Fear of Failure: Why Leaders Play It Safe Under Pressure

What happens when capable leaders stop taking risks—right when the stakes are highest?

In this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded, Cynthia Kyriazis and Drea Martin unpack fear of failure—a leadership contaminant that often stays hidden until pressure rises.

Unlike everyday behaviors, contaminants emerge under stress. As stakes increase, fear of failure can quietly shift how leaders operate—pushing them toward safer, more familiar decisions.

Decision-making slows. Innovation narrows. Performance plateaus.

While often associated with less experienced professionals, this pattern can be even more limiting in senior leaders—where hesitation impacts not just individual performance, but the trajectory of the organization.

The discussion focuses on how leaders can recognize this pattern and develop beyond it—not by reducing pressure, but by building comfort with risk through intentional exposure and support.

You’ll learn:

• Why fear of failure is a stress-triggered leadership contaminant—not a constant trait
• How it shows up as risk avoidance and slower decision-making under pressure
• Why even experienced leaders default to “safe” decisions in high-stakes moments
• How to build risk tolerance through stretch opportunities and deliberate repetition

Whether you’re developing emerging leaders or leading at the highest level, fear of failure is one of the most limiting—and least discussed—constraints on performance. When left unaddressed, it drives hesitation and safe decisions.

But when understood and developed, it becomes a lever for better judgment, faster decisions, and stronger leadership. Because the goal isn’t to eliminate failure—it’s to lead effectively through it.

Ready to explore your leadership traits? Connect with us on LinkedIn or visit www.plllab.com to see how we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.

Transcript

Welcome And Host Introductions

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:00

Welcome to Leadership Traits Decoded. I'm Cynthia Kiriazas, Chief Experience Officer at the Culture Think Tank.

Drea Martin 0:07

And I'm Drea Martin, Chief Operating Officer of the Crucible. We are collaborative partners at Performance Leadership Learning Lab, where we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.

Leadership Traits For Scaling Companies

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:20

Today we're unpacking the leadership traits essential for building, investing in, and scaling successful companies. Our insights come directly from data-driven metrics within our platforms solution. So let's dive in.

Drea Martin 0:33

Great. All right. How are you doing today, Cynthia?

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:36

I'm good. I'm good, Andrea. I'm really happy because it's Friday. We have the weekend to look forward to, and we have some good weather coming. Wonderful. You know what? I was looking over our list, and we have a total of seven areas, right? Six. Yeah, a total of six areas. We have a total of six areas.

Introducing Contaminants Under Pressure

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:56

And five of them all will have to do with the type of behaviors we've been talking about. But the sixth area is something we've uh only done a couple sessions on, so I think we do it today. The sixth session is called contaminants, which in and of itself makes you want to say, okay, what are those things that we need to be aware of? We've talked about a lack of awareness and we have talked about arrogance and how those two particular traits in that category, what they look like. I thought today we might talk about fear of failure. And you reframing it for us again from the beginning a little bit about contaminants.

unknown 1:30

Yeah.

Cynthia Kyriazis 1:32

Our audience hasn't, you know, hasn't heard the previous one. So fear of failure is what I thought we talked about today.

Drea Martin 1:37

Great.

Metallurgy Metaphor For Contaminants

Drea Martin 1:38

Yeah. So to start us off, contaminants in themselves are when you're an individual's experience experiencing increased stress, pressure, things are changing rapidly. These are the traits that come to light in those situations. So when these are flagged, which means the individual's at risk for these traits, for example, fear of failure, as we'll be diving into that one. It means on the day today, someone might not feel that that individual has fear of failure. But when those high pressure situations come, things start to change rapidly. This is the kind of trait that someone will fall into. And we call it a contaminant with the whole metallurgy theme. This notion of it's something in the pot that's making things not mix the way that they need to.

Cynthia Kyriazis 2:19

Okay, very good. All right. So what can you share with us about fear of failure? Because my initial reaction to that was that's probably something that we could consider common. I'm not sure, but it seems that I see that or hear it from others.

