🚀 go-pugleaf

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
In Message Wed, 25 May 1994 08:34:59 EDT,
  Bob Roche <broche%sedofis@VM1.NYSED.GOV> writes:

>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>
>
> In response to Dr. Bushe's posting about fear, I would like to provide my
> opinion. I am no psychologist, so please take the remarks with a grain of
> salt.
> (Except of course if your blood preasure is already high :-) )
>
> The posting lead me to believe that there was little that managers could do
> about driving out fear, since it was a direct result of workers being at the
> bottom of the hierarchical system.
>
> Fear may come from the inside out but I think that in many cases there is an
> exterior stimulus that triggers the fear. This stimulus is generally
> a lack of control over our own destiny. If you fear heights, you are
> reacting to the feeling of a lack of control over your balance in a
> specific situation. Similarly workers may feel a lack of control over
> what they will do that day, how their actions will be interpreted, how will
> blame for a mistake be distributed, etc. These situations result in the
> general fear level experienced by the worker.
>
> In a hierarchical system the managers are generally rewarded for controlling
> situations, thus taking the control away from the worker. If you want to
> change
> the culture of fear, you need to change the culture of management.
>
> Flattening the organization (reducing the hierarchical structure) is an
> excellent way to begin that change in management culture. It brings the
> managers in closer touch with the workers, which gives them more of an
> opportunity to listen to the workers input. When a worker feels
> they are providing input into a process, they don't feel such a lack of
> control and their fear level will diminish. Another benefit of flatter
> organisations (relative to this discussion), with fewer levels of
> management a persons ego is less likely to grow as they are moved
> through the ranks. I believe that ego is an important factor leading to the
> feeling of need for control.
>
> You can keep my ego in check by providing critical feedback of my opinion.

Bob,

Thanks for the response to my "contrarian" message on fear and the invitation
to respond in kind.

Of course those who have control over valued resources
(i.e. management) can indeed make a difference in how fear inducing an
organization's environment is.  But how many of us in the consulting field
have not run into many, many cases where people are afraid of those in
authority while we know that this supposedly awesome and fearsome
creature (the CEO, say) is really a decent, sensitive individual trying
to make sense of a confused and turbulent world.

People bring themselves to their jobs.  If they have a basic view of the
world as a scary place out of their control they're going to see that at work
too.  Those who see the world as a basically safe place and see themselves as
in control of their own lives, not surprisingly, find the "boss" easy to
approach.

When I was involved in QWL and STS redesign work at General Motors early in
my career, it was easy to see management as the "bad guys" and to feel that
it was their responsibilty to "drive out fear".  I was not prepared to see
how much those who, in my mind, were oppressed by the hierarchy, were
dependent on that hierarchy to contain their "natural" fear - that is, their
basic sense that the world is not a safe place and strong and wise leaders
are required to keep the world safe.  Those who are most
fearful are also those who most need to believe that someone up there knows
what is going on and will take care of them, whether it is big business, big
unions, or in the case of Canada, big government.

Try to remove the illusion that someone is in control and knows what is
going on and some people will call you a revolutionary and want to lynch you.

Thus it takes hundreds of interviews to find one person psychologically
suited to work in a structurless organization.  While I agree that creating
non-hierarchical organizations eliminates the kinds of fears bottoms
will "naturally" experience in hierarchies (and I am a big proponent of
these kinds of organizations), new fears come into play.  As scholars like
Elliot Jaques or Larry Hirschhorn have demonstrated, structure contains
the anxiety provoked by unregulated human interaction.  When we don't have
rules anymore to regulate our interactions and decision-making, we just
have you and me in an ambiguous, anxiety filled dance of who is going to
influence who.  Here, more so than in highly structured situations, the
impact of a person's own attitudes and proclivities are most apparent.

In culture change workshops it is not unusual for an employee to tell me
he/she wants to act in new ways but needs managers to make it safe for them.
I say no one can make the world safe for you - only you can do that for
yourself.  I have found that when a person begins to think about it
from that perspective, they usually surprise themselves as they uncover
what they need to do to make work "safer" - and are often shocked at how
easy it is to make that world safer when they aren't waiting for someone
to do it for them.

And here is where another popular misconception comes in.

Some people talk and act as if "empowered" organizations are ones that make
it safer for people to take initiative.  While I would agree that such
organizations *encourage* initiative, to think that makes it *safer* is to
completely misunderstand the nature of power.  All powerful acts are risky.
An act of influence makes one more visible and a target for those  who have
other agendas or interests.  There is an unreflective view that thinks that
*power* equals invulnerability - as if when I have more power no one will
be able to harm me.  Well, that is not power, that is safety.  It is much
riskier for a production worker to decide that an operation needs to be
closed down for maintenance (act of power) than to give that authority to
some hierarchy to decide.

I have come to the conclusion that working in organizations that attempt to
give everyone the *power* to influence the organization for its own good,
requires *courage*.  It takes courage for senior managers to expound and
act on a motivating vision when it will take years to know if the vision
and strategy were right.  The temptation to change strategies every 10
months when there is no visible effect from the last change or so is
overwhelming and so destructive to organizations.  The temptation by middles
to just play to the tops, be their clones, is very strong and takes it
tremndous courage by middles to take an independent stance that integrates
the needs of tops with those of workers - but that courage is exactly what is
needed for systems to be empowering.  And it takes courage for workers to
say "this is wrong and we will not do it" when that is what needs to be
said.

If you kow where courage comes from or how to cultivate it please, please
let me know.

And now as my ranting winds down, I have to say that I am just trying to
present another, valid perspective to balance the knee-jerk reaction I
see to this "safety" issue.   Of course "punishment" drives out motivation
and cooperation and I have seen systems paralyzed by fear and violence
between union and management that is generations old.  I have seen
individual managers destroy groups and organization by unbridled ambition
and/or highly neurotic behavior.  It is scary to have a crazy for a boss.
But let us not fall into the trap of assuming there is some utopian design
where people can go to work, act in empowered ways, and feel completely safe.
People who are fearful will find lots to be feaful about no matter where they
work.  Managers can turn themselves, and their organizations, inside out
trying to respond to that fear when it has nothing to do with them. And that
is just as tragic to watch.



Gervase Bushe Ph.D.
Faculty of Business Administration
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC, Canada,  V5A 1S6

email: bushe@sfu.ca
phone: (604) 291-4104