Drive Out Fear
Leaders create a safe space for people to take risks such that their assumptions and convictions can be questioned and improved.
Safety Not Fear
Trust and cooperation flourish best in a climate of psychological safety. Only when the members of a group trust each other and feel safe enough to speak their minds openly and take risks can the whole become more than the sum of its parts (see Section “Diversity and Dissent”). Conversely, where competition and fear have been the dominant leitmotifs in the past, achieving adequate unity is impossible.
Organizations are full of contradictions. A fundamental one is that value creation in organizations always depends on cooperation, while the culture is usually geared towards competition. As a result, the desired fruitful cooperation decays into an envious, zero-sum game in which one person's gain is the other's loss.
This paradox can be seen in the example of the widespread concept of Management by Objectives. Peter Drucker, who was well aware of the damaging effects of fear and pressure, called it deliberately “Management by Objectives and Self-Control.”1 However, this method for managing knowledge workers, based on self-organization and leading at eye level as early as 1954, quickly deteriorated into dictating goals from above. This misinterpretation is exacerbated by financial incentives that are demonstrably not only ineffective but even counterproductive.2 The fear of missing the targets is an essential ingredient for a culture of antagonism and fear.
The constant fight for budget, headcount, position, influence, power, and prestige causes plenty of frustrating friction even in good times, but on the bottom line, it still works out somehow. In times of crisis, however, the full toxic effect of such a culture, based on competition and fear, unfolds. The threat to the organization from external circumstances (competitors, new business models, a pandemic, etc.) requires internal unity in the fight against it. However, those who do not trust the other department in good times cannot rely on trusting and unconditional cooperation in an emergency. This is why W. Edwards Deming explicitly mentions the reduction of fear as one of the 14 points in his management program:3
Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
Therefore, Roman emperor Caligula was wrong with his motto “oderint, dum metuant” (let them hate me as long as they fear me). Fortunately, such radical autocrats are no longer common in politics and business today. Nevertheless, fear, competition, and mistrust are deeply interwoven in the culture of many hierarchical organizations. This is why leadership needs to prevent unhealthy competition and instead ensure psychological safety, as Simon Sinek calls for:4
Leadership is the choice to serve others with or without a formal rank. (…) Leaders are the ones willing to look out for those to the left of them and those to the right of them.
“Leadership is a service and not a privilege” is how Father Anselm Grün sums it up in the same way as Simon Sinek, making a lasting impression on Bodo Janssen in a seminar.5 This service includes, in particular, creating a safe environment in which employees can develop without fear. Yet, this is only possible with the appropriate level of self-confidence. In this respect, Father Anselm Grün's second sentence, which greatly influenced Bodo Janssen at the time, also fits: “Only those who can lead themselves can lead others.”
Leading oneself begins with knowing oneself and accepting oneself in one's unique being. Unfortunately, many people increasingly feel that they are not enough. They constantly compare themselves and emulate other people or an abstract ideal image. The unique original that we all once were becomes a pale copy.
If people constantly feel insufficient, they seek confirmation and admiration from the outside. This is precisely why social media attracts people and reinforces the tendency to compare oneself with others. Leaders with such an inclination will keep employees small and dependent. Only those who have recognized and accepted their own unique and unadulterated nature can enviously and wholeheartedly develop the unique potential of the people entrusted to them and genuinely rejoice in their people's success.
In addition to this inner image of how we are and how we should be, we more or less unconsciously hold many other inner images. For example, we can see life as a struggle or a miracle. We can see our work as a hamster wheel and treadmill or as a workshop for flourishing life (see Section “People are at the Center”). We can see employees as lazy or motivated (see Section “Species-Appropriate Keeping of Knowledge Workers”). These inner images, created through upbringing and experience, determine how we interpret the world. Although they might be unconscious, they are still our choice.
Good leadership means approaching your work with hope and inspiring hope in people. To do this, our inner images, in particular, must speak a language of hope. Seeing life as a struggle, the company as a shark tank, and work as an unavoidable treadmill and annoying evil does not inspire much hope. On the other hand, seeing life as a miracle, the company as a place of human encounter, and work as an opportunity for individual development has much more potential for hope.
He Who Says A Does Not Have to Say B
When reality contradicts our beliefs and worldviews, we have manifold ways of resolving this painful dissonance. Astonishingly, most people tend to creatively reinterpret reality so that their perception of reality better conforms to their worldview. Of course, utilizing the contradictions as a source of insight and adapting your worldview and beliefs would be more helpful, especially for leaders.
At midnight on December 21, 1954, a devastating flood was supposed to wipe out all life on Earth. At least, that was the prophecy of Dorothy Martin from Chicago. She had received this warning from extraterrestrials with whom she claimed to be in telepathic contact. But there was also hope: the aliens, with their spaceships, were to rescue her and her small sect, the “Seekers.”
Fortunately for us non-believers, this highly improbable prophecy did not come true. Thanks to Leon Festinger, a 35-year-old psychologist at the University of Minnesota, the story doesn't end here but only becomes interesting afterward. He doubted that the world would end and wanted to investigate how the people in this sect would deal with the fact that no spaceships would come to save them. He, therefore, infiltrated the sect with his colleagues in the run-up to December 21, 1954.6
How did these people, some of whom had sold their homes and quit their jobs in the hope of imminent salvation from doom, cope with such dismay? Did they lose their faith and send Dorothy Martin packing? Far from it! After a brief moment of horror, the sect found a remarkable way out of their dilemma. They reinterpreted what had happened: Their unshakeable faith had saved the world from devastation and made a rescue by aliens unnecessary.
