“I don’t know” are three terrifying words. But they are also powerful. My podcast guest, Harvard Business School’s Martin Sinozich says, “When you model being able to say, ‘I don't know, but I'll find out,’ it reduces other people's needs to always have the data and the facts. It reduces anxiety because yes, you're expected to master a lot of stuff, and yet the real craft is asking the right questions.”

Leaders must make decisions. The buck stops with somebody – probably you. Sometimes leaders have to be right, says Martin. That’s good. But if we always need to be right because we’re scared to be wrong, our anxiety is managing us. Here are three things your anxiety might be telling you:

1. If I’m not right, I shouldn’t be here. 

Being wrong can make you feel like a failure. Psychologist Lisa Orbe Austin explains: “Like so many of us, if you’re experiencing impostor feelings, you’re both fearing feeling shame, and working to gain others’ approval. Impostor feelings, Austin explains, are triggered by new and challenging situations. You may fear failure or being “found out.” The situation may trigger ghosts from the past. Once you’re triggered, you have performance anxiety. The Impostor Cycle is driven by a need for external feedback. The magic happens when you can internalize that you belong even if you don’t know all the answers.

How do you begin to break through impostor feelings? Begin by listening to my conversation with psychologist Lisa Orbé-Austin on how to get started. 

1. If I’m not right, other people won’t want me here.

If you're different than most of the people in power at your company, it's probably not all in your head. As Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey wrote in their essential HBR article, Stop Telling Women They Have Impostor Syndrome, toxic workplace systems can foster and exacerbate impostor feelings. People repeatedly facing systemic racism and bias feel like impostors because they are treated like impostors.

As Minda Harts told me in our interview, when she was in corporate life, “I used to think that I didn't have a voice. So I'm like, "Oh, I can't say this because they're going to think I'm angry or aggressive or feisty or whatever other stereotype." I learned to shrink my voice and I realized that part of healing myself, but also creating some accountability in the workplace, is creating boundaries. I deserve to be able to set boundaries for my coworkers. How will they know what good looks like to me if I never articulate that to them? Part of that was understanding that, yes, I might not be able to break down the whole system, but can I deal with the people and create boundaries around the people that I have to interact with on a daily basis.”

1. I have to be right because the stakes are too high if I’m wrong.

We all fear loss. But when we interrogate that fear, our anxiety lessens. Martin says he sometimes will play out the worst case scenario in a moment of anxiety. He realizes most times, “I'll still survive. I might as well get dressed and show up.” Martin uses a skiing analogy: when you ski you can’t lean back into the safety of the mountain behind you, or you’ll lose control and fall. “You have to lean into gravity. You have to lean into the void in front of you. It's the only way you can get the skis to do what they need to do. That's the only way you can get all the right mechanics in your body to work. And that sense of having to willfully lean into the front of the boot and not the back is a model. I ask myself in moments of fear, what am I doing? Why am I afraid?”

To interrogate your fear, model out a worst case scenario. If you’re wrong, will you really lose it all? I love what Dr. Angela Neal Barnett calls, “The So What Chorus.” Run through the worst case scenario and with each worry ask it, “so what? “What we say is, “So what?” Because what we’re really trying to get at is, what is the core fear? And if we can get to the core fear, then we can work to overcome that fear,” says Dr. Neal Barnett.

Examining these questions can help dissolve fear and anxiety. And you know what? The antidote to bring right all the time is to ask really good questions. Listen and ask better questions. So much of work is us acting out old patterns and anxieties- reflexively, habitually, to protect ourselves. These anxieties negatively affect us and our coworkers.

Thoughtful questions break habits. I've heard over and over in the hundreds of interviews I've done: it's been a question that stopped leaders in their tracks and prompted them to seek productive change.

Sounds simple, but it's so powerful. 

Morra

PS: Here’s my new Anxious Achiever playlist on Spotify- a collection of some of my favorite episodes. What’s your favorite? Message me and I might send you a special gift!

PPS: My book The Anxious Achiever comes out in 7 days!! Have you pre-ordered yours?