Even smart and empathetic people can react strongly the first time they hear about trust-based leadership. Everybody likes the sound of the word 'trust,' but putting trust-based leadership into action takes patience and humility, and these are not typically virtues we honor in the business world.
Speed and decisive action, however, are right up our alley! Even managers who want to cultivate trust-based leadership abilities have to take baby steps at first, because trust-based leadership concepts are foreign to them. Why is that? Why is fear-based management the only kind of management most of us are familiar with? Here are five reasons!
We grew up being managed through fear ourselves.
Most of us were raised by fear-based authority figures at school. We grew up afraid to get in trouble, and we know how to get along in that system. It is familiar to us. Managers who want to cultivate trust-based leadership in their teams may run into opposition from their own managers, who tell them "Toughen up and manage your team, instead of letting them manage you!"
Nobody wants to seem weak. We have twisted reality around to convince ourselves that people who manage through fear are tough, whereas in reality, trust-based leaders are tough and fear-based managers are weak. Fearful managers only have one tool to use in every managerial situation, and that tool is a threat of consequences or even termination if a team member doesn't do their bidding.
What's tough about that? Their authority is fake. It was bestowed on them by somebody else. Trust-based leaders inspire trust through their words and actions. They don't stoop to picking up a hammer every time they need to get something done through other people.
Any bully on the street can threaten people. Trust-based leaders don't use threats. They trust themselves and the people they supervise enough to work things out without threats of disciplinary action or termination. It takes a strong person to be human, but that is not the traditional management style our executive leaders know!
Our culture reinforces fear-based management.
I live in the United States, whose first European settlers (apart from the Vikings) were religious fanatics, if we are honest. We learn in school that the Puritans came to New England to escape religious persecution, but the minute they got there they became very comfortable persecuting other people for their religious views. There is a statue in downtown Boston of Mary Dyer, who was killed because she refused to give up her Quaker faith. How crazy do you have to be to kill a Quaker?
We grew up with the Puritan ideas that sparing the rod spoils the child, that we must be broken upon the rock and that the only honorable way to live is to spend our lives correcting our defects and atoning for our sins. You can see how this cultural frame fits nicely into the fear-based leadership worldview. It's only a small step to managing people the same way in the workplace -- through fear and control, that is.
We grow up with the idea that authority and punishment go hand in hand.
We heard from our client Greg, who had been to a leadership training workshop at his company. "This sounds weird to me," he said. "Does this sound weird to you guys?" Greg read to us from a handbook he had been given at his leadership training workshop. The handbook included this message that a new supervisor was encouraged to share with his or her new teammates:
We both have a job to do, and as long as you do your job you'll be fine with me. I have standards and policies that I will explain to you, and I am happy to answer your questions. I want to be fair and reasonable with you, and all I ask is that you give me your best work every day. Do that, and we won't have any problems.
That sounded weird to us, the same way it did to Greg. The new manager is telling his or her teammates how to stay on his or her good side, but doesn't say a word about his or her intention to support them or serve them in any way.
The new manager only says "Do your best at work." He or she doesn't say "This job has to grow your flame. I want to know how I can help you. Nothing good or worthy that might happen in this department will happen on its own, without your amazing contribution. I want to help take away any roadblocks that keep you from loving your job."
I'm not sure our Puritan forebear Cotton Mather, who presided over the Salem Witch Trials, would have been able to choke those words out, but the rest of us can send that message easily! We only have to notice how big a step we take out of our cultural frame when we step into trust-based leadership.
Trust-based leadership requires introspection, something most of us haven't practiced before.
Trust-based leadership is personal. As a trusting leader you tell yourself and your teammates "I don't have all the answers. I'm figuring out my job the same way everybody is. We'll all learn together." Introspection means looking inward and taking responsibility for the things we do and say, whether we're proud of them or not. Traditional leadership training has not emphasized self-reflection, and that's a pity. Self-reflection is a fantastic way to learn!
The costs of fear-based management can be hard to spot and hard to measure.
Fear in a workplace kills the culture and makes companies go bankrupt, but it isn't something that shows up on a balance sheet or an income statement, at least not right away. When fear grips a culture, the best people leave first, but the fear in the environment keeps the higher-ups from acknowledging that they have a problem. If they admitted they had a problem, they'd have to look in the mirror, and that's the one thing they can't do.
More people start to leave and it becomes harder to hire good people. Customers get the memo and leave for other vendors. The slow cycle downhill is an old and oft-repeated story. Nobody -- not even the Board members charged with keeping the company healthy -- tells the truth, and another firm bites the dust. Fear is a powerful silencer!
Fear-based management is fast, and businesses love speed
Once when I was 21, I went to my then-boyfriend's parents house to visit. As we entered the house, my boyfriend's dad was yelling at my boyfriend's younger sister, who was about seventeen. All of a sudden, the dad slapped the girl across the face. I remember standing stock still in shock as my boyfriend's sister ran out the front door.
I had not yet been introduced to the dad, who turned to me and said "You have a problem with corporal punishment?" I was frozen. I couldn't speak. "Well, it's expedient," he said, and walked out of the room. My boyfriend and I didn't stay long and thankfully the daughter got out of that house relatively soon after.
The abusive dad was right -- fear and control are expedient. That's one reason we don't question their value, even in 2016 when we should know better.
Fear makes people bend to our will and keeps us from looking more closely into problems that we don't care to examine. We can simply tell the people in our departments to shut up and do their work and delude ourselves that we are excellent managers. We can maintain the fiction that being the manager makes us right, automatically. We can pretend that we have nothing to learn from our teammates. We can convince ourselves that as long as we churn out the work on schedule, we have nothing to worry about.
Our teammates know that's not true, and our bodies know it, too. We can pretend that managing through threats and punishments is appropriate in the new-millennium workplace. We can stick our fingers in our ears and take our leadership guidance from seventeenth-century zealots and say inane things like "As a manager, I'm tough but fair."
