Authors: Gaurav Bhatnagar and Mark Minukas

Publisher: McGraw Hill

ISBN: 978-1-264—26816-0


Prior to writing Unfear with Minukas Bhatnagar worked for Pepsi-Cola International in Europe. (2022, inside back cover).
He also worked for proctor and Gamble in India and before that with McKinney and Company. In 2010 he founded Co -Creation Partners where he puts his twist on assisting organizations to achieve incredible optimal performance by transforming their organizational culture. He has done this work in nearly all sectors.


Minukas, co-author of Unfear, is an engineer by education. (2022, inside back cover) He was a Naval officer, member of the Naval Dive Community and the U.S. Naval construction Battalions or Seabees. He also worked for McKinney and Company as a consultant using his expertise to help improve the performance of engineered systems. Minakus has also worked across many sectors and industries to construct high-performing organizations. He is now managing partner of Co-Creation Partners.

“Fear is taboo in most organizations. To admit fear is to admit weakness, failure, or that you can’t handle the demands of your job.” (2022, Introduction) What can you do to prevent this?

“Unfear is not the opposite of fear, nor is it a synonym for fearless. To unfear is to reframe the experience o fear so that we can make different choices in response.” (2022. p.3) In order to be effective, we must learn where the fear comes from and how to tame it.

“The good news about trust and difficult conversations is that they create a virtuous cycle, a positive-feedback loop, whereby difficult conversations build trust, and the more trust there is within a team, the more effective it becomes at difficult conversations.” (2022, p.16) “The cycle often goes unnoticed because aggressive/apathetic responses work in the short term.” (p.17) “However, when we unfear, we flip this cycle.” What is the goal of unfear?

“The goal is to shift the story we carry within us about fear and to see the opportunity for learning and growth that fear offers us as an individual, a team, and an organization.” (2022, p.21) How can you and your organization accomplish this?

“How do we change the narratives we hold around fear so that we can create an unfear transformation?” (2022, p.24) “A true unfear transformation changes almost everything about an organization, including its understanding of learnership, namely who the leaders are and how they should lead.” (p.27) Doing so means determining how the organization leads.

“In a fear-based organization, hierarchy exists to put controls and limits on employees. In an unfear organization, hierarchy exists to streamline decision-making and remove impediments to learning and create an environment where people are not coddled or protected but invited, as adults, to be creative contributors I the ace of difficult circumstances and uncertainty. --- That is the essence of unfear.” (2022, p.29)

I have spent my entire educational career in Business Management and have touched on fear and unfear, but this book dives deep into how to use those dynamics to boost performance and overcome fear. I enjoyed the read and believe you will too.