Fear Audit.
A clinical inventory of the seven fears senior leaders carry into the boardroom. Run in the first RE:CODE™ session — without it, behavioural change tends to address the symptom, not the source.
Naming the fear is half the work.
Most leadership behaviour change fails because the intervention treats the visible symptom — communication, delegation, conflict avoidance — without addressing the fear that is producing the symptom in the first place. Fear Audit names the fear directly. The naming is half the work.
Six steps from naming to installation.
Surface the seven fears
Found out · Not enough · Too much · Disliked · Replaced · Wrong · Unloved. The leader marks which apply.
Locate the dominant one
Usually one fear is doing 70% of the work. Identify it.
Trace the symptom
Map the dominant fear to the leadership behaviour the engagement was originally going to fix.
Test the substitution
Run a small experiment: behave against the fear. Note the cost. Note the gain.
Install the new pattern
Repeat the experiment until the new behaviour is more automatic than the old.
Measure quarterly
The fear does not disappear. The leader's relationship to it changes. Track the change.
Three anonymised cases.
VP whose 'communication problem' was fear of being found out
Fear Audit named the dominant fear. Communication fix replaced with a self-disclosure protocol over six months.
Stakeholder trust score 58 → 81. Promotion accelerated.
CEO whose 'delegation problem' was fear of being replaced
Substitution experiment ran weekly. Delegation increased without the feared loss of authority.
Direct reports' decision velocity doubled.
Director whose 'conflict avoidance' was fear of being disliked
Tested behaviour against the fear in low-stakes settings. Confidence cascaded to high-stakes ones.
Two stalled team conflicts resolved in 8 weeks.
Cases anonymised by sector and seniority. Numerical outcomes are exact and locked in the engagement scorecards.
RE:CODE™ integration.
Fear Audit runs inside RE:CODE™ Step 1 (Diagnose) and is revisited at Step 6 (Measure) to track the leader's evolving relationship to the dominant fear.