We Treat Our People Like Family

Is there fear in your organization? Are your people scared to speak up, to be open, to volunteer information, to risk? Are your people off-balance, concerned about their performance, and scared that they might be replaced, or let go?

A phrase I heard from five different managers this week is "We treat our people like family", accompanied by lists of all the good things they do, like their companies' open door policies, fun work environment, 360 reviews, training programs, performance management process, benefits, bonuses and incentives. I can only think of one manager in my experience who readily, publicly admitted that he wanted his people to be constantly scared, to realize that unless they performed, they would be replaced. He was a mean man, who I believe enjoyed the fear in his underlings. He is the exception. Most of the leaders and managers I've worked with feel a little offended at any suggestion that their people might be scared - leaders want to be liked, managers want to believe that their people can speak freely and trust them.

In Out of the Crisis, W. Edwards Deming spoke repeatedly about the need to "drive out fear, so everyone can work effectively for the company." Ryan and Oestreich speak of building high-trust organizations instead of high-fear organizations in Driving Fear Out of the Workplace. And, though twice as long as it needed to be, Steven Covey's The Speed of Trust makes a compelling case for how trust, and lack of fear, contributes to the bottom-line.

Now all of the five managers I heard from this week are very nice, very accomplished people. They work hard to blend a clear vision with compassion and polite kindness. But still, from discussions with people in their organizations, it is clear that their employees feel fear. The fear isn't about whether the manager is nice or mean; it generally isn't a personal fear at all; it is fear that's built into the structure of their companies.

I don't know about your family, but mine seems very different from the way these companies are run. It doesn't seem to go over very well when I give my wife a performance review. She doesn't seem to appreciate it when I let her know how she compares to other women I see on TV. Similarly, when I make my kids compete for parental affection, and promise to withhold love from the one that gets the poorest marks in school, it doesn't seem to promote the free exchange of mutual support and encouragement that I'm hoping for.

We don't (or shouldn't) do this stuff in our families. We shouldn't do it at work.

At work, we rank our people and compare them to each other. We hold people accountable for the randomness and results of our systems. We use carrots and sticks that trivialize their efforts and take away the inherent joy that comes from doing good work. We set targets that are outside the capacity of our systems, and blame people when they don't achieve it. We believe that someone who is totally dependent on us for reward and promotion will be able to give us open, honest feedback. We set up competitions between our people, then wonder why they don't work together.

We don't do any of this because we are mean people, and most of us try to very nice and respectful when we do these things. That's not the point. It is not that we are mean people who are trying to induce disabling fear in our people, it is that we are nice people using management tools that inherently produce disabling fear.

There are better ways.