Contemporary management and leadership theory focuses on consensus, collaboration - the democratic "flat" style - rather than the top-down , "do as I say" style. Be comfortable with, not afraid of the person in charge. The problem is: fear as a tactic to get others to do your bidding… works.
My first experience with fear as a management technique was in a network newsroom in New York City in the form of a mysterious "Dr Parker" who used to call the newsdesk regularly and ask to speak to anchors, writers, editors, you name it, who had just committed an on-air faux pas. It might’ve been something as small as an arcane grammatical error ; it could have been getting someone’s name wrong or pronouncing it incorrectly; it could have been using old information – but then, how would he know ? Was he glued to the news with the newsroom’s unlisted phone number on speed dial ? People who received too many calls from "Dr Parker" more often than not were moved to less responsible positions in the newsroom. It turned out "Dr Parker" was a news executive who apparently never slept and who kept everyone on his and her toes by incessant surveillance – thereby engendering…fear; but also pretty sharp, focused performance.
I used fear as a management tactic myself – unconsciously at the time– as Bureau Chief for Worldwide Television News in Moscow (the video news agency then owned by ABC News ; now part of Associated Press TV). I knew enough about Russia before arriving to understand that if I was going to keep any sort of order in a bureau of 35 people – of which 20+ were men, in a location such as Moscow - I was going to have to be a Tsarina. Not cruel, just decisive, aloof and well-dressed. The high point came when – during the annual weekend in the country staff bonding exercise - I actually managed to hit two skeets in a row with a pelet rifle, rendering the onlooking staff utterly speechless. But our performance as news-gatherers was pretty much unbeatable.
There are plenty of examples in history of how leaders have successfully used fear. I’m not talking about leaders such as Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini – but by leaders whose overall command was positive, and whose use of fear effected positive results.
Portrait of Louis XIV (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Take Louis XIV, who became King of France in 1643 at the age of five; his mother the queen served as regent for some 14 years until Louis was of an age to reign in his own right. Louis shocked the country by decreeing there would be no Prime Minister : Louis himself would run the government . And so he did, coercing parliament, the court, and most foreign enemies by sheer dint of personality, sheer force of will, and engendering unadulterated fear among his constituency until his death in 1715. He is generally considered France’s greatest monarch - the “Sun King.” One wonders what future the country may have had had Louis’s son or even grandson ascended to the throne after his death; instead, an epidemic illness spirited away those two heirs, leaving Louis’s five-year-old great-grandson to succeed him as Louis XV, without having had the benfit of seeing how "Fear as a Management Technique" worked for Louis XIV.. (one could argue Louis XVI didn‘t understand how to use this powerful tool)
Today, there is terrorism - the fear of which has forced governments to implement security measures that can test the limits of civil liberties.
"Fear will get some results because it sets boundaries and consequences," says Dr Manfred Kets de Vries, Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development and Organizational Change at INSEAD in France. "But most people who manage by fear eventually fall because no one is able to tell them anything. They live in a fantasy world."
That certainly happened with Napoleon. Though the administrative reforms he wrought - the Napoleonic code, for example - both in conquered lands and within France (a codification of changes brought about by the Revolution: “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite”) were significant and last to the day, France lost millions of soldiers towards the end of Napoleon’s ill-conceived military campaigns; consequently, domestic support turned to anger , his own counsellors conspired against him, and foreign fear evaporated - from there, the path to Waterloo was quite short.
Louis XIV suffered some military and political defeats towards the end of his life (historians argue as to how much of this was hubris and how much due to simple age) and became a bit of a toothless lion. This was lamented (posthumously) by Voltaire in his epitaph for the king, claiming Louis had “too great arrogance with foreigners in the days of his success…” This was not something Voltaire - who lived during Louis’s reign, and actually admired the monarch - would have dared write while the king was alive.
On the terrorist front, too, we now see hardened resolve to stop these orgaizations in their tracks: beheadings and other outrages which indeed evoke fear have now propelled and compelled counties (some formerly unfriendly) to work together to defeat this common menace.
There are some leadership-management strategies that actually encourage what we might construe as »fear. » Though I’m sure they didn’t write it to be a leadership handbook for the use of fear as a management tactic, Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson in “The One-Minute Manager” (Willow Books, London, 1983) have hit the nail on the head with their description of the “One-Minute Reprimand,” which goes something like this:
-Reprimand people immediately;
- Tell them what they did wrong, specifically;
- Tell people how you feel about what they did, in no uncertain terms;
- Stop for a few seconds of uncomfortable silence to let them feel how you feel.
That confrontational approach would strike fear in just about anyone. But it gets better. Here’s the second half of that One-Minute Reprimand:
- Shake hands or touch them in a way that lets them know you are honestly on their side (remember; this was written in 1983; “touching” today may not work or even be legal);
- Remind them how much you value them;
- Reaffirm that you think well of them but not of their performance in this situation;
- Realize that when the reprimand is over, it’s over.
Fear works, short-time and within limits. "You have to use humor," says Kets de Vries, "and you have to respect people. If you go on too long evoking fear you will either fall yourelf or you wil incapacitate your people."
