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The Reload with Sean Hansen
The Reload with Sean Hansen
Overcoming the Pitfalls of Fear-Based Leadership: Building Positive and Collaborative Work Environments - 223
Can fear-based leadership really cripple an organization's success? Join me as we unravel the complexities of fear-driven tactics in leadership and their counterproductive impact on team morale and productivity. Drawing from my experience as a performance coach, I share insights into the pressures that can lead even well-intentioned leaders to adopt intimidating behaviors that stifle autonomy and drive skilled employees away. We'll identify key traits of fear-based leadership, such as dominating conversations and using titles to intimidate, while distinguishing them from assertive leadership practices that effectively guide teams through challenging times.
As we navigate through the challenges of leadership and team dynamics, I emphasize the importance of recognizing the "tyranny of the urgent" and how it can contribute to burnout and poor decision-making. By prioritizing tasks and understanding human relationships, leaders can foster a healthier organizational culture. We also discuss the crucial need for leaders to assess their management style and seek help from coaches or therapists to manage stress better. Ultimately, this episode aims to empower leaders to inspire teams through genuine influence rather than fear, paving the way for a more positive and collaborative work environment.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Welcome to the Reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high-performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. Hello, hello and welcome to the show. Fuel their lives. Hello, hello and welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Today, I thought we would dive into the topic of the flaws in fear-based leadership. Ooh, this is going to not go over well, I am quite sure, but in the last few weeks, obviously, we've been talking a lot about conflict styles and we've been talking about emotional literacy and also how we move into decision making mode from ideation mode. And over the years of coaching executives, I guess I have noticed that in many instances, at least with the people that I end up working with which, who knows, that may be a self-selecting audience in some way but I've noticed that there is, during times of stress, a trend of moving into what I would term fear-based leadership, using fear to get things done, and I think that is something that is not altogether uncommon. I think that the instances where you have a boss that does not resort to that particular tool are more rare, and so it could be useful, hopefully and I'm not trying to point fingers at anybody, but it could be useful for us to talk through some of what happens. What are the consequences if you are the individual who is leading a team or an organization or what have you, and you find yourself resorting to fear tactics. And again, in the times where I've seen this, it's not because I don't work with evil people, right, I don't work with bad people. I work with good people who are often incredibly stressed out.
Speaker 1:Some of that stress is external. Some of that stress, a lot of that stress is internally sourced. They're usually perfectionists and they have amazingly high standards, more so for themselves than anybody else, and so they end up in this place where they're just these pressure cookers, and so I think oftentimes especially the team members of such leaders they start to get a bit jaded about the treatment that they're receiving and then they believe that, oh well, this person is a bad person. And I don't believe that myself, and sometimes I do catch their stress as well, because it's just kind of blowing out from all pores, if you will, and so sometimes I'm in that sort of collateral damage pathway as well. But I don't believe that they're bad people. I really, truly believe that they care deeply, which is also part of where the stress comes from is they really care a lot and they take things very personally, and that when the sort of combination of stresses aggregates in just the right way, well then you have this sort of chemical reaction. If you will, that results in a pretty negative demonstration of poor leadership, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:Now there may be leaders out there that believe that fear-based tactics are the way to go. Why? Oh, I don't know. Maybe because they believe that they're more efficient, or more to the point, or I don't know I'm struggling here, but I don't know Maybe they think that's the only way to keep people on track, or they feel that there's been some sort of demonstrated behavior pattern of falling short on expectations more on that in a while. There could be any number of reasons why. Another reason that just dropped in my head might be if there is some sort of crisis happening, and I don't know.