The sometimes completely irrational suppression and reinterpretation of incongruous facts and events is deeply human. When reality contradicts our convictions, we are capable of remarkable mental contortions. Leon Festinger called this phenomenon the “Theory of Cognitive Dissonance”.7 According to this theory, the dissonance between beliefs and reality causes an unpleasant tension that people try to resolve without giving up, questioning, or correcting their beliefs.
From a rational point of view, it would only be logical to follow Bertolt Brecht's advice: “He who says A does not have to say B. He can also recognize that A was wrong.”8 In practice, however, it is hard to recognize and admit that you were wrong. Humans prefer to stick steadfastly to their laboriously constructed, more or less skewed worldviews. Even more so when we have already invested substantial time and money into it. This cognitive distortion of sunk costs is well documented and regularly spirals into escalating obligations, whereby further investments are justified with the (sunk) ones already made.
Nevertheless, some people manage to detach from their cognitive dissonance in a way that promotes insight and personal growth. Like Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, they see the deviation of reality from their beliefs as a welcome opportunity to learn something new:9
I really enjoyed changing my mind because I enjoy being surprised and
I enjoy being surprised because I feel I'm learning something.
In the best empirical tradition, we must measure every theory against reality, and it is only valid as long as observations do not refute it. Shouldn't this scientific principle also apply to our worldviews and beliefs?
Leading means deciding, sometimes yourself or more and more often—in the sense of this Manifesto—by creating an environment in which proper decisions can be made (see Section “Context Not Control”). However, every decision is always fraught with uncertainty. If the next step is obvious or logically deducible, there is nothing to decide. Thus, leadership always runs the risk of making an erroneous decision.
Only the Pope is infallible, and even for that, Catholic theologians do not all agree. For everyone else, an actual decision under conditions of uncertainty is always a hypothesis about a hoped-for course and an expected outcome. A good decision must be falsifiable and must not become dogma.10 That is why a good decision requires measurable success criteria on the one hand and the humility to correct the course if it is not successful on the other.
This correction of the decision is also a decision that must also be made under uncertainty, and if you think too long, you will miss the right moment. Anyone who buys a share is betting on rising prices. That's the easy part. The art of intelligent investing begins with the exit, by realizing profits on the one hand—accompanied by the fear of missing out on an even greater profit—and consistently limiting losses on the other, for example, with a stop price of 10% below the entry price.
Too often, however, our decisions in a private and professional context are inalienable, and those of the boss are sacrosanct anyway. Once these decisions have been made, they seem to be without alternatives and are doomed to succeed. This success is then rationalized and glossed over in some way, which, of course, works all the better the fewer rigid criteria for success have been defined beforehand. More advanced players in the corporate theater change the criteria and the benchmark along the way.
“If you make a mistake and don't correct it, you will make a second one,” Confucius warned. This ability to question oneself, one's convictions, and decisions is crucial for leaders. Their worldviews are generally not purely private matters but affect and influence many other people. Good leadership knows how to balance between convincing visions and steadfastness in pursuing goals on the one hand and, on the other, the ability to humbly question one's vision, worldview, and decisions and correct or develop them accordingly.
In this sense, freely adapted from Reinhold Niebuhr: Give me the strength to stand my ground when I am right, the humility to admit mistakes when I am wrong, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Table of Contents
All links lead to the parts that are already published here on Substack.
The 14 Principles Behind the Manifesto
Safety Not Fear
He Who Says A Does Not Have to Say B
Integrity Over Charisma
Disturbing the Comfort Zone
Get to Work!
Leading by Example
Incitement to Rebellion
Set Priorities
Enduring Dissonance
Doing Your Best
The next chapter will follow next Friday. In case you want to read on as soon as possible, the book is available on Amazon in many countries as hardcover, paperback, and for your Kindle. (also on Leanpub). And all my German readers can get the German edition in every book store.
Peter F. Drucker and Joseph A. Maciariello, Management, Rev. ed (New York, NY: Collins, 2008), 258.
The German psychologist Karl Duncker described the candle problem in 1945. Probands were given a candle, a pack of tacks, and matches, and the task was to attach the candle to the wall so that no wax would drip onto the table. The solution requires cognitive abilities because one must overcome the so-called functional fixedness to recognize that the box could be more than just a container for the tacks. In 1962, Sam Glucksberg combined this experiment with financial incentives and found that this extrinsic motivation caused the probands to take an average of 3.5 minutes longer to solve the problem. (Sam Glucksberg, "The Influence of Strength of Drive on Functional Fixedness and Perceptual Recognition.," Journal of Experimental Psychology 63, no. 1 (January 1962): 36–41, https://doi.org/10.1037/h0044683.)
W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis (Cambridge, Mass: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1986), 23f.
Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't, 2017, 82.
Bodo Janssen, Die stille Revolution: Führen mit Sinn und Menschlichkeit, 7. Auflage (München: Ariston, 2016), 48.
Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1956).
Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univ. Press, 1957)
cited in Jan Knopf and Bertolt Brecht, eds., Brecht-Handbuch: in fünf Bänden. Bd. 1: Stücke, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2001), 251.
Adam Grant, "Daniel Kahneman Doesn't Trust Your Intuition," Taken for Granted, accessed March 25, 2022, https://www.ted.com/talks/taken_for_granted_daniel_kahneman_doesn_t_trust_your_intuition.
Karl Popper founded this scientific theory of critical rationalism, which he summarized in his work The Logic of Scientific Discovery as follows: “An empirical-scientific system must be able to fail because of experience.” (Popper, Karl Raimund. Logik der Forschung. 10., verb. und vermehrte Aufl. Die Einheit der Gesellschaftswissenschaften 4. Tübingen: J. Mohr, 1994, 17)