The fear factor

Fear is a great disconnector. It is rampant in modern organisations. We have grown so accustomed to fear that we hardly notice it, be it fear provoked by an announcement, say, your company is implementing new HR rules to check employee performance, or a rumour that it is going to slash jobs. Not managed correctly, fear can hold your employees back more than any other single force. In this extract from the book Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People, author Edward M Hallowell explains what employees fear and how organisations should deal with it.

Many employees are afraid to make a mistake. Some of their fear may be due to their genetic makeup — research has shown that toxic worrying can be carried in one’s genes. But some of their fear may also be due to their manager’s style. Worrying that their job is in jeopardy, these workers play it safe. They play not to lose, rather than to win, which leads them to fall far short of what they could do.

What they fear varies. It may be disapproval, a poor result, criticism, looking stupid, going beyond their comfort zone, making others look bad — they may even fear making themselves look good! Oddly enough, some people feel that to stand out even by excelling is to court rejection, so they consciously or unconsciously perform below their abilities. A mob mentality can preserve mediocrity by punishing those who achieve excellence.

The process can work in the other direction as well. People can want so passionately to excel that they put too much pressure on themselves. This is one of the great paradoxes of peak performance: wanting too much to win can keep a person from winning. If employees believe everything is riding on the outcome of their performance, fear can freeze them up and lead them to perform poorly. Or, as a golf pro friend of mine put it, “The key to putting is not caring too much if the ball goes in the hole.”

Fear also can drive an employee to take on more than he can handle. He may feel obliged to do more than he can do. Feeling that his job, the success of the project, the making of the quarterly number, or his self-esteem is at stake, an employee may try to carry much more than he possibly can — leading to less-than-excellent, if not disastrous, performance.

Employees may fear that stating their limits will lead their manager to fire them, downgrade them, or, at best, think less of them. In my consulting work, this is one of the most common fears I address. “How can I tell my boss that he is making my job impossible? If I do, he’ll think I’m complaining or not gutting it out and doing what’s required. I can’t afford to lose my job or lose his respect.” This is why it makes sense for the manager to inquire, rather than wait to hear from the employee.

Not all fear, however, is detrimental. Some underlying anxiety can in fact sharpen performance. One of the best validated of all relationships in the behavioral sciences is the so-called performance-anxiety curve. It shows that as anxiety increases, performance improves, up to a certain point. Beyond that point, the curve starts a rapid decline, as performance deteriorates while anxiety continues to rise. Managers should try to keep employees off the descending slope of this curve. A bit of reassurance, some coaching, or, if possible, giving additional resources or education all can serve to reduce anxiety and pull a person back from that downward slope. If nothing else, simply joining the person in their worry can, interestingly enough, reduce the worry. One of my favorite and most useful maxims is: “Never worry alone.”

Among all the sources of fear discussed today in the business literature, perhaps the most common is simply change. The person who can’t manage a fear of change can’t win in today’s world. We all fear change at some level. It ties into our basic desire for security, even immortality. At an unconscious level, change represents the ultimate cause of human insecurity — the prospect of death. So it makes sense that all of us fear change, to some extent.

At a conscious level, change triggers our fear of the unknown. Because we don’t know what change will bring and can’t control it, we tend to fear it. Anything that threatens our feeling of being in control triggers fear — or anger — or both.

Much of a manager’s work is helping the people who work for him or her manage their fears of change and of the unknown, their feelings of insecurity and powerlessness. If a manager can turn that fear on its head so that it becomes excitement at the prospect of change, he will get enormously more out of his people. The great manager helps his people make this emotional flip, thus regaining the mental energy they would otherwise have lost to fear.

But how do you do this? One way to transform fear into confident action is by reframing the situation. Let’s say some people have been laid off, leaving those who remain fearful that they might be next. As you reframe the situation you have to be careful, because you don’t want to sound phony. However, you could honestly say, “The good news is that the people upstairs are going to look elsewhere for the next cuts, so we have some time to pull together and come up with some new ideas.” Or, “With fewer people, we need each other now more than ever. Let’s take this as a chance to create some super teamwork with one another.” You don’t deny the reality of the situation, but you work to see its realistically bright side. You work to instill rugged optimism in the culture of your place.
A word about optimism. It can jump-start peak performance. Often dismissed as Pollyanna-ish or unrealistic, the best kind of optimism looks disaster straight in the eye and says, “We’ll find a way to deal with you.” Such optimism is muscular and brave. And, it can be learned. As a manager, if you model an optimistic attitude, it becomes contagious. It fosters what Stanford psychologist Carol

Dweck calls a “growth mind-set,” one that welcomes challenges because the person believes he can learn whatever is needed to overcome whatever obstacles arise. The person who has what Dweck calls a “fixed mind-set” believes that talent, or lack thereof, limits outcome, and so shies away from what he doesn’t know how to do. Dweck’s copious and groundbreaking research shows that the most successful people are not necessarily the most talented but rather those who develop a growth mind-set. And the really good news is that, like optimism, a growth mind-set can be taught and can be learned — at any age.


How? Here is how Dweck put it:

I believe that managers can best communicate a growth mind-set to their people by conveying that the skills of the job are learned skills and that they, the managers, are there to teach and support employees in the learning of those skills.

In that context, managers can also emphasize that they value passion and dedication (not just “natural talent”), that they value employees’ challenging and stretching themselves to tackle new things (rather than just remaining in their comfort zones), and that they value teamwork (over individual stardom).

My research has taught me one thing more than any other: People are tuned into what those around them value. If managers convey these growth mind-set values, their people will adopt them and live/grow by them.

The manager who rules by pressure and fear (who usually is ruled from above by superiors who also use pressure and fear) lobotomizes his people. Believing he is doing what must be done to bring out their best, he in fact renders them ineffective over time. Fear is a short-term motivator but a long-term disabler.