When I was a kid, my brother was obsessed with Dune. Through conversations between my father and brother at the dinner table or by the fireplace, so many of the most iconic concepts of this epic were imprinted on my mind. I never managed to finish those books myself, but this phrase especially stuck — albeit probably not in the way it was intended.
“Fear is the mind killer.” — Frank Herbert, Dune
In the book, this phrase is used as a sort of mantra in stressful situations to calm the protagonist and gain a sort of acceptance of his mortality and death’s inevitability. It is used to move through fear, to quiet it, to transcend it — and for that end the phrase is very useful. But I often find myself using these words in a different way, especially as it pertains to work.
Throughout more than a decade and a half in various corporate environments, I’ve seen a great diversity of organizational structures and cultures. From the small, 2 person design studio I got my start in, to the help desk for a consumer packaged goods conglomerate, to a multi-billion dollar retailer, I saw some dramatically different examples of leadership. But one thread has run through all these experiences.
The purpose of fear
Fear is an emotion that is very important to just about every living thing. Most life, from the simplest single cells up to complex, sentient, multicellular mammals have some form of this response to stress. Even plants experience a version of this reaction to stimuli, firing off stress responses from the scent of grass to the distress signals released by acacia trees. But it has a very particular purpose. That purpose is to protect a life right here right now. To prevent immediate harm. In the short term, it is very good for this. But in the long-term, it is extremely counter-productive.
When we are afraid, we go into what is colloquially called “fight or flight” mode. Our amygdala takes over, firing off hormones and messages to the body to raise the heart rate, kill all unnecessary body processes, and hyper-focus on the clear and present danger. If there is no clear and present danger, the brain will invent one. You will freeze physically, mentally, emotionally. You may become irritable, agitated, aggressive, or recoil and become avoidant of what frightens you. Most importantly in the modern workplace, you will struggle to concentrate, become suspicious of your colleagues or direct reports, and your work will suffer.
Fear and panic make for bad decisions.
There are more studies than I could possibly cite for this next point. It is a hot topic right now with the rise of burnout and the impact of the traumas suffered by many throughout 2020. But anxiety and fear make for absolutely terrible decisions.
I have personally witnessed this countless times — a director pulling the plug on a promising project because he feared being outshined by the Project Manager leading the charge, an executive forcing her managers to hire unqualified candidates that would not be able or willing to challenge her, a talented, bright employee paralyzed by the trauma inflicted by past toxic work environments and made paranoid, suspicious of everyone’s intentions. The bullying, the scheming, the once-untouchable corporation laying off thousands of loyal employees at the slightest shrug of their profits, the culture of mistrust and disposability that many have been working under for decades, some their whole careers, all contribute to the fear and panic that dims so many bright minds.
The effects of fear on cognitive tasks are well studied. They’ve been detailed much better than my layman brain can lay out for you here. What is important to understand, the bottom line, is that it is an emotion whose entire purpose is to benefit the here and now at the expense of the future. Even physiologically, cortisol and other fear hormones lead to brain and heart damage over time. In terms of decision-making, if we are afraid we will almost invariably make decisions that benefit us right now — keep that other person from getting promoted over us at the expense of an initiative that could improve the company’s processes, placate the shady boss by agreeing to do things that are unethical or illegal, exposing the company to litigation or loss of reputation, or avoid receiving criticism that may improve our work.
Build a culture of forward thinkers
Only when we feel safe, secure, and relaxed can we really be at our best. Flow-state, the highly sought-after state of mind that creatives, construction workers, athletes, and housewives alike can find themselves in, mysteriously, unsure of how they arrived, is the state where we often find our best ideas. That feeling when your worries and concerns fall away, and you are dialed into what you are doing. The ideas are flowing, the task that seemed daunting a minute ago is as natural as breathing or your heart beating, and you wonder why you ever doubted yourself before.
But that state isn’t so mysterious if you think about it. You achieve that state when you are not distracted, internally or externally, when you’re relaxed, when you are rested. I used to work late a lot at one of my favorite jobs, happily buzzing along from 9 am until 9 or 10 pm, because with no one else in the office, I could turn up my favorite album, sing along, and work uninterrupted for hours. But it was only because the culture of my team, of my department, was one of hope, not fear, that I was able to do that. We were all rowing in the same direction, led by a supportive leader who trusted and believed in each of us to do what we were good at. This leader achieved the same organizational end of a company like Amazon, convincing hundreds of smart people to pour 60 or more hours of productive time into the company each week, but in a much more humane way. Today I still look back fondly on a time when I worked harder than I ever had before or since.
Lead by example
When I was leading a team of designers, I struggled with one of my first hires. She and I kept butting heads, I kept feeling a tension in our conversations, and we were caught in a bizarre and stressful cycle of one-upmanship. I found myself becoming distrusting of her, fearing her, even briefly hating her, since it felt like she was constantly bulldozing over everything I was trying to do. Then in a conversation about her past workplace it dawned on me — she and I had a very similar shared trauma. We were butting heads so much because we were both locked into our past toxic work environments. We were squaring off and fighting for survival every day in a coliseum of our own invention. When I realized this, suddenly I relaxed. I didn’t need to fear this brilliant, talented person, and she didn’t need to fear me. There was plenty of work to be done, plenty of opportunity for each of us to find our place and shine bright. We could focus our light, compounding it to illuminate our team, our organization, rather than worrying about which of us shined brighter.
I started talking openly with her about my feelings, had a few very, maybe dangerously frank discussions about behaviors we both were engaged in that weren’t serving the team or us personally, and we both were able to start putting our fears aside and focusing on the work that needed to get done. Once that internal distraction fell away from both of our minds, we entered a flow state like no other. She raced ahead, unleashed and with all that brain power unlocked, focused on building a design system and reinventing the entire technological ecosystem of the business instead of on whether the boss was going to replace her or I was going to punish her for being too good at what she did. The amount she got done in a couple of months supported by positive, honest, no bullshit and no fear leadership was more than I have seen any designer do in a full year under old guard management styles. Just being honest, empathetic, and tamping down my ego for a moment yielded stunning results.
So I challenge everyone, if you have read this little stream of consciousness and are even a little bit convinced, to lead the charge away from cultures of fear. When we cast aside that barbaric method of whipping our colleagues into shape and instead choose to empower, trust, and elevate each other, we will achieve great things without the trauma and stress that keeps us imprisoned in the present rather than marching toward a better future.