Speaker 1:Even here, I think there's a difference between exercising more authority in a much more assertive way and actually using sort of fear-based tactics. I still think that we don't, even in a crisis, for instance, I don't think that we necessarily have to engage in fear-based tactics. I think that we can still, we can be assertive, we can be authoritarian even, and not have to do so in a or else kind of way. So when we look at fear-based leadership, well, fundamentally, what are we looking at? Well, there, as I kind of alluded to a second ago, there is this notion of or else Do what I want you to do, or else there will be some sort of punishment, there will be some sort of discomfort that comes with you not conforming to my expectations, with whatever timeframe I want or with whatever deliverables I want, or sometimes it's not so much even about the work product that's being delivered, but it's more the deference that the person wants to experience from their team members. The risk of running your organization in that way, or your team in that way, is that you're going to kill the autonomy of the people around you, and I've talked about this previously, so I'm not really going to get into it here. Additionally, your skilled employees or your skilled team members often leave for other opportunities because they can and they don't like being treated like shit. So there's this element of you know, how is it that you scare off the people that you can least afford to lose? I've talked about that in the past too, so that's all I'm going to say on that Now.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I've noticed is oftentimes, when there is a very top-down vibe, especially when it's supplemented with these fear-based leadership tactics we'll talk more about that in a second based leadership tactics we'll talk more about that in a second it can often create an atmosphere in the leadership room, or the boardroom, if you will, of vying for the leader's favor or attention Instead of focusing on what's important for the betterment of the group, you know, or the company, if you will, or the organization. So instead of that being the team's primary focus you know what's good for the company they start to the individual leaders that report up to the big boss, if you will they start focusing more on how to please that personality, and then this in turn can often lead to a lot of cliques and a lot of infighting, which, over time, erodes the effectiveness of the leadership team as a whole, and we're starting to spend a lot more time and effort in managing personalities and managing factions, as opposed to really just getting on with the work and really trying to understand how to stay competitive and how to serve your end customer, and so on and so forth. One other aspect of utilizing fear-based leadership is that you often kill hard discussions because nobody wants to be the one that pisses off the boss. And then, as far as things that you are promoting, well, one of the things that gets promoted in these sort of fear-based environments is passive resistance. You know, there's this uh, I guess metaphor, right, how do you push a limp noodle when you you really can't and just kind of? You know twists and turns and you can't really get it where you want to go, at least not with any real effectiveness. But essentially, people are going to stop offering overt resistance. You want it to go, at least not with any real effectiveness. But essentially, people are going to stop offering overt resistance. But that doesn't mean that they're actually on board and they're often going to find ways of getting what they want, and in some cases, they might even start to lie in order to keep themselves from getting in trouble.
Speaker 1:And this can show up in any number of ways. I mean, one of the prime scandals that we saw a few years ago was with wells fargo bank and where it was that individuals across the country at you know all these local bank branches, were creating these essentially fictional accounts. I mean, they weren't fictional, they were real. But the account holder didn't ask and didn't authorize for these accounts to be created. But the word came down from on high that the branches needed to create more accounts and of course it was tied to certain business metrics. Obviously they didn't just like randomly come up with that, but there was a lot of pressure placed on individuals in the field, at these various branches, to ensure that these numbers were going up and the numbers had to look a certain way, even when the account holders you know, average Joe, average Jane didn't want extra accounts and didn't, and I said it didn't authorize it and in many cases, most cases, didn't realize that they were being created. Most cases didn't realize that they were being created. But there was a lot of pressure, a lot of fear in the organization inside Wells Fargo, and then you had a lot of people capitulating, not offering that resistance and not wanting to push back on the leadership because of the fear that was being instilled. And then of course you did see people leave the organization, the ones that had other opportunities, the skilled players, if you will.
Speaker 1:But even when you don't see that type of behavior where they're going to do something to conform, when you don't see that type of behavior where they're going to do something to conform, there are times when the leader him or herself ends up being lied to and that happens quite a bit and where it is that information that, as the leader of the organization or of the group, you really have to keep your finger on the pulse of reality. And the more that your team or your organization starts to whitewash the information, you start to get into a very, not only disconnected but sometimes paranoid place. Because then, once you start to learn that there are untruths that are coming to you and being presented to you as the truth, as reality, well then you no longer know what to believe, you no longer know who or what you can trust, and then, of course, that ramps up the amount of time and effort you spend auditing and attempting to ferret out what's really going on. And unless, of course, you happen to be hiring just from like a pathological liars conference, I would say that, by and large, the times when that starts to occur, when it happens en masse is in those fear-based environments. And, again, because people want to keep their jobs, generally, they don't want to get in trouble, generally they don't want to get their face or their head bitten off, quote-unquote. And so you're getting this sort of self-protective behavior out of them, and that is one key indicator that you have created a fear-based environment. And then, on top of this, if you are operating in this environment where nobody's going to offer you overt resistance, they generally create this kind of disengagement, I guess is one way of saying it. And so anything that you propose as the leader, as the fear-based leader propose, they're going to maybe nod their heads and do a lot of oh yeah, oh interesting, a lot of hmm and murmurs of something, but then things don't really start to take off, they don't get off the ground, everything is happening very slowly. You have to sort of track everything down, you have to force people to comply and they're not taking it up with real enthusiasm, with real passion, and oftentimes, again, that's because they disagree with you, but nobody's going to tell you to your face, because they're so, again, afraid that they're going to get their head bitten off, metaphorically. So what are some of these key indicators that you are creating a fear-based culture.
