Boo!

Boo!

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Jill Wiltfong

Hi, I’m Jill Wiltfong, Chief Marketing Officer of Korn Ferry, and this is Briefings, our deep dive into the issues corporate leaders need to care about. With Halloween approaching, we’re talking about something every leader knows but few like to admit: fear. And right now, there’s plenty of it. One survey of 3,200 CEOs and senior executives across 11 countries found that nearly half fear losing their jobs.

Some of those fears are grounded in very real pressures. Others may be less rational. But either way, fear can change how leaders behave, how they make decisions, take risks, manage their teams, and ultimately how their organizations perform. So today, we’re looking at what senior leaders are most afraid of, whether those fears are justified, and what happens when fear starts influencing the way they lead, in an episode we call “Boo!”

I’m joined by Jamin Graves, Korn Ferry’s global leader of CEO and enterprise leadership. He’s a longtime CEO whisperer, we like to call you, Jamin, and has some very unique insights into what might be stirring their fears. Jamin, it’s really great to have you with us.

Jamin Graves

Great to be here, Jill. Thank you.

Jill Wiltfong

So, before we get into the various fears leaders have, what does fear actually look like in a CEO? Does it usually show up as obvious anxiety, or does it disguise itself and maybe show up in other ways?

Jamin Graves

Fear is something that most CEOs are constantly aware of and trying to hide or suppress. But as we know, emotions can’t be suppressed. And so, when you do that, it rears its head in different ways. It can show up as some form of aggression or withdrawal. You’ll see different tendencies with different people, depending on their kind of factory settings.

Jill Wiltfong

You’ve interestingly separated fear into two kinds: rational and irrational. Talk me through some of the common rational fears you’ve seen leaders facing today and how they may lead companies astray.

Jamin Graves

Rational fears, just for starters, means that they’re grounded in the reality of a situation. So, imagine cyberattacks or fraud, or a competitor is about to take over. Of course, economic disruption, geopolitics, and political forces are always there. How you, as a CEO, navigate the threats that are coming at your organization from the outside is very real, and we would call those rational. I mean, it would be irrational not to look at them.

Jill Wiltfong

That’s a scene from the movie Black Swan, where Natalie Portman plays a prima ballerina who is paranoid about being replaced. Jamin, it’s an appropriate segue, I would say, to talk about the irrational fears that you’ve seen CEOs experience. You’ve said one fear in particular you see cropping up again and again is around CEOs being afraid to step away and afraid of being replaced. What’s really behind that fear, and how have you seen it damaging companies?

Jamin Graves

There’s this fear of not being relevant anymore. There’s a fear of letting go of your identity, not being what it once was. Unfortunately, most CEOs are not good at this, and a lot of them make the end about themselves instead of maintaining the focus on the needs of the enterprise. The solution is that you need a board and CEO partnership that starts this thinking early. Don’t wait and wait and wait. The big mistake is that boards are afraid to entertain the conversation out of respect for such a successful CEO.

Jill Wiltfong

You said another irrational fear you’ve noticed is imposter syndrome. We did a recent survey around that and found that seven in 10 CEOs suffer from it, which is a big number. And you’ve said it can be particularly bad with new CEOs. So, given that 11% of the nation’s largest public firms changed CEOs last year, and more than 80% were first-time public-company CEOs, do you have any advice for those new members in this CEO club when it comes to this kind of imposter syndrome?

Jamin Graves

What is imposter syndrome all about? It’s this belief that other people are going to discover that you’re not actually as good as they thought you were. You have to understand that the evidence that explains the gap between where you are and what you’re catastrophizing just isn’t there. Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset is a really helpful, quick way to address folks who are struggling with imposter syndrome by redefining success in the role. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to be wrong and not have the answer. That’s part of being vulnerable and knowing your limits. That’s normal and healthy in a CEO.

Jill Wiltfong

I’d like to end on some advice you have for leaders grappling with any kind of fear, which is to form a personal board. Tell me a little bit more about this. Who should be on this personal board, and how can you make the best use of something like this?

Jamin Graves

The personal board is a group of people that a CEO surrounds herself or himself with, say four to six people. There is at least one person who really knows you well, understands your pros, your cons, your fears, your tendencies, and what triggers you, and can really be a truth teller to you. Have a peer CEO in your network so you can ask, “Is this normal? Are you experiencing this?” And then I would say there are a couple of folks who are just really good at what you’re not good at. They have expertise in topic areas, industry areas, or knowledge areas that you know are vital to the future of the company.

Again, it’s a group. You don’t access them like a board all at the same time. You tap into them individually when your needs are personal, interpersonal, or enterprise-wide. They provide a real safe space for you to have a sounding board, bounce ideas around, lower your guard a bit, and be a human being.

Jill Wiltfong

Jamin, really good to get your thoughts on all of this. Thank you for being here. As we shed light on these fears, maybe they’ll lose just a little bit of their strength just by talking about them. So, thanks for being here.

