So, here we are, a day or so away from Halloween, that pre-Christmas boost to fancy dress and confectionary retailers the world over. I suspect the Celts of 2,000 years ago, celebrating their festival of Samhain, the origin of today’s Halloween, approached things slightly differently. Generally, less trick or treating, I’m guessing. This was their new year, the day when the worlds of the living and the dead blurred into one. Regardless of its origins, Halloween is a branding success story. Today in the US alone it inspires around $9bn of sales. Another example of the successful commercialisation of fear.
Which is ironic, given that fear, particularly workplace fear, is often a significant brake on commercial initiatives and innovations.
There’s a lovely spoof of horror movies portrayed in a Geico ad of a year or so ago. The commercial shows four hapless US teenagers, fleeing from danger, choosing to enter a haunted house and opting for entirely sensible places, such as the basement, in which to hide.
The payoff line? ‘When you’re in a horror story, you make poor decisions’
So, does fear influence ill-advised decision making?
I’m going back to Gareth Southgate, the England football manager. After a hugely successful World Cup, his side nearly topped that with their first win away in Spain since the 1980s. It was a performance full of vim, vigour and confidence. Much of the side’s recent successes have been attributed to Southgate’s attempts at removing fear from the internal squad culture. He is publicly backing his players to make their own decisions, take their own risks and to play without fear.
Contrast this with the trials and tribulations of Manchester United’s increasingly beleaguered manager, Jose Mourinho. With a peerless track record, he has struggled to reinvigorate United, despite spending vast amounts of money. Increasingly, his demeanour is truculent and abrasive, and his successes are limited to creating friction and factions amongst his players. To the untrained eye, those players appear unhappy, divided, perhaps even afraid of Mourinho. They seem afraid of expressing themselves and of functioning as a team.
As Forbes and Huffington Post writer, Louis Effron puts it, ‘While fear is a motivating factor in human behaviour, it consistently leads to bad decisions and creates barriers to success’.
A very topical example of poor decision making took place on a recent Ryanair flight from Spain to the UK. In what appears to be an horrendous instance of unalloyed racism, one passenger berates another. However, because the internal penalties for Ryanair flights taking off late are so onerous, employees tend to be fearful of taking any action that would result in a delay. The story is still playing out, but one possible consequence of Ryanair’s flight attendants taking the path of least resistance is there being no criminal case to answer. As it is, the Ryanair brand will be attracting more than its usual amount of turbulence – no mean feat given the regular contributions in this space of Mr Ryan himself over the years.
Much of the #MeToo initiative, now a year on, was the result of unarticulated fear of harassment within the workplace. The hashtag has shone much needed light on some appalling behaviours. Until the case against Harvey Weinstein – and it will be interesting to see how the Sir Philip Green story unfolds – came out, concern around career-limiting implications resulted in a fear-drenched silence.
Whistleblowing is another example of repressed fear within the workplace. That an individual employee has to resort to secrecy and subterfuge in order to communicate their concerns suggests a workplace where fear is a governing factor.
The most recent high-profile example of this occurred at Barclays a year or so ago. On the announcement of a pending senior arrival, anonymous letters were sent to the board touching on concerns about the personal behaviours of the new hire. The letters also referenced the actions of Jes Staley, the Barclays CEO. Not once, but twice did Staley ask the in-house internal investigation team to try to identify who had sent the letters. On the second occasion, Barclays informed the regulator. Mr Staley remains in place but his wallet suffered the consequences of his actions. Quite how enthusiastic other whistleblowers might be within the bank given his continued tenure is another question.
But fear within the workplace is perhaps more endemic and less well highlighted than these scenarios.
If whistleblowing, #MeToo and Ryanair feel like extreme examples, are they exceptions or simply outliers?
Think about your own workplace. How comfortable are your people about calling out poor behaviours, about challenging leaders, about speaking out?
To what extent do they fear the consequences of such actions? To what extent do they stop innovating? Stop taking risks? Stop thinking differently? Are they second guessing how management will react?
Instead, do they do what they think is expected? What’s always been done. What will please those in leadership.
And if you’re consoling yourself right now that your organisation hasn’t experienced an episode similar to those articulated above, is that because one hasn’t taken place or because your people are too fearful to call it out?
And if your reassurance around workplace fear is associated with positive scores from your latest engagement survey, you might be missing the point. In many cases, such surveys act as sticking plasters to significant internal issues.
But if you’re avoiding some of the extreme examples cited above, isn’t that enough?
Not if you’re serious about getting the most out of your people. Of enhancing productivity, of innovation, of risk.
If management guru Peter Drucker gets more than his fair share of airtime, his counterpart, W. Edwards Deming is probably less well known. but both wrote tellingly about fear and its inhibiting influence on the workplace.
‘Drive out fear, so that everyone may work more effectively and more productively’.
Mr Deming probably hadn’t come across the term employer branding, as he shuffled off this mortal coil in 1993, but he certainly appreciated the value it can deliver.
‘Use open and honest communication to remove fear from the organisation’.
Happily, employer branding is being used more and more to better engage with internal audiences. To communicate direction, journey, intent, empathy and purpose.
Clearly, however such employer branding messages have to align with what leadership is doing and saying. Open and honest communications have to correspond to open and honest leadership actions.
With the unknowns of Brexit due to impact the workplace and the economy between now and March 2019, it would indeed be a rare and happy organisation in which fear was entirely absent.
And the words of Brexit economist Professor Patrick Minford who advocated ‘running down’ the UK car industry this week can only add to the potential horror story unfolding.
One final example of how fear and oppression can produce unfortunate actions. And apologies in advance for another story from the world of sports.
This week sees the publication by the Ethics Centre of the report into the Australian cricket team’s much publicised ball tampering from earlier in the year. The report suggests that the incident (one particular individual was caught applying sandpaper to the ball during a test match) was ‘an extreme example of the prevailing culture of men’s cricket in Australia’. Much of the culture that inspired such actions was put at the door of the governing body given the ‘strong systemic and organisational input’ into the decision to flagrantly cheat.
So, a strong and controlling leadership culture directly created the environment where cheating was seen as acceptable.
Your employer brand grows in importance. It has the capacity, through its openness and transparency, to influence organisational behaviours and actions. It should inspire confidence, trust and the enthusiasm for your people to take risks without fear corroding such aspirations.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 