Fear in the Workplace
“People keep saying that we need to remove fear from the workplace. I ask them, ‘Then where are you going to put it?’” — Peter Block, at the Organizational Development Summit 2003 in Chicago.
We have spent a lot of energy trying to reduce fear in the workplace. Block, whom I’ve mentioned a lot in this blog, makes his point about workplace fear at length in this books and talks. The workplace has fear as a component of being in a marketplace. Some of this fear is gratuitous, such as a constant fear of being fired. I used to show up to INFOSEC every day thinking that I’d be called in and told that this was my last week. It wasn’t a good way to live. The company obviously didn’t want me around on a fulltime basis. They showed that in their enthusiasm when I finally raised the issue that they didn’t want my skills. The fear that I felt was a result of their poor management, that they would not come and confront the tough issues as bosses but instead waited for me to raise it.
The point is not to reduce fear but to increase hope. Hope will overcome fear naturally. Fear of the unknown falls away at the strength of hope, desire, joy, involvement.
Don’t reduce fear. Inject hope. Work on desires. Get the right people on the bus and in the right seats on it. Powerful positive emotions are what the workplace needs.
There’s a reason why wartime generals are remembered more than the successful peacetime generals. They have more room to succeed, more room to fail, more room to improvise.