Jamin Graves

Thanks for having me.

Jill Wiltfong

Well, we’ve looked at the fears that are haunting CEOs. When we come back, we’ll dive into the workforce perspective on this: what’s scaring employees and what can be done about it. Stay with us.

BREAK

Jill Wiltfong

We’re back. In the first half of this episode, we discussed how many CEOs are haunted by fears that can end up doing some serious damage to the companies they run. Now we’ll take a look at what major fears today are plaguing the people who work at those companies. Joining me for this conversation is Jenna Young, head of creative for Korn Ferry’s Culture, Change and Communications practice. Jenna, thanks for joining me.

Jenna Young

Super happy to be here.

Jill Wiltfong

So, Jenna, you’ve said that you believe employees are more afraid at work today than they were even a few years ago. What makes you say that?

Jenna Young

Well, it jumped out at me in our Workforce 2026 survey that we just completed, which really looked across every level globally. What I noticed was how job security had really crept up into the top three reasons to join or stay at a company. Why it stood out to me was what it edged out and replaced.

Jill Wiltfong

Which was?

Jenna Young

The work we do. There was a time not so long ago when purpose was a real driver. It’s what would get someone to stay at a company. In fact, I think there may even have been times when, if you really loved the environment you were in and felt like the work was valuable, that was more important for staying than pay. The fact that it has fallen off the top three reasons really indicates to me that something else is going on.

Jill Wiltfong

You’ve said that fear can often show up as simply being checked out at work. Our recent Korn Ferry Workforce report says employee motivation has dropped 10 percentage points from just two years ago. And you said something on this that has really stuck with me: Motivation is the result of action. How can an employee who feels afraid, stuck, or powerless at work apply this idea of motivation as the result of action?

Jenna Young

Yeah, it’s really just the power of getting started. It’s taking something that might otherwise feel overwhelming and breaking it into the smallest pieces. Then it begins to be manageable. There’s something deeply neurological in this, where as soon as you start to make progress, you get a bit of that sense of success, and that begins to help you feel more in control and more able to move forward.

Jill Wiltfong

That’s a scene from Shakespeare’s Henry V, where the English army generals express fear before a battle in which they’re wildly outmanned, and their leader, King Henry, reframes their disadvantage and rouses them to fight. So, Jenna, we played that clip because not only are you a classically trained Shakespearean actor, but you’ve also said corporate leaders can use this scene as a great example of how to lead their workforce through unsettling times. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Jenna Young

Yeah, that’s where the phrase “band of brothers” comes from. There are moments that can actually bring everyone together. And when you can frame it as, “This is really an experience that we will look back on with incredible pride,” often, I think, when you ask someone to think of their company on its best day, their team on its best day, and work on its best day, they’ll rarely describe a boring day where not much happens and they roll in, meet friends for coffee, get their paperwork done, and go home.

What they talk about is: Things looked dire. We pulled people into a room. We rolled up our sleeves. We thought together. Someone had an idea. Someone else built on it. We figured it out. We went out and we won. There’s that fighting spirit inside each of us.

Jill Wiltfong

I’d like to end by touching on AI, which is today perhaps the biggest cause of fear for many people, with some concerned it might pose a serious threat to human existence as we know it. So, it’s serious. What can leaders do to lessen the technology-related fear that’s seeped into many company cultures?

Jenna Young

I think this actually goes back to the first point that I made. We really are missing an opportunity, especially around AI. The conversation has focused too much on efficiency and, in a way, driving this unknown value. We haven’t talked enough about the value of the people and the value of the work that you’re doing. Leaders need to really lean in and talk about the impact that people are having, and really double down on the value of what you are contributing in your work.

If we can get that sense of mission, purpose, the reason we are here, and the unique power of the work that you are doing in whatever organization it is, having a reason to be and having that drive you, having that be the motivation that gets you up and going every day, does a fairly good job of pushing existential dread aside. We have important work to do here, and we’re going to get it done.

Jill Wiltfong

Really good takeaways. Thank you for being here today.

Jenna Young

Thank you for asking me.

Jill Wiltfong

And we are wishing all of you a very happy Halloween, if you’re celebrating. Thanks for being here.

Jill Wiltfong

The executive producer of Briefings is Jonathan Dahl. Today’s episode was produced by Rupak Bhattacharyya and Zachary Dore, and it was edited by Jaren Henry McRae.

It contains reporting by Russell Pearlman, Ariane Cohen, Peter Lauria, and Meghan Walsh. Our video segment contains original artwork by Fraser Milton, Haley Kennel, Jonathan Pink, and Sasha Kotzek. Our web operations are managed by Ed McLaurin.

Don’t forget to read our magazine—available at newsstands and at kornferry.com/briefings.

That’s it for Korn Ferry Briefings. I’m Jill Wiltfong. See you next time.