Why Fear is an ineffective management Style

I have so many stories of employers using fear as their style of management to motivate me and other employees. Every scenario ends with me leaving the company and using my talent elsewhere. In my case, fear doesn’t motivate me at all even in the short term; I completely shut down and can’t perform. This particular instance is the freshest and occurred when I had taken a new position after being laid off in 2020. When I first accepted this position I had many offers from different employers but chose this one because I liked their value statement, pay, and benefits package the most.

What I didn’t realize about the work culture with this particular employer was that expectations were nearly impossible to reach and fear was the main tool on their belt to drive performance. It only took about a week for me to get my first taste of fear in this environment. This company prided itself on having one meeting a week for every team in which it was deemed appropriate for the team to fight through any conflicts. The louder and more boisterous the meeting became the more the team was rewarded for not being afraid to speak up and make a change in the department.

This is what was explained to me at first and when the meeting was over no one had hard feelings and would learn from the meeting to be more effective in their position. I quickly learned that if a manager or higher up was in the meeting that the team members were not allowed to speak up for what needed to be changed. The person doing most of the yelling, threatening, and in my opinion not trying to solve any problem other than creating fear were the leaders of the teams.

More than once I was involved in a meeting where an employee would try to defend what was happening in their department or bring up a problem and the reaction from the manager or even higher up was that “If you don’t shut up” you’ll be fired. In one meeting in particular the CEO joined the meeting and asked the team “why we were failures.” He said that he was using the word failure to motivate us to stop failing.

My actual reaction to the word made me feel belittled, embarrassed, scared, and small. When I looked around at my teammates they also looked defeated. Instead of creating any kind of positive behavior we all spent the morning licking our wounds and feeling worthless at our jobs. I can only speak for myself on how I actually felt afterward but I felt like why even try if I suck that bad at my job. These meetings were a huge source of anxiety for me and it quickly spiraled into depression. Even if I desired to do well in this position I couldn’t function well enough in this mental state to find a way to be successful. Every time, it was a work morning I dreaded the thought of going in and being fired that day. Because of the fear, I felt about being yelled at, fired, and publicly embarrassed at work the employer didn’t ever get to see me flourish in the position.

Instead, I did look as though I was terrible at my job and for this particular company, I really wasn’t any good due to fear crippling all of my creativity and talent. The only way I could figure out to move away from the fear was to find a new employer as quickly as possible. I only lasted six months in this position before finding a new employer to work with that I hoped at the time would have a more positive management approach. The employer I left reacted with shock that I was leaving and just said our culture isn’t for everyone so I guess you just weren’t a fit. Although, they seemed nice when I was on the way out. I felt as though they thought I was too weak to handle the way they scare everyone into doing their jobs. In the short period of time I worked there I also noticed that employees didn’t seem happy or cheerful at work. Most of them had their heads down working away too afraid to do anything else. I've been successful at numerous different employers and am now in a position I’m able to be a top performer once again.

The major difference between my current position versus the one I just described is that my new employer allows me the freedom to use my talent without fear. When interviewing I was adamant about how the company culture viewed and treated their employees as assets lifting them up instead of knocking them down. I was told in the interview that they only hire the best candidates and have faith in them. They also, said that we reward and encourage positive behavior which encourages even more positive behaviors. Whenever I have a win in this position we all celebrate together as a team. One motto they use which I’ve found extremely helpful and has removed fear for me in this position is; “Be hard on the problem not on the people.” How I’ve seen this play out is that if an employee makes a mistake management works on solving the problem created and doesn’t beat the employee up about it. The culture I see in this new place of employment is that production levels are high, employees are happy and tons of positive team collaboration happens daily. We all lift one another up because that’s what is expected of all of us and it’s what makes the company successful which we all desire to do.?