DANGEROUS
Be the threat to your threats
ERIK KRUGER
ALSO BY ERIK KRUGER
Acta Non Verba ā The playbook for creating, achieving and performing at your highest level
First published by Tracey McDonald Publishers, 2022
Suite No. 53, Private Bag X903, Bryanston, South Africa, 2021
www.traceymcdonaldpublishers.com
Copyright Ā© Erik Kruger, 2022
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-920707-35-4
eISBN 978-1-920707-36-1
Text design and typesetting by Patricia Crain, Empressa
Cover design by Tomangopawpadilla
Digital conversion by Wouter Reinders
Printed and bound by Pinetown Printers (Pty) Ltd
CONTENTS
Title page
Also by Erik Kruger
Imprint page
THE ORIGIN STORY
PART I: A CALL TO DANGER TO EXIST IS TO BE THREATENED
TYPES OF THREATS
HARMLESS, RECKLESS, DANGEROUS Harmless
Reckless
Dangerous
PART II: HOW TO BE DANGEROUS THE HEROāS JOURNEY
STAND IN YOUR DANGER
THE DANGEROUS KIND
THE PROCESS OF BECOMING DANGEROUS
UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES FOR BECOMING DANGEROUS Agency
Assertiveness
DANGEROUS Patterns of Thinking
Patterns of Feeling
Patterns of Acting
DANGEROUS TWO-PAGER
PLEASE BE DANGEROUS
STAY IN TOUCH WITH ERIK KRUGER
THE ORIGIN STORY
āOnly when you are dangerous are you truly equal to the world.ā
ā Daniel Hecht
This book is the result of my two-year search for an answer to the question,
āHow can I be more dangerous?ā
The idea was planted in my head a few years ago by a client.
I vividly remember finishing a call with an executive I was coaching at the time and being absolutely fascinated by what I had just observed.
I was engaging with a successful leader by any external measure that you might traditionally apply. He was running a substantial organisation doing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a year, was married, a father to two kids, liked and respected by colleagues, and earning more than enough for him and his family to ever want for anything.
And yet, on the call it was clear something was missing.
He was not feeling challenged. Even the role of CEO felt like a breeze. But perhaps more than that, in some ways his position left him feeling more out of touch with his own strengths.
Too often he was waking up without a sense of excitement or energy for the day. Just another day, doing the same thing, generating the same result.
What he described was by no means unique to him. In fact, I observed it time and time again with my clients. The same pattern playing out in various environments, from the CEO to the entrepreneur, the sportsman and sportswoman, and the single parent.
In med school, we were taught that you should never mistake the symptom for the cause. As a student you might look at someone with a knee problem and determine how to fix the knee. However, with some maturity and experience you start to realise that a patientās knee pain might only be a symptom of something else. You need to look at the whole body (and its behaviour) to find the cause.
For example, weak glutes lead to poor knee stabilisation, which exposes the knee to unnecessary shear forces that might over time lead to ligamentous injury. Treating the ligaments without strengthening the glutes will just lead to a repeat injury.
What I was observing in my clients (and, I had begun to admit, in myself) wasnāt the cause but the symptom. I was surrounded by powerful, successful people who felt sub-par in their lives. The reactivity, fear, anxiousness, lack of assertiveness, even feelings of distress and mediocrity are all the tell-tale signs of someone in survival mode.
Understanding Survival Mode
Survival mode is a physical place and state of being. Sometimes starting internally and finding its way to the outside. And sometimes starting externally and making its way inside.
The entrepreneur whose business has come under siege, and thatās on the brink of collapse is in survival mode.
The CEO whose business is thriving, yet his life is falling apart is in survival mode.
You cannot always tell from a superficial observation on the outside whether someone is in survival mode or not. I have often been in survival mode. I have also worked with many clients who have self-identified as being in survival mode. So, I can speak with some authority on what it feels like to be there.
From what I have seen and experienced, survival mode has the following characteristics:
1. Extreme Reactivity
The first sign of survival mode is that you become hyper reactive to everything happening around you. You go through your day just putting out fires. Often this means that you are ruled by your calendar and never make time for the things that matter to you.
For those in firefighting mode it feels like they must tend to every fire thatās burning instead of realising that some fires can be allowed to burn so that effort and energy can be channelled towards extinguishing others.
2. Driven by Fear and Anxiety
In survival mode you are constantly driven by fear and anxiety. This emanates from many different places and gives rise to two different distortions.
ā¢ The distortion of probability says that things are likely to go wrong.
ā¢ The distortion of severity says that when things go wrong it will be catastrophic.
When you are always expecting that things will go wrong and that when they do it will be catastrophic, you might find yourself paralysed at the ...