By Steve Moran

I recently completed a project for a customer through our senior living leadership platform. The project turned out well; they were happy with the results, we were happy with the results …

They were mostly easy to work with … except there was this underlying tension …

While I can only speculate …

Early in the relationship, the tension caused me to worry that they were going to be difficult to work with and/or overly critical. That wasn’t the case at all. As near as I can tell, their tension was actually fear that they were going to mess up, do something wrong, or say something wrong.

Not fear of us, but fear of other people, known to them but not to us. That fear translated into being super careful and super cautious in their interactions with us.

They would ask for clarification on the tiniest of details or discrepancies; things that in most organizations would be seen as rounding errors. Here is a made-up example of the kind of thing I am talking about.

We often get asked how a sponsored LinkedIn post or video or email blast performs. It’s a sort of easy and sort of hard question because the numbers are always moving, always increasing. All we can offer is a to-date number.

So a typical response would be it got around 2,500 views … that could mean anything from 2,460 to 2,540. That is a good enough number for most people, it would be a good enough number for me. They would want to know the exact number to the final digit. So saying around 2,540 when it was really 2,543 would be an unacceptable variance. 

I can guarantee that they want this kind of precision because their leaders demand it and are critical when it is not that precise.

Control 

So why does a leader do this? It could be that in some cases, this kind of precision could be important, though that is rarely true. More often it is done to exert control and dominance over the individuals being led. It is also not a well-thought-out strategy because it leads to all kinds of negative consequences.

Negative Consequences

Here are some of the negative consequences:

• It is a waste of time (and energy). Team members waste lots of time making sure they get it right, not because right is important but because they don’t want to look bad or to be made to feel bad.
• No extra-mile performance. It might seem to some leaders that keeping people off balance and like they are never quite good enough is a way to make people work harder. It simply does not work. At some point, if someone is beaten down all of the time, they spend most of their time trying to figure out how to not be criticized.
• It crushes creativity. Creativity always involves risk. The creative process means false starts, getting things wrong, and changing direction. That is unsafe behavior when fear is in the driver’s seat.
• Team members will end up critical of their team members and of you. They will delight in your stumbles. They will not be there for you when things go wrong.

The worst part about a fear-based culture is that it is nearly impossible to change. Team members will never tell you that fear is a problem. It is worthwhile to be honest with yourself about this. Ask someone you trust, who is outside your leadership influence, to tell you the truth.

Getting rid of fear will transform your organization.