Email: Fear can stunt your career and personal development
I received the following email in my inbox this morning. It’s an interesting article, so I copy-pasted it here, as is, with no alterations.
Fear can stunt your career and personal development
By Anderea Morara
Where things are uncertain, employees may be fearful about a number of things. Some will be worried about losing jobs, getting demoted, not being promoted or simply not getting along with colleagues.
One of the most common manifestations of fear is people’s reluctance to voice their opinion on anything.
They just want to conform to whatever the “official” opinion is. This kind of behaviour is usually the norm in authoritarian or dictatorial states and organisations. However, democratisation is now permeating both Government and non-state organisations and becoming standard practice, and thus there are hardly any substantive autocratic managements.
In a scenario where one cannot voice their opinion; employees are averse to making any move on their own. In other words, employees will not take initiative. They will hang around like zombies until someone in authority tells them what to do, and even how to do it.
The other characteristic of people in this kind of situation is their fear to disagree with anything that they are asked to do by their superiors – even when it is abhorrent to their values and morals. They can even commit crime at the behest of management.
In true autocracies, due to the intricacies of the pecking order, even supervisors have to “read between the lines”. Almost everyone in this kind of work environment tends to mask their true feelings. This is all because of feeling insecure.
However, in modern times, the feeling of insecurity in the workplace is often exaggerated. It could be true in a number of organisations that the CEO and his top lieutenants are autocratic, but often times, the fear is a function of the victim’s background rather than the present workplace.
David had been already fired from two jobs, despite his star performance at college. While on his third job, the manager, a former high school teacher and career master, noted the inconsistency between David’s college grades and his performance. He called the college where David trained, booked an appointment and went and verified his academic credentials.
INITIATIVE
Next, he called his previous supervisor, who described David as “a person who neither showed initiative nor the ability to make up his mind.”
Nevertheless, in his own assessment, the manager reckoned that David could do much better if offered the appropriate guidance.
He called David to his office and praised him for his extraordinary performance at college and promised to assist him achieve good performance at his new job. He assured him of support and pointed out that all the great achievers had made many mistakes in their journey to success. He then gave him a specific assignment and asked him to figure out how to do it and provide him with the solution in three days. “I do not expect a perfect solution; but let’s see what contribution you can make,” the manager told him as he patted him on the shoulders reassuringly.
For the first time in his working life, David felt challenged to deliver at his own terms.
PERFECTION
The fact that the manager was prepared to accept a less than perfect solution gave him assurance that he would not be blamed if anything went wrong; but this edged him on to give his very best. He just did not want to disappoint this manager. His mind frame had changed from the fear to be wrong to the desire to make a difference.
David is now a valued senior executive at the company. This is because he was able to remove the spectre of fear from his work. Fearful people often lack initiative and are less efficient and therefore less productive. They frequently spend too much time worrying about what their superiors or colleagues might think of them and fail to spend enough time in thinking through and performing their jobs.
Managers generally do not deliberately set out to frighten their employees. Sometimes, however, some managers unwittingly scare their staff out of their wits – and occasionally impair their subordinates’ confidence enduringly. This is what happened at David’s first job. The manager, a hefty expatriate, shouted at him with expletives, embarrassing him in front of his colleagues and consequently undermining his self-respect for asking if the procedure for producing a 500-gramme loaf of bread could be shortened.
Good managers, as any smart leaders, should always encourage opportunities for continual improvement, even when staff suggestions may allude to the fact that their own thinking is less than perfect.
If you are a captive of fear, you must seek to overcome it – whether it originates from your home background, school or your initial work place – for it will set undue limits to your career and personal development.
The writer is the Executive Director of Capacity Development Africa Ltd. cdasedic@africaonline.co.ke
Tags: employee, employer, fear, motivation, overcoming, self-confidence, shyness, workplace