Students of the late W. Edwards Deming, the quality guru and management consultant will quickly recognize the phrase, “Drive Out Fear” as number 8 of his 14 points for achieving quality excellence.   Dr. Deming penned his points during a period in the twentieth century when the approach to leading in business was highly autocratic; a style that he believed inhibited organizational advancement around quality.  While prevailing leadership styles may have moderated a bit from the “command and control” approach so common a few decades ago, there is ample evidence that “fear” is still used liberally by organizations and small-minded managers to assert control and to drive compliance.

A few examples of Management by Fear:

  • There’s the manager that frequently and publicly drops hints in departmental meetings about the likelihood of layoffs and the expectation that he will have to let go 2 out of 10 on his team.   
  • One of my favorites: the General Manager who gets visibly angry every time one of his key subordinates submits a vacation request form.  According to one of his workers, “He clearly does not believe in vacations, and let’s us know that it will hurt our future opportunities if we insist on take time off from work.”
  • I blogged earlier this year about the manager who railed at his employees: “The only way you will be on my team is if you are married to the job.”  This same dipstick indicated what commitment means to him with: “The only way you will see me in a family vacation picture is with a blackberry stuck to my ear.” 
  • A colleague described the manager who expects 100% support of her ideas and policies.  Dissenters have an interesting habit of either being fired or relegated to corporate Siberia working alone on or on projects that no one else would touch.
  • One of my personal favorites is the manager that expects his co-workers to join him for drinks in the evening and rewards those who attend with the choice assignments and rides herd on those that refuse to worship his seat at the bar.
  • An adult student in one of my recent management classes indicated that it was common for employees to be publicly humiliated by the screaming, cursing, belittling boss that just so happened to be one of the children of the founder. 

Type the phrase “Workplace Bullying” into your favorite search engine, and you will be rewarded with a bevy of articles describing the growing awareness of this destructive behavior and its consequences for individuals, teams and organizations.  Many of these articles describe the problem as “epidemic” and a number of organizations are responding with training programs on “bullying” similar to those on sexual harassment.

Fear is a tool that leaders have used to rule and subjugate throughout all of recorded history.  Those with power use fear to gain compliance, to protect their position or to achieve their ends.  Instead of the local warlord or playground thug, today’s corporate bully is likely a well-dressed, articulate professional that puts on a good face for the higher-ups and a completely different face for direct reports.

Suggestions for Smoking Out the Bullies in Your Organization:

  • Make it a clear and visible practice to spend time talking with the team members of your direct reports.  While your intent should not be to spy on the managers that work for you, if you establish a decent rapport with the broader team members, you will be more apt to pick upon the signs that indicate a bully is at work. 
  • Create on-going review programs and survey process that gauge manager performance, work-environment satisfaction and that provide people with an opportunity to safely highlight concerns. 
  • Ensure that everyone understands that you have a zero-tolerance policy for bullying.  Live up to this policy when the occasion arises or it will be meaningless.
  • Be aware that most bullying is done quietly.  While it’s easy to recognize the boss that dresses down employees in public, you have to work harder to identify the quiet assassins in your workplace.
  • Make certain that your own behaviors don’t rationalize bullying to the bullies.  In many instances, the leaders frustrated with examples of heavy-handedness are themselves highly autocratic leaders that exhibit behavior that borders on bullying. 

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Spend some time to determine whether “fear” is a factor in your organization.  If people are in fear for their jobs or living in fear of falling under the wrath of a bully boss, they will not create, innovate or even execute their basic job functions in a quality manner.  While today’s corporate bully is not shaking down the other kids for lunch money, he or she is shaking them down and stripping away their self-esteem, their drive and their desire to help the organization succeed.  It’s time to hit back.