Practically Fearless

By Joe Biffar, CFE, CFI
Manager, Corporate Loss Prevention & Security
Chico's FAS, Inc.

Although unspoken at times, Fear is ever present in both our personal and professional lives and those with which we interact. My relationship with fear has evolved over my career, taking many shapes and forms along the way. Early on in it was both a help and hindrance: acting as a stimulus for improved situational awareness in dangerous situations, to using fear as a crutch in trying to sell LP programs to cross functional partners and Executive Leadership. (With little success I might add).

It impacts us from a young age; as children, fear of the monster in the closet may keep us up at night, yet we enjoy a good ghost story or scary movie. As adults, it varies in extremes, whether its fear of making a ‘bad stop’ on a shoplifter, giving a presentation to the C-Level, or the sleepless nights wondering whether you’ve done all you can to prepare your teams to respond effectively to the next incident of workplace violence or devastating weather that may hit.

How often does fear come into play in your choices, actions and career? Do you lead through fear? How often have you played on fear to sell your new initiative, ask for more resources, or push a product offering? Are your crisis response plans based in fear?

Personal Fears
Early in my career I feared a number of things; feeling not qualified enough compared to my seasoned peers or equipped for the new position I was in, and afraid to speak up with new ideas for fear of ridicule. Much of this fear driven self-doubt stemmed from me, internally; thankfully, I had a great peer group and mentor who helped me harness my fear, using it to identify opportunities and outline a roadmap for success. This gave me the confidence to let go of my fears and the courage to share ideas, experience new developmental opportunities and grow my scope of responsibility.

Understanding that fear plays a role in your team’s mindset may help you foster a more open environment conducive to learning and growth. Being open about your own fears allows your team to do the same. Do you have people that don’t contribute at meetings? They may not be disinterested but rather afraid to speak up in a group setting. Reach out to them, share with them, encourage them. Fostering an environment of trust and respect may pay dividends with improved productivity, fresh ideas and innovation.

Fear as a Crutch
Recently, we sought approval from Executive leadership for a new E-Commerce/M-Commerce Fraud mitigation solution. It would’ve been easy to lead with scary statistics such as Cybercrime losses at $118 Billion a year, or the absolute worst case scenario for our business in potential millions loss to fraud should we not implement. Putting scare tactics aside, we chose to highlight the positive ROI and Internal Rate of Return for the solution. Additionally, emphasizing the positive benefits including a ‘white list’ for high value, high spend customers, improved shopping experience, increased efficiencies, and decrease of total labor costs, helped us achieve buy in.

By continually using a fear based approach, leadership may relegate you to the sidelines of discussions as a fear monger. Rather, maintaining a pragmatic methodology to risk and presenting cogent solutions delineates you as a trusted advisor who can provide value added solutions.

Diving into Fear
I’m an avid scuba diver and spear fisherman; living in South Florida affords me great opportunity to do both. When preparing for a deep, technical wreck dive in a closed overhead environment, fear can raise its ugly head. Scenarios of getting lost inside, being tangled in old fishing line, or succumbing to Nitrogen Narcosis, run through your mind. The dichotomous nature of fear manifests itself in direct action or paralysis. Ignoring fear is not an option as it could lead to carelessness and possibly death so far removed from the surface. However worrying about all that could go wrong during a dive may drive someone to bring too much gear, too many backup tools to deal with a crisis. This needlessly bogs one down with extraneous equipment, turning a technical dive into a dangerous one.

While updating crisis response/workplace violence plans I noticed the same multi-faceted fears creeping into the discussion: various ‘What if’ scenarios being discussed, each more troubling than the last. While being the impetus for responsive planning, fear should not be its foundation. Fear can have a deleterious impact in the preparation of crisis response plans, resulting in overreaching regulation, impractical policies and programs too cumbersome to be effective during an actual event.

If an emergency occurred at depth, deep inside a wreck, there’s no time for complex response plans, or fancy tools, rather one reverts to their training; simple steps to remedy the immediate situation are required. In the same fashion, we should replace our associates’ fear, with simple, practical response plans that can be quickly executed during a crisis such as an Active Shooter.

Just as in diving, we cannot train for every type of crisis that may occur but we can create an effective response framework giving our teams the best chance for success, even in the most dire of circumstances. One must temper fear with practicality, objectively asses the risk and the likelihood of the event occurring. Determine what proactive steps, training or tools one can use to mitigate the risk, in the simplest, most direct fashion.

Fear is a natural part of life; harness its power but do not let it control you. Address it but don’t let it become the salient issue with your leadership teams. Use it to spur healthy discussion on risk but let practical, rational planning lead the way.

Take a moment and ask yourself, what role does fear play in your life? And can you become practically fearless?