Does Fear Really Work?

The owner of a small print shop had six pretty happy employees and a thriving little business. As things got busier, the owner brought his wife in to help run things. She was a bit of a tyrant, and was a fan of the good cop, bad cop approach to management. She was the bad cop.

As the work environment deteriorated, several of the employees quit. The remaining employees were unhappy, and one expressed concern to the bad cop, saying that everyone was afraid to make a mistake, afraid to try anything new, afraid for their jobs. Her response was that "fear works for me," she was OK with having fearful employees; that was part of her strategy, her management philosophy.

Within months, all of the previous employees had left. Within a year, the company had folded. The bad cop manager, to this day, still laments the difficulty of "finding and keeping good employees."

Does management by fear really work for you?