Q. A lot of my coworkers and our management seem to making decisions purely on fear. I admit my own brain fogs up trying to make the right choice rather than the one that lowers my anxiety. Any tips for improving decision-making when it looks like the sky really is falling?

A. Yes, there are tools for making effective decisions even when it looks like "the End of Times" has arrived.

Realize that for anything new to be born, old structures have to fall apart. Realize you are definitely living in one of those times. Also realize that you have a lot of anxious company in corporate America. To put it briefly ... if you can keep your head while all around you are losing theirs, then you probably haven't been paying enough attention!

Many of my talented executive clients try to manage their fear by "snapping out of it." Unfortunately, emotions don't get better by snapping. If anything, when people ignore emotions they risk "snapping" and doing something we all regret.

The fear that is pervasive right now is not the problem. When we make poor choices of words or actions because of our fear, we then have a problem. The challenge right now is how to swim in the ocean of fear around us without drowning.

There are three steps that can act as flotation devices as bad news continues to roll into your workplace:

1) Be concrete and specific about your worst-case scenario.

2) Create a plan to survive your worst case-scenario.

3) Stop taking responsibility for economic factors you can't control.

In American business, we have a cherished myth that bad things don't happen to good people. Thus if bad things happen to us, we feel ashamed we've been publicly revealed as undeserving of God's favor. Continued...