Originally published at Forbes.com
Today, especially after the damage the pandemic has caused to the economy, some organizations are more focused on metrics than ever. Furthermore, and ironically, giving, receiving, and asking for feedback is rare and terrifying.
After all the furloughs and employee reductions, fear and disengagement have increased in the most affected industries and companies. Not only impacting the employees that left but also the ones that remain, the perception is that their job stability is on the line at every small mistake they make. This makes them feel more nervous, defensive and disengaged. Moreover, they are probably more focused on looking for other opportunities outside the company, or fiercely fighting for any opportunity in the current company, than performing as usual. In many cases, this fear could even become a self-fulfilled prophecy, where the employee is so fearful and distracted that ends up not performing hence, being scrutinized even more.
While some companies could not have avoided personnel reduction, there are some strategies they can implement to reduce its effects on fear and disengagement with the current staff, to move from a culture of fear, shame and anxiety to a we culture focused on CARE: connection, attention, respect and empowerment.
Brené Brown, a shame researcher author of the book Daring Greatly, recommends four strategies for building shame-resilient organizations:
1) Support the leaders that are willing to facilitate honest conversations and help to find potential in people, not the ones that just prefer to blame or make people feel shame. Employees with shame, pass it to their customers, co-workers and families. Leaders are role models, and employees follow what they do, not what they say. To change a culture of fear, leaders are the first ones that don’t need to start a hunt because of an “audit finding”, but need to start a conversation. They need to accept that they are far from perfect, like everyone else, and that is OK.
2) Facilitating an effort to recognize where the organization is using blame or fear to solve problems. Innovation, learning, and creativity are not certain, therefore they are connected to the fear of failure. If failure is not embraced by the company culture or it is punished, someone must be found responsible when there is something wrong. So instead of focusing on solving the problem, the focus is on who is to blame. Here there is no room for innovation, learning and problem-solving. Therefore, disengagement and poor performance are the first symptoms. People stop caring because they feel hurt and vulnerable, wondering if they will be the next who fails.
3) Normalizing errors, fear, or failure by talking about them, bringing them on during one-on-one sessions, courses, or coaching sessions. Identifying what you know, admitting you have a problem, and making a list of things you don’t know or need to be fixed. Finally, engaging your team in finding the right problems and the right opportunities for improvement.
As Brené Brown, puts it “We can’t eliminate fear from our lives, but we can definitely get to the point where our fears do not stop us from daring to think new thoughts, try new things, take risks, fail, start again, and be happy.”
4) Training all employees on the difference between guilt (You did something bad) vs shame (you are bad). Shame causes disengagement, guilt is more positive, as you have the feeling that you can still learn and improve. Everyone should be trained on how to give and receive feedback so that it is more constructive than destructive.
The first step to build a fear-free environment is to see mistakes as opportunities for improvement. You can see mistakes and ideas as problems you fear, or you can see them as opportunities, accept them, and learn from them. There will be there anyway, so it is all about how to deal with them. Frederic Laloux, author of Reinventing organizations says “What replaces fear? A capacity to trust the abundance of life. We come to believe that even if something unexpected happens or if we make mistakes, things will turn out all right, and when they don’t, life will have given us an opportunity to learn and grow”.
