doing them.
• Equip managers to be good role models and mentors who acknowledge workers’ worries and help them to deal with them.

For some, changing their job may be the only option because their fear is so crippling, but for most, it will be possible to ‘feel the fear’ and… well you know how the rest of it goes.