Speaker 1:Well, if you are the leader and you are using possessive language a lot like it's my company or this is my show or it's my meeting, you know, my, my, my, my, my, as though you're the only owner of that company. And even if you are the owner of the company because in certain instances I work with entrepreneurs who actually do own their company In certain instances I work with entrepreneurs who actually do own their company and unless you are literally like a one-person band, well then in that situation, yes, you may own it, but the success of that organization is not 100%, wholly dependent upon you, and so this disproportionate use of the possessive starts to exclude people. Okay, well, if it's your company or it's your show or it's your meeting, well then I guess I'll just sit here and I'll just let you tell me what to do, even though I'm a highly paid, highly credentialed professional myself, just as a, for instance. Also, you probably are creating a fear-based culture if, or environment, if you dominate the space, either physically or in talking time, and dominating the space can show up in any number of ways. One of the ways is you physically sort of menace people and it's not. You know, I'm not saying that you like close your fist and shake it at someone like, oh, I get you, although that actually has happened. I have had clients that have closed their fist in reference or in direction to one of their team members. And yeah, I mean, if you're making a closed fist at another human, you should probably expect that they're going to interpret that in a threatening way. Interpret that in a threatening way. But other ways that people dominate the space physically is they will intrude on another person's sort of personal bubble whatever they find comfortable, and obviously different cultures have different expectations around personal spacing. But if you are the leader and you get in that bubble and you are culturally aware enough to know that you're in the bubble, I mean, I guess that's a caveat there. But if you do this and you're intentionally violating that, so evolved human beings are still very much animals and if you look at the animal kingdom, if one animal violates the space of another animal, there's most likely going to be an attempt to back away, unless they're about the same size, same power, and then there's usually a fight.
Speaker 1:Now in the corporate setting, when the boss violates the personal space of a subordinate, well, that's not generally an equal power exchange, and so usually the subordinate tries to back away. And then, if the boss continues to fill up that space, well, that's a sign of bullying. Now, when it comes to talking time, I think we've probably all been in a meeting at some point in our careers where one person is just yacking nonstop, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk and talks over people and does not let anyone else contribute to the conversation. That is another sign that you're just dominating and bullying people over. Another sign is that the leader asserts their opinion before letting others give their opinion. So you tell me, when you're in a meeting with the boss and the boss says I like this or I want this, or I think this is the way to go. How many times does a subordinate then say oh well, you know, thanks for sharing that there, boss man or boss lady, but I think we should do this other thing instead. No, I mean, there may be times where that happens, but most of the time the subordinates are like okay, I guess we're going in this direction now, especially if there's already a track record of some of this other fear-based leadership.
Speaker 1:Now another one that comes up which, if you're doing this, then you should probably recognize you got a real situation on your hands and that you're most likely going to have to do something about sooner than later. And that is if you are pointedly reminding others of your title or your position or your status. If you have to remind people that you are the boss, you know I'm the vice president of sales or I'm the chief operating officer of this company, or I'm the CEO or you know. If you're doing any of that sort of thing where you are having to, or you feel like you have to, visibly or forcibly or verbally remind people of what your title is, when they fully know what your title is, then something has gone terribly awry in your culture, in your environment, and it's most likely been your doing. One other example here is the leader doesn't let the team members shine and keeps team members in the literal or metaphorical background, especially if that's combined with this.
Speaker 1:Sometimes what happens is individuals take the credit but none of the blame, take the credit but none of the blame. And if you are an individual who works for one of those individuals and you're listening to this podcast, you are in trouble. You should find another place to work. That's going to be a very toxic environment for you, and I would recommend that you I mean, if you want to try to work it out, that's great. But oftentimes if you are working with somebody your boss who not only engages in some of these fear-based leadership tactics but then also takes all the credit but then never takes any of the blame or responsibility I think is more the word that I like here then chances are you're not fixing that environment and you might consider strongly moving to a different environment. And then, of course, last but certainly not least and there are other traits here that I'm not listing today, but hopefully this list was at least somewhat thorough and of course, as I said, last but not least, yelling, screaming, tearing people down in front of their peers. Any of that is also going to be in this key indicator list of hey, yeah, you are creating a fear-based culture, and whether you do so intentionally, I mean that would only make it worse.
Speaker 1:But most often, as I said at the beginning of the episode, these things don't come forward intentionally. They come forward unintentionally, during times of profound stress, and you might be thinking well, you know, can't we give the person a little bit of grace? Sure, I'm all on board with that. And what happens when it is a pattern, when it's been happening potentially for years, or maybe not years, at the same company or with the same team, but years collectively, across different roles, across different companies, with different teams? So at what point does that individual who is demonstrating some of these indicators, at what point does someone say, hey, this doesn't work? Does someone say, hey, this doesn't work. Maybe you think it works for you, boss, man, boss, lady, who is yelling at everybody, or who is doing some of these other things that I just mentioned? But it doesn't work for us, it doesn't create a healthy team environment and it doesn't allow the team to really be effective, and then we don't serve the organization effectively, and then we don't serve the organization effectively, and then we don't serve the end customer or the end client or the cause, or whatever it is that your group of people is doing. We don't end up serving the reason for why this organization exists in the first place.
