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How Fear Can Block People’s Motivation
Fear is a major cause of business problems and managers must be able to recognise and manage fear in themselves and in their teams. The fear of managing others can be alleviated by timely management training for the manager but it helps to have a good understanding of how fear can lead to problems and what the manager can do to alleviate these issues.
Unknown fears in people are the cause of many internal company problems. These can include:
- Unclear goals
- Endless discussions
- Broken promises
- Pressure and resignation
- Resistance and cowardice
- Inter-departmental fighting
- Flimsy decisions
- Problems of acceptance
Fear is a feeling that grows primarily out of incorrect self-assessment. An individual may feel that a particular task, new challenge or a certain situation, such as a meeting with their line manager, is threatening. They believe that they are unable to deal with the situation and as a result behave unreasonably and may react excessively. This behaviour is called by psychologists ‘overshooting’ or ‘over-compensatory’ behaviour.
When people feel anxious they also feel inferior and this can make them dangerous. They constantly try to compensate for their feeling of inferiority and self-doubt by attacking or belittling others, including their superiors and colleagues.
Conflict management training teaches that if people work in a relaxed atmosphere they tend to feel more equal and so have a sense of affiliation to the company. They are more likely to react reasonably to requests from superiors and work colleagues.Therefore, if you succeed in removing a person’s fear, they will start to lose their aggressiveness and feel more motivated to pull together with you and their colleagues.
To reduce fear you need to understand how a sense of inferiority and fear arise in the first place. Alfred Adler, a famous psychologist, said, “Being human means feeling inferior.” Every human being was once a child, and as a child every human being is small, helpless and physically at the mercy of their environment. If we look at the behaviour of aggressive people compared to the behaviour of young children, you can see some interesting similarities. The former Chrysler Managing Director Lee Lacocca once said “If you imagine ten boys in pinstripe suits in kindergarten playing with building bricks, you have a rough picture of what it’s like in a large company.” He then continued, “Grown men in a meeting are capable of doing anything to avoid attracting any unwanted attention to themselves. If someone doesn’t have the facts to hand for a certain subject, they will just spout drivel as they are afraid to admit they do not know or appear less clever than the others.”
Having a sense of inferiority is, therefore, in no way exceptional, but is simply part of the human make-up just as hunger and thirst are. The exceptional thing is how some individuals deal with their feelings of inferiority. It is a sad fact of our time that an increasingly large number of people behave in an over-compensatory manner because never before has the framework of our working life changed so quickly and the time pressures been so great. In many people the modern way of life generates the feeling of no longer being able to keep up and accomplish the essentials. When changes in the working world are taking place faster than our emotions can digest we almost inevitably develop the feeling that we are constantly lagging behind developments or are being steamrollered by events. This results in fear, which insidiously eats away at our courage and motivation.
Denial is, unfortunately, symptomatic of such fear. Denial can be expressed in high levels of sick leave and the avoidance of competitive situations. To remove this fear, you must constantly inform your staff about decisions and developments that directly affect them. It is also important that you give feedback that indicates whether they are on the right track or not. Conflict management training thus shows managers and supervisors that the main way of reducing fear in others is by being open and honest with them.
