Do you ever get that feeling of panic before a webinar, often centred on the worry that you will be asked questions that you can’t answer or challenged on your views? If so, you’re not alone. This is a common concern that comes up in our coaching sessions.
Fortunately, there is something that you can do about it—and it isn’t ‘know more’. It is, in fact, ‘care less’. To explain this, we need to visit the world of the US Navy SEALs, and more specifically, an element of their training called drown proofing.
An extreme example
During drown proofing, trainees’ hands and feet are tied and they are thrown into a deep swimming pool. The objective is to survive five minutes. If you’ve ever tried to float in a swimming pool, you’ll know that you can’t do that for five minutes without using your hands and feet in some way. You also can’t hold your breath for five minutes straight. Worse still, if you start to panic and thrash around, you use more oxygen, and will be even less likely to last five minutes.
What’s the secret to passing this test? Complete calm and acceptance of the situation. Instead of fighting to remain at the surface, you accept that you are going to drop to the bottom of the pool. Once you have done so, you kick off hard to get back up to the surface again to breathe. Repeat as often as necessary for five minutes.
Baseball player Josh Gessner highlights an example of the Backwards Law, which states that more effort means less reward. In the Navy SEALs’ case, if you struggle against the situation, you are far more likely to fail the test, and may even drown.
This law is hard to understand as a sports player because generally, effort is required to get any reward. When you train harder, you get better returns. However, this only applies to physical training. Once you start to think and worry about any skill, you tend to get worse at it.
This is true in any walk of life. Timothy Gallwey famously highlighted it in his ‘Inner Game’ books. Coaching tennis players, he noticed that if he gave them something to do that distracted them from worrying about the shot they were taking—he asked them simply to observe the height at which they hit the ball, which has no relevance at all to the quality of the shot—they played much better. In other words, if you distract the conscious mind, the body is left free to take over and perform a known skill to the required standard.
What happens when you start worrying about your skill is that you take a step backwards on the competence cycle of learning. From unconscious competence, you move back to conscious competence because you have started to notice what you are doing again. It is also possible to drop back still further, and move to conscious incompetence as you become aware of every mistake.
Acting on knowledge
The real question is how you can break this cycle.
The first is simply to care less about the outcomes of whatever you are doing. However, this is hard to do in practice, because you can’t just switch off worrying. The second option, which is significantly more actionable, is just to do the thing you are worried out. Stop avoiding it, and just embrace it—or, as Susan Jeffers’ best-selling book has it, feel the fear and do it anyway.
What would this mean in thought leadership? It would mean exposing yourself to situations that bothered you, such as webinars where you might be asked awkward questions, or putting yourself out on social media so that your views can be challenged. It would also mean being more relaxed about what happens—and in doing so, taking back control of the situation.
Remember that when people ask questions, it’s (usually) because they want to know the answer. If they challenge your views, it’s because they have a different perspective. Consider this as an information exchange, and use it as an opportunity to learn. Treat questions and challenges as a way to expose gaps in your own knowledge, and a chance to expand your horizons. Ask your own questions to explore more. You may even find that you build a stronger following as a result.