As I See It: A Lot to Fear and Fear Itself

by Victor Rozek

My job was my protection. It was the answer to the question by which others judged me: "What do you do?" Those without an answer were, I knew, vulnerable to any number of calamities. As columnist Bob Herbert recently wrote, "For most Americans, the job is the thing. It's not just a pathway to a better life, it's also a shield against all kinds of disasters, from plummeting self-esteem to family breakup to homelessness." I didn't have to be homeless to be fearful of being discarded. The world is inhospitable toward those of uncertain identity and no means of support.

Alfred Hitchcock was right when he said there is more terror in the anticipation than the bang. Everyone around me was infected with the same apprehension. We were survivors competing for a limited number of lifeboat seats. Forget teamwork and cooperation; they were yesterday's virtues, distant and abstract. Drowning people want to survive at any cost. We all wanted to believe we were the indispensable ones, yet on some level we knew the decisions governing our fates had already been made. Having little reliable information to guide us, all we could do was eye each other jealously and hope the next layoff bullet didn't have our name on it.

Much later I realized that fear, rather than serving as a universal motivator during times of economic uncertainty, frequently has the opposite effect. The steps taken to lighten the lifeboat immobilize the drowning as well as the survivors. It isn't the fear itself but the paralysis it produces. As fear and anxiety increase, we tend to draw inward, communicate less clearly and completely, and become less able to do our jobs.

Worry requires fuel, and it syphons energy from work. I can remember people with illness in the family obsessing about losing their medical insurance. The rest of us had mortgages to pay, car payments, college tuitions, consumer debt. We wasted many hours computing how far our savings could be stretched against the persistent demands of our monthly obligations. Even moderate lifestyles have financial obligations, which require a predictable income, and losing a job seldom allows disengaging from those obligations. So we went through the motions, hid our private torments, and embellished our résumés. It was an outcome that benefited neither us nor the company.

For many IT professionals, these are again anxious times. Recession and wide-spread layoffs by themselves produce enormous workplace anxiety. But even those who are securely employed have reason to wonder about the safety of their pension funds or whether their trusted employer may be hiding some terminal accounting irregularities.

A Time magazine cover story last month warned working professionals, "You're on your own." Its candid analysis concluded that "shady ethics and deceptions...have become pervasive" and that "many of the professionals on whom we would like to rely for guidance are proving untrustworthy and even corrupt."

Because the regulatory restraints that once safeguarded employee interests have been lobbied away, most analysts agree that there are very likely more Enrons out there. And whether acknowledged or repressed, the suspicion that no one is really minding the store has created widespread apprehension.

Working with an undercurrent of fear can be deadly for morale and productivity. But employers can take steps to alleviate the fear, and employees can better manage their response to it.

Management's task is to adopt one of Edwards Deming's celebrated 14 points: Drive out fear. Although fear has temporary motivational value, it primarily spurs people to avoid mistakes, rather than to excel. As such, it is limiting, adversarial, and inherently oppressive. And if business is already slow, employers need their employees to excel, not to cringe.

The two great sources of fear that management must address are ignorance and exclusion. Far from being blissful, keeping employees ignorant invites suspicion and rumor. It shows a lack of trust and is employed as a strategy to control people. Information is indeed power, and withholding it is a sign of deception and manipulation. When information is withheld as a matter of policy rather than necessity, such policies should be examined and dismantled. However unpleasant the truth, history repeatedly shows that full disclosure is a lot less painful on the front end.

Given the recent Enron debacle, a good place to strike a blow for disclosure is to provide a forum in which employees can question management about administrative practices governing their 401(k)s. The total lack of employee participation in such decisions illustrates the costs and dangers of exclusion.

Exclusion creates separation, which is also one of the consequences of keeping people ignorant. Employees who feel excluded eventually bond together and develop an adversarial relationship toward their company. They feel disrespected, not valued, and out of the loop. The long-term consequence of being left out is that a portion of the workforce will view themselves as second-class citizens. And if no one cares about them, why should they care? Feeling wronged, people will seek some private form of redress, and it may manifest in damaging ways, such as employee theft, excessive absenteeism, or simply not giving full effort.

Although employees can not be included in every management decision, where appropriate, the free and generous flow of information and the opportunity to provide input to decision-makers creates inclusion, common purpose, and shared accountability for outcomes.

Handled creatively and respectfully, even layoffs can provide an opportunity for inclusion. Separating from a company need not be adversarial and secretive. I once read about a CEO who, when forced to terminate a percentage of his workforce, gathered as many employees as he could, apologized for his and his management team's failure to safeguard full employment, and announced an event to honor the contributions of those people he was forced to let go. The entire company was given ample warning of the impending layoff and the opportunity for closure. Employees were applauded when they left, not bundled off by security like thieves in the night.

Slaying the dragons of ignorance and exclusion will require a firm commitment to telling the truth. In our current business culture, speaking the truth is obviously not regarded as universally desirable. We even have a special name for those who tell the hard truth: We call them whistle blowers. Generally, spin is more highly regarded than truth, but spin is simply a sophisticated form of deceit. Examine the root cause of distrust, and you will invariably find that someone is not telling the truth.

The somnolence that lying produces is addictive, but ultimately, like all addictions, it creates only an illusionary short-term gain at the price of long-term discomfort brought on by fear of discovery and the need to constantly manage the fiction. The most respectful thing a company can do is to tell its employees the truth. If it fears doing so, that itself is reason enough for profound self-examination.

For employees working in times of uncertainty, it is worthwhile to examine the same question I asked myself years ago: "Who am I without my job and my income?" The answer, which I understood only much later, is that I am not my job. My job is what I do, not who I am. The income my work generates represents an investment of life energy. Once I got over the initial shock of losing my job, I discovered there are many other worthy ways to invest that energy. As I opened to the possibilities, the fear dissipated and was replaced by excitement.

It's a curious thing, but physiologically there is virtually no difference between fear and excitement. The body's reaction is nearly identical. Over time, I've come to appreciate the wisdom of the body and now experience fear as excitement without the breath. So when all else fails, I remind myself to just keep breathing.