2025 is here. What now?

Imagine you are on a train heading to a special destination. You know the way, and the journey is easy. Then, one day, in an instant, the train is stopped by an earthquake. The track is destroyed, splitting the earth asunder, and the rails disappear into a deep abyss. The train is left teetering on the edge of nothingness.

When you get an invitation to that special destination again, there is no track for the train to travel on. The train is left teetering, stranded and helpless and when you try to fire it up the wheels you find bare dirt and the train crashes to a halt.

This is what happens with Performance Anxiety and it is what happened to James (real name withheld) at a leading Australian Financial Institution. Because of the quality of his work, his dashing good looks and his excellent pedigree, James was given a leadership position for which he was well qualified in all but one way: his presentations. So, without training, advice, and support (these elements virtually died in the 1990s in corporate Australia), James was requested to lead a day program with 80 of the top senior executives in the organisation. Panic set in, and James was torturing himself about what to do when someone mentioned he might like to talk to me. That’s when the call happens where I hear, “I’ve lost my confidence”.

Sound familiar?

You may be hiding by turning down engagements, asking subordinates to take on your engagements, or just working harder and becoming busier to avoid the issue.

The bad news is, this is a career limiter.
The good news is, this is curable.

Remember, you are not alone. Great performers such as Chopin and Maria Callas had Performance Anxiety, and more recently, Adele and Ben Affleck complained, while Michael Phelps and Serena Williams claimed to suffer through their sport. When it comes to sports, Victoria University found that 77% of athletes reported experiencing performance anxiety in the past year and in music, the National Institute of Health indicates that between 60 and 80% of professional musicians suffer from its debilitating forms.

Like athletes and professional musicians, executives are high-performance individuals, yet so little research exists. Abraham Lincoln was said to suffer, but this dirth of research exists because of a sense of failure and because performance anxiety is often linked to sexual performance and, therefore, is undiscussable. Whatever, there is a consequent lack of transparency and while Abraham Lincoln is one of few leaders who owned up to the phenomenon since Covid, it’s exploded, and no one is talking.

There is an old actors’ adage:

How do you get over Performance Anxiety?
You don’t.
You learn how to deal with it.

A new track needs to be built and then the train has to be convinced to actually get on it.

It’s all about ‘action’, as Katty Kay and Claire Shipman tell us in their book, The Confidence Code.

Know the old train track is destroyed and accepting you are stuck. Then we rebuild a new train track taking a different route, by learning the skills and laying them down, piece by piece, in an orderly manner and then recognising why it may be hard to put your foot on the accelerator and addressing it.

Common barriers to success appear in the form of statements such as:

• It’s too hard (it isn’t)
• It’ll take too long (how long would you like it to take?)
• I will look stupid (only in your own mind)
• Others will think I look stupid (no they won’t)

Be aware if you find yourself saying any of these things and meanwhile, you know where I am.