Fear Gets a Bad Rap

Happy Halloween! Welcome to this week's?MAD?newsletter - for C-level Executives who want to?Make?A?Difference - in themselves and their organizations.?This week's features -?#Fear, #MentoringRelationships, #ProblemSolving and more.

In this Issue

1. Recreational?Fear
2. Designing?Mutual Mentor Relationships
3. Safety = Sales
4. Candles and Icebergs
5. Resilience?(the movie)?
6. Econ Recon

Recreational Fear

Fear gets a bad rap.?It’s Halloween so let’s talk about?fear???Research from the Recreational Fear Lab in Denmark suggests that“recreational fear” may be good for us.

Their studies suggest “that recreational fear is a form of?play behavior,?which is widespread in the animal kingdom and ubiquitous among humans.?When an organism?plays, it learns important skills and develops strategies for survival. Playfighting kittens train their ability to hold their own in a hostile encounter, but with little risk and low cost, compared to the real thing. Same with humans.”

Our attraction to horror movies, roller coasters, the annual “Halloween haunted houses,” Stephen King novels, and other deliberate attempts to scare ourselves appear to have some psychological benefits.??“For instance, one study… found that people who watch many horror movies?exhibited better psychological resilience?during the first Covid-19 lockdown than people who stay away from scary movies.”??(See more on “resilience” below).

This is one of the more provocative articles I’ve read on self-management.?Take a few minutes to explore the question?Can Experiencing Horror Help Your Brain?

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Designing Mutual Mentor Relationships

Even?founders, serial entrepreneurs, and CEOs benefit from mentors.

Chip Conley, who led?Joie de Vivre Hospitality, and is now?an author and the founder of the Modern Elder Academy,?shares lessons from?mentors?and mentoring relationships he has cultivated over his career:

• Southwest Airlines co-founder and CEO?Herb Kelleher:?The customer comes second.
• AirBnB co-founder and CEO?Brian Chesky:?Value curiosity.
• Chip Conley:?Humility is what helps you run a company.

How can you foster and design mutual mentoring relationships, particularly across generations??And what will you learn?

Safety = Sales

Most executives have had some exposure to Maslow’s Hierarchies of Needs.?After air, food and water and other basics required for our physiological needs,?the most basic human need is safety.?Perhaps as important as our physical safety is our?psychological safety.?When we don’t feel safe, we are often frozen into inaction…where not very much happens.

Vistage speaker? Colleen Stanley, CEO ?is one of the country’s leading experts not only on sales and sales management but on the importance of?emotional intelligence in selling. She offers a good introduction of the role of?psychological safety in how salespeople manage themselves and what sales managers need to understand about how it ultimately impacts salespeople’s performance.

As Stanley says,?understanding the role of safety is both “practical and tactical.” Take 2 ? minutes for her video overview of howPsychological safety increases sales results?before your next sales meeting.?Also, check out her books??Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success?and?Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leadership.

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Candles and Icebergs

Succeeding in business is in large measure about solving problems,?but it may be that seeing problems and solutions as two different things is in fact part of the problem.

Vistage Trusted Advisor member and employee engagement expert? Les Landes offers a provocative and useful look at problem solving in a recent blog post.?He shares how understanding that the iceberg that sank the Titanic could have been a lifesaver and how a candle exemplifies how?the problems in front of us often hold the very answers we are looking for.

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Resilience (The Movie)

Resilience was mentioned in the section above on “Recreational Fear.”?We’ve heard and read a lot about resilience?in recent years; an important trait for people and companies.?

If you’d like a fun and meaningful visual depiction of resilience which reminds us that it’s important to “bounce back”, here is a 90-second video reminder that?success isn’t linear.???

For a deeper dive on the topic check out?Resilience Training: Why mental toughness at work matters.

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Econ Recon

The Last Hurrah?:??“Most investors we talk to think the US is already in a recession or that a recession will start by the end of 2022. We think they’re wrong on both counts” begins Dr. Brian Wesbury’s latest blog post.????

Moreover, he predicts that Q3 will come in at an expansionary 3.0% annual GDP Growth (since he wrote that the number came in at 2.6%). But could that be the economy’s??Last Hurrah???Just before writing this, he published another?short post analyzing September’s increase in personal income and consumption.??

Encouraging trends:??ITR Economics’ Dr. Alan Beaulieu shares that “some of leading indicators are now showing an upward turn,?an encouraging development amid pessimism in the media etc.”?

Also, we hear about inflation daily in the news and for many it’s limited to soundbites and headlines. ITR economics shares a short, useful analysis of?What the Headlines Got Wrong on Inflation.

Share this week's newsletter as a treat! I also distribute via email and welcome new subscribers. Wishing you a productive week.

Sue Tinnish, PhD,?Vistage Chair, Facilitator, & Executive Coach

Find me easily at: 847.404.7325,?[email protected], Twitter:?@STinnish, LinkedIn:??www.dhirubhai.net/in/suetinnish, Website:??https://vistage.com/chairs/sue.tinnish

#ChicagoCEO #CEOs #leadership