Speaker 1:So, compassion, sure, yeah. So compassion, sure, yeah. And we have to have an eye. I believe we have to have an eye open. For how long is this going on? And if it's poor stress management, okay, well then, how do we get better stress management tactics or techniques or strategies in place? We can't just continue to repeat negative cycles ad nauseum without, at some point, opening our eyes and saying, oh well, this is rather counterproductive. I should attempt to remedy this. And how would I go about doing that? Well, I mean, gosh, there's like the internet and any number of books and speakers and I mean this podcast, right, like there's any number of resources out there for how we begin to deal with the adverse impacts of the stress that we feel. The adverse impacts of the stress that we feel. Work with a therapist, or work with a coach or a shaman or a healer I don't know Find something.
Speaker 1:So, when you're engaging with this fear-based leadership style, what you're really doing is you are using force. You're not truly connected to power. For someone to be powerful, they don't need to be forceful, and oftentimes, when somebody is forceful, they're not genuinely connected to deep inner power. Like I said before, if you have to assert and if you have to overtly remind someone that I'm the boss around here, then you've lost the bubble, you're not in your true, genuine leadership authority and you're attempting to beat them over the head and shoulders with your rank, and that happens a lot and I don't know, maybe the skeptic in me says that that might be the norm. I don't know, maybe the skeptic in me says that that might be the norm and perhaps that's not that surprising.
Speaker 1:Perhaps the notion of having a truly aware and enlightened and empowered leader is a rarity. But if it is rare, I don't think that it is unachievable. I believe that all of us can learn to do better. We can learn to control the stressors that act upon us and the inner narratives that serve to exacerbate those external stressors. Additionally, I believe that we can learn certain techniques, if you will, or certain behaviors that allow us to show up in a much more empowered way, to allow us to show up in a much more empowered way. So if you are one of those individuals that has been exercising some of that fear-based leadership behavior, well, first and foremost I would encourage you to talk less and listen more. You can still ask questions and in fact, some of the best questions are quite probing, but come from a place of real curiosity and not interrogation, not attempting to pin somebody down and prove or show that they're the wrongdoer and that you will smite them from on high, but really trying to understand what they're saying.
Speaker 1:The numbers are down for the month. Okay, well, what may have caused that? How might we have become aware of that sooner? What might we do next month in order to take corrective action sooner? What would corrective action even look like? How do we determine what our plan would potentially be Instead of well, what did you do? Why weren't you doing more? And I'm dramatizing here, hopefully you can recognize that.
Speaker 1:But there's a certain edge, a certain bite, and when I do 360s and subordinates talk to me about their boss and I feel fortunate because oftentimes they do tell me the bitter truth and they say, yeah, there's a real edge to her tone or his tone and it feels very biting. And it feels very biting and it feels accusatory. And they can tell the difference. I've never once had team members not be able to tell the difference when a boss was coming from a place of genuine curiosity, even about a stressful situation, versus coming at it from that place of accusation and wanting to find blame and wanting to have heads roll. Now, part of this, I will grant you, is that there are many times when the boss has a lot of pressure, as I've mentioned, and there are so many things that they're trying to get across the line, and I'm very sympathetic to that.
Speaker 1:And so part of this process is also figuring out for yourself how you're going to tap into patience More patience than you ever thought was necessary and how do you remind yourself, on a probably a daily, maybe even hourly basis sometimes who knows that the results that you are seeking will likely take far longer than you expect and certainly way, way, way longer than you would hope. One of the elements that can help with that is figuring out in your business what is truly important and time critical, what is truly important and time critical, and separating what is truly important and truly time critical from the myriad of things that are not important even though they might seem urgent. You know there is this notion of the tyranny of the urgent and how, so often when something seems urgent, we put ourselves in a place of supreme stress and the urgency often befuddles people into thinking that the issue is important when it's not actually important. So, having a very disciplined approach to recognizing being able to take a step back and say, okay, is this actually important, first and foremost, and then secondly, okay, yeah, it's important and it's urgent and if you're recognizing that legitimately, you are getting bombarded day in and day out with important and urgent, then I would recommend that you reevaluate how you're running your business and try to figure out are there things that you can cut? Perhaps you're trying to bite off more than you can chew, as they say. You're taking on too many initiatives all at once. You're not clear about what the actual priorities are. You're not clear about what in your business will allow your company to be successful, or in your marketplace. But if every day is just saturated with oh, this is highly important and it's highly urgent, there is no way that I can currently think of to stay in that environment without having a nervous breakdown or worse. And so taking that step back and, yes, you probably are going to have to let certain things absolutely fail and that is, I think, a big part of maturing as a leader is going through that pain and that suffering of oh my gosh, we're not going to be able to do all the things. No, you won't. And that's also part of how you're going to start to figure out what really truly is important and focus in on that. And again, if you have to work with a therapist or a coach or a wise friend, whatever. How is it that you allow yourself to drop some of the stress that comes with not being able to get all the things done?
