Today I was reading The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker and found it extremely interesting. So I looked him up online and found an interview with him at CSO Online. He has 4 C’s that define what he does:
- Care: Every client needs to know that you’re actually invested in their safety. They need to feel that.
- Confidence: Before meeting, remind the client of your three capabilities built on real experience.
- Communication: Always stay in touch. Don’t be lazy. Offer to be in touch even off hours.
- Certainty: Be certain about what can be made certain. That counts.
Regarding his point on confidence, he quotes Mandela:
“When we are liberated from our fears, that automatically liberates others around us.”
Nelson Mandela
He points out we’re often not able to prevent a crisis, but we’re able to respond to it when resilient. De Becker advises:
“You can cultivate the knowledge that the issue is not how well you’ll predict what’s coming but rather how well you manage what does come. The confidence that you can manage what comes down the pike is what people will see when you sit down in a meeting. Nothing’s going to come at me in this meeting or in this lifetime that will destabilize me or that will persuade me that I can’t meet the challenge. There’s a beautiful way of saying this: The anticipated may never occur, but the unexpected will always occur. Our product is to calmly manage change because change is coming.”
Gavin De Becker
The last point of advice he gives when working with executives, which I like, is to give options. It’s okay to recommend which one, but give multiple options that create agency for leaders who naturally are accustomed to being in control of their destiny.
