When Fear is in The Driving Seat

Fear is doing its job, but it can wreck your leadership if it takes the steering wheel. I’m Lois Burton, an executive coach, and I’m getting honest about what it looks like when leaders operate from threat mode. 

It’s rarely obvious. Fear often disguises itself as fast decisions, high standards, constant busyness, or “just being thorough.” Underneath, it can drive micromanagement, avoidance of conflict, and a habit of playing it safe when bold leadership is needed most. 

I tell the story of Avril, a senior leader who steps into a role that feels too big and starts bracing for exposure. That imposter syndrome doesn’t stay internal, it shapes how she communicates, how she delegates, and how her team experiences her. 

We zoom out to the wider cost of fear-based leadership: a guarded culture, reduced psychological safety, and teams that start “playing not to lose” because they can feel their leader tightening up.

Then I share two practical leadership coaching tools you can use immediately. 

First, “name it to tame it,” a neuroscience-backed way to label fear and re-engage your thinking brain (amygdala vs prefrontal cortex). 

Second, a skill that separates strong leaders from reactive ones: learning whether fear is a real signal to slow down or just noise from old stories and conditioning. 

If you want better decision making under pressure and more courageous leadership, this is a place to start.

Subscribe to Leadership Horizons, share this with a leader who needs it, and leave a review with the moment that hit closest to home. What’s one decision you’d make differently if you weren’t afraid?

You can check out further details on my websites:

https://www.loisburtononline.com/

https://www.loisburton.co.uk/

email:  lois@loisburtononline.com

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Transcript

Why Leaders Fear

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Hello and welcome back to Leadership Horizons. I'm Lois Burton, executive coach, and someone who's spent 25 years sitting with leaders in the most challenging moments of their careers. If this is your first time here, I'm so glad you've found us. And if you're a regular listener, thank you. You make this whole thing worthwhile. Today we're going somewhere a bit uncomfortable. We're talking about fear. Specifically, we're talking about what happens when leaders lead from fear. When fear stops being a passenger and quietly climbs into the driver's seat. And here's my promise before we dive in. I'm not going to tell you that fear is the enemy, because it isn't. Fear is human. What matters is what we do with it. So I want to start by normalizing something. Every leader I've ever worked with, and we're talking about CEOs, MDs, directors across higher education, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, the arts, every single one of them has experienced fear. Every one. Fear of getting it wrong, fear of being exposed, fear of making the call that tanks everything, fear of letting people down, fear at its most basic level is your nervous system doing its job. Your brain is wired for threat. When something feels uncertain or high stakes, the alarm bell goes off, and that's not weakness, that's biology. I worked with a senior leader in financial services, let's call her Avril, who had just stepped into a role that was genuinely two sizes too big. But she was ready for it, but she thought she wasn't. She told me in our first session, Lois, I'm terrified that everyone is going to realize I shouldn't be here. Classic imposter territory. But what was fascinating wasn't the fear, it was what she was doing with it. She was making decisions faster to avoid being questioned. She was avoiding certain conversations entirely. She was over-controlling her team because unconsciously she believed that if everything was buttoned up and perfect, nobody would look too closely at her. The fear was running the show, and that's when fear becomes dangerous. Because here's the thing about fear in the leadership seat: it rarely announces itself. It disguises itself as decisiveness or drive or high standards or being really, really busy. Some of the patterns I see most often in my coaching practice are the leader who micromanages everything, not because they don't trust their team, but because letting go feels terrifying. The leader who covers up, who doesn't want to hear the bad news because they think that exposes their weaknesses. The leader who avoids the hard conversation, the underperformer, the toxic dynamic, because somewhere inside, conflict feels like a threat to their position or their likability. The leader who says yes to everything overcommits constantly because saying no triggers the fear of being seen as difficult or not a team player or not dedicated enough. And the most subtle one? The leader who plays it safe, who sticks with the tried and tested because the idea of a bold move and potentially getting it wrong is just too exposing. The cost of all of this is enormous, not just to the individual leader, but to their teams, their culture, their organizations, because fear is contagious. When people feel their leader is reactive or guarded or playing not to lose rather than playing to win, they feel it. And they start operating from that same contracted, fearful place. This is something I feel really strongly about. You know it's the underpinning theme of this podcast. That the way we led yesterday is not going to lead us into tomorrow. And right now, the world is too complex, too fast, too unpredictable for fear-driven defensive leadership. We need something different. So, what do we actually do about it? I'm going to give you two things you can take away and use this week. The first one, name it to tame it. This sounds almost too simple, but the neuroscience backs it up completely. When you name what you're feeling, when you actually say, even just to yourself, I'm feeling fear right now, or this is anxiety, you shift anxiety, sorry, shift activity from the amygdala, which is your threat response brain, to the prefrontal cortex, which is your thinking brain. You literally change what's happening neurologically. So the next time you notice yourself in a meeting feeling that tight, contracted, I need to control this sensation, pause. Name it internally. This is fear, I'm in threat mode. Then ask yourself one question. What would I do here if I wasn't afraid? That question is one of the most powerful coaching questions I use. It doesn't magic the fear away, but it opens the door. It lets you access your wiser, calmer, more resourceful self. And often that's all you need. Remember Avril? I spoke about her at the beginning. This was the one simple thing that Avril did, and it changed things dramatically for her. The second tip is distinguish between signal and noise. Not all fear is created equal. Some fear is a genuine signal. It's your gut telling you that something important is at stake, that this decision matters, that you need to slow down and think more carefully. That kind of fear deserves your attention. But a lot of the fear that drives poor leadership decisions is what I call noise. It's old patterns, old stories, old conditioning, the inner critic that says you're not good enough, the childhood experience of getting things wrong and being humiliated. The early career moment when vulnerability costs you. Get curious about which one you're dealing with. When fear shows up, ask yourself, is this fear telling me something real and relevant about the situation I'm in right now? Or is this an old story? Signal or noise. Learning to tell the difference is one of the most important leadership skills you can develop, and it takes practice but it absolutely can be learned. Fear and leadership isn't a flaw, it's part of the territory. The leaders I most admire, the ones who build remarkable teams and create real impact, aren't fearless, they're courageous. And courage isn't the absence of fear, it's knowing how to move through it. So, this week I want to leave you with a challenge. Just notice. Notice when fear is informing your decisions, consciously or not. Name it, get curious about it, and ask yourself that question: what would I do here if I wasn't afraid? If today's episode has resonated with you, I'd love to know. Come and find me at loisburtononline.com. There's a lot more there for you. And if you found this useful, please do share it with a leader in your world who might need to hear it today. I'll see you next week on Leadership Horizon.