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Fear and uncertainty have been undermining performance and well-being in the workplace for as long as we have had workplaces. Gaurav Bhatnagar and Mark Minukas show you how to reframe your ― and your employees’ ― relationship with fear and anxiety to create a learning culture of engaged workers at the top of their game.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
Founder, Co-Creation Partners
Gaurav Bhatnagar is the founder of Co-Creation Partners and has dedicated more than two decades to helping companies thrive and achieve breakthrough performance. Since founding Co-Creation Partners in 2010, he has designed and led programs and workshops for private, public, and social-sector clients across multiple industries, including financial services, basic materials, manufacturing, healthcare, and technology. Prior to founding Co-Creation Partners, he was a consultant with McKinsey and Company, most recently as a leader in their Organization Practice in North America. Before McKinsey, he worked in marketing for Pepsi Cola International and Procter & Gamble in Europe, the Middle East, and India.
Mark Minukas
Founder, Co-Creation Partners
Mark Minukas is the managing partner of Co-Creation Partners. An engineer by training, he began his career as a Navy officer and member of the US Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) and the Navy Dive Community. In 2005, he brought his experience and insights into the performance of engineered systems to McKinsey and Company, where he worked as a consultant and member of the Operations Practice. There, he mastered the technical aspect of organizational transformation and process improvement, as well as the cultural side of transformation. Since leaving McKinsey to join Co-Creation Partners, Mark has worked across multiple industries, including financial services, high tech, biotech manufacturing, IT services, and governmental offices, to deliver both top- and bottom-line improvements and build high-performing operations.
What We Discuss in this Episode:
- Fear sits at the root of how we behave in the workplace. Shifting our relationship with fear will help us move forward into new possibilities and make changes happen.
- We have trained ourselves to see threats in our environment, which stems from mismanaged fears. Long term, mismanaging our fears disintegrates trust and creates dysfunctional cultures.
- If leaders show up in a reactive way or a vulnerable way, the rest of the people will as well. We must be able to self-regulate emotions, build trust interpersonally, and tell narratives that are inspiring instead of fear-based.
- With advancement in technology and the hyper competitive nature of the world today, the only competitive advantage can have is human potential. The way you tap into human potential is by changing your (and your culture’s) relationship with fear.
- The way you think is the way you see the world. The way you see the world is the way you act. Therefore, you must act on yourself before anything else can happen.
- Strategy is very important, but culture determines what strategy you choose and whether or not that strategy will be executed. If you’re acting from a place of fear, it will change your results.
- Stress and anxiety are only varying levels of fear, and the root of fear is our desire to have control paired with a sense that we don’t have it.
- Control is a story we create, and we have choice over it. We are not just actors in our lives or insecure overachievers. You are a controller in your life and you have choice over your behaviors.
Mentioned in the Podcast:
- Email CJ for your complimentary copy of Unfear
- Unfear: Transform Your Organization to Create Breakthrough Perfoamce and Employee Well-Being by Gaurav Bhatnagar and Mark Minukas
- Take The Achiever’s Compass
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