When a business has faced adversity, it can shake up leaders to the point they fear making decisions. It is like a golfer who has faced seemingly insurmountable challenges but overcomes fear to return to the golf course.
By Vincent Pane

Businesses experience a multitude of problems, but some are more severe than others. The most difficult problems include events like near bankruptcy, destruction of a brand's reputation, senior managers accused of sexual harassment, CEOs who intentionally violate securities laws, new product introductions that experience expensive and embarrassing failure in the marketplace, and the list goes on.

When companies experience severe blows, top managers must be able to make the decisions needed to restore stakeholder confidence in the business and its competitiveness. That is when fear can strike. One poor decision that heaps more problems on the pile could be a final devastating blow.

It is like the golfer who has experienced injuries that kept him or her off the golf course for a long while or the championship golfer who has been unable to win the prior five tournaments.

Golfers must overcome fear and keep on playing, while improving course assessments, play strategies, and swings and putts. Business people must overcome fear of failure.

Deciding to Return
The insurance giant American International Group (AIG) experienced severe financial problems as a result of the 2008 recession. It would have failed, but the U.S. government decided to pump money into the corporation to prevent its collapse. It was nine years before the U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Council declared the company was once again stable. The company had nearly failed because a division decided to insure extremely risky debt obligations with a product called a credit default swap. Also contributing to near insolvency were accounting problems, a lowered credit rating and posted bondholder collateral that put the company at risk.

Davis Love III is a professional golfer who won the 1997 PGA Championship and 21 other PGA events. Love had spinal fusion surgery in early 2013 when he was 48 years old. It is similar to the surgery Tiger Woods underwent in April 2017. Both champion golfers found relief and were glad they chose to undergo the procedure. However, it was never intended to be a miracle cure. Woods said it limited his flexibility and created new aches and pains.

The big decision the golfers faced was whether to return to championship golfing, knowing it would be difficult to play at the same level they played pre-surgery, if ever. It is very difficult for champions to accept anything except a win. Yet both men decided to return.

Love returned to competition three months after surgery. The dismal result was that he played four rounds and tied for 48th place, but for him it was a major accomplishment. After 37 golf games over a two-year period, Love won the Wyndham Championship in 2015. He was a champion once again.

Woods played his first PGA Tour a year after his surgery in January 2018 at the Farmers Insurance Open. He said he felt good and was happy to be swinging a golf club again, but the way he played was far from the level of play that had earned him 79 PGA Tour titles and 14 majors. The perspective of Love and Woods on their post-surgery games was that the losses were steps toward more victories, which Love has already proved.

AIG hired a new CEO in September 2017. At 70 years old, the board hopes that Brian Duperreault can guide the company out of its ongoing problems that include improving its underwriting record of high losses. It would be natural to wonder why the company did not learn from the failed credit default swaps fiasco, but here was the company nine years later still making poor decisions

Duperreault was faced with tough decisions from day one, including whether to sell unprofitable business lines (he said "no") and technological disruptions that will reduce demand for insurance coverage, like self-driven vehicles and autonomous braking which will cut down on the number of vehicle accidents.

Embracing Adversity as Opportunity for Growth
Champions in business and golf are champions because they do not run from adversity. They embrace it as a chance to prove once again they really are winners, even if current events and situations are such that temporarily losing is quite likely.

Another common characteristic between champion golfers and major corporate CEOs is that they must deal with impatience. Woods' golfer fans want to see him once again do incredible things on the golf course. Woods also puts pressure on himself because that is the nature of a true competitor. Duperreault is under pressure from impatient shareholders who want AIG to show a positive return on equity as soon as possible. Only golf and business champions understand the importance of resisting the pressure, building up endurance and strength, and developing winning strategies.

Fear can prevent success, whether talking about golf or business. Fear is an emotional response that is intended to help a person deal with perceived danger. Fear can drive people to make good or bad decisions or no decision at all. It makes people wary of moving ahead and makes them self-protective. It is a primal emotion intended to promote survival in the face of threats.

When it is a golfer feeling fear, body tension and lack of focus on strategy lead to poor swings and putts. In business, it drives leaders to make decisions with shortsightedness or, worse, with a focus on self-preservation rather than corporate success.

Play the Game with Confidence
Golfers and business people share reasons for fearing playing the game or doing the deal. One is fear of underperforming. Another is failing to win or fearing failure in the first place. Another is fear of what other people will think should decisions go wrong.

All of these fears result because there are two things missing: Confidence in personal competencies and a willingness to risk making mistakes along the road to success.

When feeling fear, play the game or make the business decisions because anything less will lead to no success at all.