Speaker 1:Another piece is if you are in a spot where you perceive that the team is not meeting your expectations, try to take a step back and assess if you have been overwhelming the team, either because there are too many tasks that you've assigned, or you've made the deadlines too tight, or perhaps you've been unclear in your instructions, or you've been unclear in what the priorities are. You have them bouncing back and forth, or maybe it's something else, I don't know. But first and foremost, before you blast somebody, how is it that you can take a step back and reevaluate what your performance has been? And, of course, also try to remember that if your team isn't delivering, then how can you train them to deliver? And if you can't, if you've tried and you've given it your true, in your heart of hearts best shot, then you might need to replace them, and that is also part of your responsibility as the team leader or the boss. It's to make sure that the team is a good fit and that the individuals on the team are not only fit for purpose, but they are a good fit with each other. And if you made a bad hire which happens again I think that's also part of the growth process of leadership is, we all make bad hires. And if you've made a bad hire, then correct it. But if you think your whole team is bad at that point, then you should most likely be looking at yourself instead instead, because if they are all bad, chances are you hired them or you at least have not replaced them if you inherited them from a previous leader.
Speaker 1:I know today's episode probably wasn't the friend list. I'm not trying to pick on anybody I'm really not but these are things that I end up hearing about, things I end up seeing in my work, and I'm hoping that, hearing some of this, if you are the leader that does some of these behaviors, that you can really truly get serious about finding some help, finding some help, and that some of these things to watch out for have resonated with you and serve as I don't know, a useful indicator or signpost that says, hey, there's another way of doing things, and that it can be very beneficial in terms of how you interact with your team, whether you're able to keep a team together for a prolonged period of time measured in years, not quarters and that also most likely will show benefits in terms of the results that your organization is able to achieve. And if you're the person that is working for someone like this, maybe you can think about ways to suggest help. And maybe there's a conversation practitioners out there, business coaches, executive team coaches, things like that and also not even executive teams any team coaches out there that work with teams to help them get to the bottom of some of the dysfunctions that occur, and any number of books also on team dynamics. And I think one general theme to sort of take away is that really, when we're talking about team dynamics, we're talking about human relationships. Just because it's in the business setting doesn't make it some novel, never-before-seen situation. It's human beings trying to work together within the context of a power structure to hopefully accomplish a joint cause. That's not the first time that humans have done that, and so you know it doesn't have to be a business book. Any book on human relationships can be tremendously useful. You may have to extrapolate a little bit more, quite likely will, and the examples that are given by the author or the speaker may not be directly on point for what's going on in your corporate environment, but fundamentally it's about getting good at understanding human dynamics.
Speaker 1:Professionalism and I'm trying to put the emphasis on that word, because this notion of professionalism, I think, oftentimes serves as a bit of a smokescreen, where people have this forced expectation that they're not going to be engaging in human emotion, and that's a fallacy. Human emotion is coming with the human being, whether it's in the boardroom, whether it's in the lunchroom, whether it's at home on the playground, whatever it's baked in. And so to try to deny the presence of human emotion and to try to neuter the conversation by saying, well, let's just keep it professional, yeah, give it a shot, but chances are you're not going to get to the heart of why the dysfunction is occurring in the team in the first place, and within the confines of today's episode, power miscarried creates fear. I mean, it's not rocket science. And so, ultimately, how is it that you get more freedom of ideas, a greater exchange, a greater democracy of exchanging ideas and having constructive conflict, not destructive conflict, which I talked about? That a little bit back in episode 216, I think. So I don't want to beat this horse any longer. The point is learn more about human dynamics, learn to understand them, learn how those things show up inside of you, especially if you are the boss and this double especially if you are the boss who is engaging in fear-based tactics.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's me giving my public service announcement. I'm done. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you did, I would love it. If you would like, subscribe, follow, share, do all the internet stuff or don't, it's totally up to you. But until next time, take care of each other.
