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DARE is the mental model for high performance and change.

You write your story through your DECISIONS, ACTIONS and RESULTS and, if you have humility and drive, a thorough EVALUATION of how you did.

A new Result requires new Decisions and Actions.

This Week’s DARE At A Glance:

Partnership: Superhuman AI - We can’t hide from it. Learn how to make it work for you in just 3 minutes a day.

Uncertainty. Anxiety. Your Power: We all get anxious, but what separates the High Performers from the rest.

We Have Three Choices: The choices we make when we feel anxious.

The Antidote to Anxiety: Why anxiety eases when we make a Decision.

Leading Your Team Through Anxiety: You control the weather.

Exam Season: We can apply the same choices to support our children as they face up to exam season.

Book of the Week: Viktor Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’.

My Week: Leading for High Performance, post-acquisition workshops and Meta challenges.

Uncertainty. Anxiety. Your Power.

So far in 2025, I’ve been called into more teams than ever before to work in environments thick with uncertainty. Transformation. New Products. Mergers. Acquisitions. New leaders coming. Previous leaders moving on. Structures still settling. Futures unknown.

And everywhere I go, behind the strategy and performance conversations, there’s something else in the room: anxiety.

Not chaos. Not failure. But the quiet, clenching tension of not knowing.

Let’s name it clearly:

Anxiety is simply the alarm bell your emotions sound in response to uncertainty.

Your system is doing its job. It’s scanning the environment for danger and sounding the alarm when it doesn’t have a clear map.

But it’s what we do next — that separates the High Performers from the pack.

Three Choices. One You’re Probably Making by Default.

Here’s what I’ve been sharing with teams — and what’s shifted something deep for many of them:

When that nagging, constant emotional alarm bell sounds, you have three options. Always.

1          ACT – If the alarm is pointing to something real, and you can do something about it: do it. Take the difficult conversation. Make the plan. Ask the question. Begin, even when the TIGER is roaring!

2          ACCEPT – If the alarm is over something beyond your control — the new org chart, the decision still months away, President Trump’s next move — then consciously accept it. Thank the alarm. But don’t carry it all day.

3          AMPLIFY – Here’s the trap: we amplify. We stay in the dopamine sandpit, endlessly ruminating, catastrophising, doom-scrolling, gaming out every possible ‘what if’ scenario.

Why? Because the Amplify option gives us dopamine. It feels like we’re doing something.

But we’re not ‘doing something’. We’re stuck in the fear loop and giving away our power.

Here’s the kicker: sometimes we know exactly what we should do (Act), but we’re afraid to do it. The TIGER is roaring. So we delay the action, building even more anxiety! That is the fear loop.

You want to move to the DARE LOOP, which requires owning your POWER.

Book Jim To Speak

The AHA Moment: DARE is the Antidote to Anxiety.

When you make a Decision — to Act, Accept or stop Amplifying — the alarm bell begins to quieten.

The emotion has done its job. It got your attention.

You thanked it for its hard work protecting you.
You responded with conscious leadership (not by non-consciously Amplifying).

That’s the endgame. That’s mastery. That’s emotional regulation.

This is the moment I’ve seen people shift.
In boardrooms. In kitchens. In team huddles and in coaching chairs.

“Wait — I can choose my next move / empower my team even in uncertainty?”

Yes. You can. And you must.

Even if that choice is ‘simply’ to become the best prepared you can be to move like a lion when the uncertainty eases.

Yes. You Can.

Keeping the Team Inspired Through the Fog.

Let’s bring this home to the business world.

You don’t need to be a superhero during a merger or leadership transition.

But you do need to keep the machine moving and the people safe.

That means:

• Focus your teams on what matters today, not what might /might not happen tomorrow: build power and control

• Generate certainty where you can: we have a job to do and a team to be a part of.

• Challenge drama, victim narratives and blame – they put control further outside of the team

• Protect energy. Celebrate progress. Don’t punish fear — acknowledge it.

• Remember: presence is power. Anxiety exists in the imagined future – not in the present moment: Calm is leadership. You are the climate.

Exam Season.

Facing exams requires the same three choices to bring the power home.

You are an athlete preparing for a race. Like an athlete, it is all done before you enter the exam room. The exam is just your chance to show off all your hard work.

How can you prepare for that:

1          ACT – to put yourself in the best possible position and that includes recovery and rest and decompression time.

2          ACCEPT – that the content of the paper is outside of your control and that you have a tough period of hard work ahead before a summer of, hopefully, immense release. Plan the summer.

3          Do not AMPLIFY – Exams do not dictate your life. You can re-sit. You can only do the best you are able to do – and that best requires ACTION today and not procrastination and catastrophising.

And as adults, we can frame this for our children as a life changing moment that means everything (nobody can cope with that) or as their chance to rehearse preparing and performing, just like their favourite musician / sports star / writer / business person does.

Book Of The Week.

I’ve mentioned before the two books that have most impacted my work are ViKtor Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ and Joseph Campbell’s ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’.

So this week I have chosen the book that most helps me approach uncertainty and anxiety and to (usually) overcome those hurdles to move forward and create.

We may not control our circumstances — but we always control our response.

In times of uncertainty and anxiety, Frankl’s message is a lifeline:

Meaning is stronger than fear.

He identified three ways we find meaning, even in chaos:

1. 🎯 Purposeful Work
   Creating something, contributing to something larger than yourself.

2. ❤️ Love and Connection
   Being in a relationship. Caring for someone. Choosing to love in hard times.

3. 🛡️ Dignity in Suffering
   When pain can’t be avoided, carrying it with courage and grace.

Even in discomfort, when we connect to what we’re building, who we care for, or how we carry ourselves, we take back our power.

We stop spiralling.
We start writing.

Frankl reminds us:

Your freedom lies in how you choose to meet what comes.

That’s where peace begins.
That’s where clarity begins.
That’s where leadership begins.

COMPETITION: Can You Help Me Empower Others?

My Week

High Performance requires a journey. A ‘Sheep Dip’ of generic principles in a classroom works for mastering MS Word. It does not work for understanding and then sculpting one’s approach to team leadership and coaching to empower high performance.

Having been commissioned to create two new High Performing Team Leadership programs for two global clients – creating this journey through email, video, my online academy materials and live masterclasses and coaching is taking much of my time.

Rather like an exam, it is both stimulating and demanding!

A day this week running a workshop for a post-acquisition ‘top 100’ team living in uncertainty (whilst running a major UK business and managing the emotions of the two organisations) was an utter privilege and the catalyst for writing on anxiety and uncertainty for you today.

We are wrestling with Meta Ads in the team. If you can give us any advice (we’ll happily pay) on how to set these up on Instagram and how to manage the audiences, we’d be incredibly grateful!

A period of intense international travel is approaching with some significant big moment keynotes. Now is when these are won or lost: in the briefings, the prep and the logistics. Thank you to everybody who spent time briefing me this week for their upcoming events. The best part of my work is hearing about the challenges people have around the world.

A fabulous dinner conversation with a close friend led to a late night ‘sleep penalty’ for us both. Worth it.

And on top of that we are moving house as my daughter moves on from her primary school. New adventures are on their way and we’re all very excited!

Write your story 🖋️

Jim