Now is your time to lead.

What is your natural reaction to fear? What happens to you as a leader when times get tough?

Me? I instinctively shut down. Retract. Hold off on making decisions.

In my years as a CEO and executive, I felt myself going automatically into protection and defence mode if there were budget cuts or significant changes.

I learned, the most brutal way, that this was the worst possible thing I could do.

Because, as a leader, my people mattered the most. They were the tools of the trade to get the work done, and if I stopped investing in them, everything would go awry.

The Board may have asked you to make these changes. What do you do? It's your job to convince directors to keep investing in staff. Finding new ways to enable learning and development is your job - the same goes for government services and non-profit organisations – the world needs you more than ever.

There is always a way to create funds for investing in people. Whether dipping into reserves, applying for grants, or having a corporate partner help you. When an organisation wants to invest in people, it can.

There is colossal fear around right now. I'm having conversations with clients, colleagues, friends, and family - everyone's full of trepidation about the state of the world.

Consumer and business confidence is low; people watch the RBA decisions and indexes like hawks - precisely the environment that leads to fear of making the wrong decisions.

Yet now is the worst time to delay your learning and development spend.

Budget cuts, staff freezes, interest rate hikes, structural changes, and elections on the horizon make it easy to succumb to fear. To wait, to put things off until later – when things are 'better'.

Someone I know and trust was an Asia Pacific brand manager for several international companies in her career. She told me those brands never cut their marketing budgets, even in the most challenging economic times. They kept spending because they knew their loyal, reliable customers would return to them and consume more when the tough times passed.

Think about your learning and development budgets in the same way. Cut now, and you lose people's loyalty. Invest now, back staff, care about how they do their work and who they are as people, and they will deliver for you in spades.

To keep your best talent, support them through change, help them stay resilient and embrace these times without being too afraid to put a foot wrong.

You know it's true; you can feel it deep in your gut. It's intuitive - the worst thing you can do this year is stop investing in your people.

Now is your time to lead.