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Fear of termination affects leadership style and decisions. Fear affects our perceptions--of ourselves and others. Fear affects our interpretations of past and prevent events. Fear affects and drives other emotions. Fear distorts our thinking and decision-making. Fear makes us someone other than our normal selves. In all our relationships at work or at home, fear is to be feared for its harmful effects. Fear, prolonged and chronic, harms our physical health. With all this said, fear also can be our ally.
The Economy:
Fact-Based Fear
Fear of termination grows directly in proportion to the U.S. economy's decline, in many industries. Some organizations thrive in bad times. For most organizations, our bad economic times mean the quest for survival, trimming expenses, including staffs. When the economy was strong, leaders usually were last to be cut, if ever. They were the decision makers. Now, however, organizational survival itself becomes the guillotine to chop off entire departments and their heads. Anyone who believes he or she is indispensable needs a mental examination. Termination is a real possibility for all.
Fear:
HR's Bludgeon in Bad Times
Many owners and HR managers see bad times as their friend. Fear of termination makes for a very quiet, cooperative workplace with higher outputs. Everyone knows the score. "Break a rule and you're gone, for 1,000 are ready to take your place." This now also applies to people in leadership positions. As a result, fear of termination escalates office politics, cutthroat betrayal, and career assassination. "I'll take out any who might threaten my place."
Fear of termination in a bad economy often becomes an unethical tool for both management and labor. Bad managers use fear of unemployment to crush legitimate health and safety concerns, and silence complaints about real conditions. Bad employees are driven by fear of unemployment to misrepresent work output information to favor themselves. Bad salaried and hourly workers spent hours "creatively" finding ways to make themselves secure, at any cost.
Organizational Cancer
Fear creates in us the "fight or flight" response. In organizational context, fear creates in everyone a dysfunctional and destructive mix. Emotions surge. Thinking becomes polluted and distracted. Speech becomes needlessly aggressive, or artificially sweet. Behaviors go all over the map.
Reports of all kinds become pawns in a chess game anticipating future disciplinary appeals, or lawsuits. Misrepresentation, lies, become more common than truth. This is the "flight" aspect of the fear response. Unfair or bad treatment, subtle or overt career assassination, alliance-building, become expressions of the "fight" aspect of the fear response.
Nazi concentration camp life showed how fear of termination--death--drove some good Jews to collaborate with Nazi captors; to become cruel overseers; and, to do things to both Jews and Gentiles their Jewish faith forbade. Fear can make people into monsters, hidden right in any organization.
Leadership Ethics Forum:
Harness and Control Fear
Fear exists. You know that. You probably have fear within you. The wise owner and manager, who values both organization and people, fears uncontrolled fear and harnesses and controls it.
The Leadership Ethics Forum is a tool designed and controlled by management to enable:
- confidential, anonymous, safe, non-retaliatory communications
- all employees to share their personal fears--reducing them
- employees with special information on dangerous situations to share that
- research data to reduce fear, increase efficiency and trust in each other
Contact us at info@leadershipethicsonline.com. Send us an email including the following information: (1) "Leadership Ethics Forum" in the subject line; (2) your name and official responsibilities; (3) context or situation prompting contact; and (4), all contact information. We will respond promptly to such inquiries.
