Is The Fear of Failure Keeping You From Being A Better Leader?

Audrey Cavenecia
2 min readFeb 4, 2022

Does fear of failure hold you back from achieving your goals? Do you find yourself unable to appreciate your achievements because you haven’t yet reached the ‘results’? It’s hard being a results-driven leader. The fear of failure creeps more often into your lives than you can imagine. Let’s explore the subject in better detail today.

In this episode, we have Audrey explain what it feels like to carry a fear of failure in leadership and how to overcome it. She takes us underneath the personal experiences that led her through anxiety, pressure, and deteriorating mental health, and what she learned about success and failure while being in it.

Learn to appreciate your success and curb the fear of failure to become a better leader — tune in now!

What You Will Learn In This Episode

[00:51] Assessing the symptoms of fear of failure in leadership — fatigue, chronic worry, lack of energy, frequent procrastination, high distractibility, headaches, digestive troubles, and more.

[05:53] Audrey expresses the pressure she underwent in the past due to societal norms. There was always a push to ‘accomplish’, be it scholastic achievements or sports achievements. She expresses her mental state back then.

[10:16] The fear of failure is chronic and crippling. The more you get around it, the more it takes over you.

[11:40] How the fear of failure keeps you from appreciating and enjoying your accomplishments

[16:53] Being result-driven could mean the small wins don’t make their way to you. It might mean you overlook the small wins. But remember that you have all the right to celebrate them.

Standout Quotes

“The fear of failure is somehow cruelly ironic. Because everything is so driven around this goal. And the more one is driven around that goal, the further away you get from it.” Audrey Cavenecia [21:16]

“There’s so much fear of failing that even when you win, it exacerbates the fear of failing because now you’re the winner.” Audrey Cavenecia [11:40]

“When you do work as a leader, share that work with your team to allow them to move through those spaces with you, and you will become far more creative and innovative and productive in your endeavors.” Audrey Cavenecia [20:22]

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Audrey Cavenecia

An award-winning content executive at Amplify Voices. Host of Belonging & Leadership, Everyday Leadership Skills, Conversations from the Heart with Pete Carroll