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No other emotion has the same stopping power as fear. Everyone, across all countries and cultures, has at one time felt this powerful emotion. When introduced into the workplace, nothing else saps the efficiency from you or your workers faster than fear. How then can you protect your business and employees? Motivational coach, leadership consultant, and co-author of the book “The Grand Experiment: An Expedition of Self-Discovery” Gayle Gregory, feels that identifying and eliminating the fears present in the minds of its employees is the key to an unstoppable and effective business. “The source of innovation is a place of fearlessness where we are not trying to force things to happen,” says Gregory. There are seven fears fundamental to the human psyche that Gregory has identified. These fears show up everywhere from personal choices to business activities. Although a person might not be aware of a fear are on a conscious level, it still has a marked effect upon the worker’s ability to innovate, communicate, and be efficient. Everyone in the workplace, from executives and managers to entry-level interns, can find some aspect of each of the seven fears within themselves. “The seven fears are universal,” Gregory observes. Gregory challenges that the world is not a scary place, but rather, an individual’s own perspective determines their intimidation level. There are thousands of possible ways to interpret the situations presented everyday. How to react is your decision. To dismantle the fear of the world, make a conscious decision to react proactively to a challenge rather than in a negative manner. “The world just is,” advises Gregory, “You give it meaning.” To determine the unstoppability factor of your workplace, you must first identify the fears that are present within it. When fear is present, employees are dissatisfied with their jobs, and lose passion for the work they do. Without this passion, your employees’ creativity and power of innovation moves elsewhere, away from the workplace, decreasing the force your business achieves. “Go out into the workplace and find out what prevents people from doing their work,” Gregory says, “Why are they standing around vending machines having conversations? What are those conversations about? Its all fear based.” The next step to making your company unstoppable is to take the power out of each fear. Most managers and leaders find the process is difficult at first because it requires open discussion and admission of individual fears. Few employees are comfortable being so open. “The only thing that holds fear in place is our unwillingness to look at it,” Gregory shares, “As soon as you place your fear out on the table, it begins to dissolve and lose it’s power.” Gregory teaches managers to take the initiative and lay out each of the specific fears to be discussed. This proactive method creates a shared purpose that goes a long way to managing the discomfort associated with sharing personal fear. Gregory, who once held a lucrative position in a Fortune 500 company, left to explore the human condition by sailing to Mexico. Through her own introspection and spirituality, while sailing the Sea of Cortez, she realized what she learned about human fears realized had held her back. Knowing how costly fear can be in a work environment, Gayle now enjoys motivating and energizing the business world by purging their workplace fears, which she sees keeping all companies from reaching their fullest potentials. A competitive business needs to be perceived as bold and innovative. Fear prevents a company and it’s employees from reaching that edge of efficiency. In an enterprise where fear is present, internal conflict turns into a lack of cohesion and teamwork. If a worker is struggling with personal fears or busy covering their back, then they are not putting their energy into improving their company. A business that is has fighting amongst its workers cannot also effectively fight its competition. “We’re so busy competing with each other that we forget to compete with competitors in the marketplace,” warns Gregory. Fear that there is not enough resources, time, favor, and other commodities for all breed individualistic attitudes rather than team players and undermine the innovative ability of a team. To stop this, encourage an attitude of even cooperation among your employees. Employees that are afraid to share their ideas or work together cripple the overall productivity of the workplace with their fears. In the end, the unstoppability of your business lies with your decision to expose fears rather than let them rest. A fear no matter how small or well-hidden, decreases your company’s performance. Even if your business achieves its goal for the future, you are settling for far less than your maximum potential by not managing the fears within the organization and its workers. The morale of a work enviornment expands exponentially the vision of what you and your enterprise can do. “When you take the fear away, the automatic outcome is you energize your performance,” says Gregory.