Defining Fear Of Failure

Drea Martin 2:35

Yeah, so we define fear of failure as an elevated aversion to making mistakes. So everyone has a healthy amount of fear of failure, because fear of failure in general just means in the society that we're raised in, like there's dynamics there, or of course we don't want to be constantly making mistakes or constantly going through different failures. On the other hand, some people have higher levels, which then can derail their performance because they don't take risks because they're afraid of making mistakes, or they don't want to try things because they're afraid of making mistakes. And where I've seen this contaminant most frequently triggered is with more junior professionals. And that is simply a default of a lack of enough experience to tell them that failure is okay and part of life and means you're trying and it's a totally healthy factor of any challenge that you're facing.

Cynthia Kyriazis 3:27

So this is what comes to mind. Yes, I would imagine that fear of failure is something that you would be seeing in junior or non-experienced individuals. But what happens if that trait shows itself in somebody who's a little bit more seasoned who is on the team? How does that, what does it do? How does it interact? How to handle it when it's a senior member that seems to be still having that issue?

Fear Of Failure In Senior Roles

Drea Martin 3:52

Yeah, that's definitely a difficult one. And probably more difficult than the more common, just haven't had enough experience to feel comfortable with failure yet, because it does mean that there have to be other things that mitigate that situation. What it typically means if somebody has fear of failure and what that looks like, especially if they're a more senior member for the team, is that they might not take the normal risks that they would in other situations when things get more heated, when there's more pressure. So decision making will slow down, they might take easier routes, depending on what drives them. They're likely to choose a path that they feel more comfortable and confident in, even if that's not kind of their normal action, but one that they will do in this situation of increased stress.

Cynthia Kyriazis 4:33

Okay, so that that makes a lot of sense. How would, let's say, the leader of an executive team or a senior team who has an individual that you just described, seasoned, does a very good job, but still has this particular trait. How would you help that individual's supervisor or even team member recognize and help them through that? Yeah, it's a great

Building Awareness With Stretch Practice

Cynthia Kyriazis 4:55

question.

Drea Martin 4:55

And it depends a little bit on the individual. I'd say the biggest and the first piece is awareness. So it's understanding that this is something that exists, not only for that person and that individual's development planning, but then also for the senior leaders around this person to be able to push, maybe, and be able to kind of take over some of those bigger decision-making needs at the times when decisions are when you can see that person falling back on let's do a more comfortable thing or let's do this kind of tried and true path. Thinking twice about that decision and adding an extra layer of kind of questioning and support in if you believe that that's just something that's a stress response compared to if it's the right thing or the best thing for the company to do at the time is a big piece. And then from a developmental standpoint, how do you work with this person so they can overcome some of this? Just like you would with more junior person, giving them more stretch tasks, giving them more opportunities to experience failure in little ways can be a really healthy way to continue to build up comfort, especially because if somebody's going to choose the path they feel more comfortable with, the riskier the paths that they feel comfortable on, the less of an issue this will be.

Cynthia Kyriazis 6:03

So it's probably one of those traits that it's better to start early with an individual to kind of work them into it because fear of failure is something that can come up for every decision of a leader. And I also guess that it's accurate to say that putting pressure or trying to solve it for that person is not something that's going to work very well.

Drea Martin 6:24

No. And that's the difficult part of as much as you can have trusted mentors around this person in periods of increased stress who can push back and say, no, we should take this risk. This is going to be okay. And it's not a super tense situation, which it totally is just contrary to everything that person wants or triggers any other aspects.

Fragility Teaser And How To Connect

Drea Martin 6:44

Another containment we haven't taken a deep dive into yet is fragility, which is kind of the ability to receive some of that feedback. So if this person just triggers fear of failure, but not fragility, that is an easier dynamic than if they also have the habit to get more fragile when situations are very stressful.

Cynthia Kyriazis 7:02

Okay, very interesting. So I guess we kind of have our topic for our next, our next uh session. I guess our next session, we probably will do fragility. So, you know, another contaminant that you would that would be interesting to learn more about. Well, thanks so much for sharing all your knowledge, as always, with Fear of Failure. And I think you gave some great points and some great ways to move forward if if this person is facing that and you still want to help them grow and get to where they need to get to. Thanks so much, Drea, for all your knowledge. See you next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded. You'll be able to find all our episodes on the Performance Leadership Learning Lab website at www.plab.com. Or you can listen on your favorite streaming platform.

Drea Martin 7:50

We'll be back soon to explore the next essential trait. Until then, feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn if you have any questions or ideas.