EP 85: The Fear And Work Show

Speaker A: Welcome to the Bad Boss Brief. I am Stephanie PIEROLO.

Speaker B: And I'm Ugs Robinson.

Speaker A: And we are at episode 85, and we are calling this one the Fear and Work Show.

Speaker B: Scary.

Speaker A: Well, and I want to talk about fear because it's something that I see a lot in my work as an executive coach and working with teams and team coaching. And it usually is something that goes under the radar, right? Like, uh, we see anger, we see ego, we see controlling behavior. But underneath so many of those is just plain old fear. And so we want to talk about today is fear at work. Kind of how to navigate your own fears and then how to recognize and navigate the fears that come up in. In the people around you. Do you have any, like, good fear stories to get you started? Okay, tell me.

Speaker B: I mean, the reality of it is I've lived my life as a constant and continual mon monument to stand against any fears. I. I do not. I do not like. And this is time immemorial. Even as a kid, I didn't like seeing people motivated by fear. I didn't like being motivated by fear. And I have steadfastly, you know, in every single interaction from pretty much the time of my earliest memory, have stood steadfast against having fear, being a motivator, while at the same time being motivated by fear, if m that makes any sense. So, um, I, you know, from martial arts to, you know, being smart and forthright and to handling your business the way it needs to, I mean, each and every situation in which others in a workplace situation have succumbed to fear. I felt like I had. Someone had to be a standard bearer for a certain type of fearlessness. And, you know, it's all academic. At a certain point, your boss calls you in the office, we're getting fired. We're not getting fired. We're not getting fired. Got to get back to work, you know? And, uh, I mean, I remember at one point getting crossing swords, being at loggerheads with somebody who was on a dotted line with me and, uh, had a bigger staff and was like, go home. You're making me look bad here. You're working on Christmas Eve. I go, I have a smaller magazine. I've got to stay here. I've got to do it. He's like, I'm telling you to go home. I said, I got to finish this magazine. He goes, go home. I go, are you going to beat me up? I had to ask him. I'm not. You know, your concerns about your magazine have nothing to do with me. So it's been Irksome. And I thought the most amusing thing was one of my references got called by a job that I later got, and I said, what kind of management style works best for Eugene? And he thought for a second, he goes, a creative one. Yeah. Um, so that's how I've dealt with fear in the workplace. But I do not. I don't believe it's only mildly healthily, motivating, but generally I find it to be destructive and not very useful.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And I want to look at. I want to start by looking at fear individually. Like, if you are listening to this and you are a person who carries fear and anxiety with you at work, let's start with that. Then we'll go to. What do you do if you're working with people who are afraid? So the first thing I think is important to do is to reframe what fear looks like and what the opposite of fear is. Right. So people often talk about courage, and courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is feeling fear and doing it anyway.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker A: And that is a sort of, like, fortune cookie type of, uh, notion. But I found it to be very true. Like, I've mentioned this before, but when I do, um, trainings to teach people how to do public speaking and presentations, people often say to me, well, it's easy for you because you do a lot of public speaking and you don't ever get nervous. And I'm like, that is absolutely false. I have puked in multiple green rooms from anxiety and nerves. I just know how to manage it. Right. And, um. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker B: I'm sorry. It was funny. I found, because I'm unpacking still, because of the Spain thing, I found some home video, uh, that my, um, clearly my grandmother had made from 1966. Ah. Which means I was four years old. And I looked at the video and I flashed on something. When you're an only child, as I was in 1966, you were the entertainer. This is like. There was no Internet. Then I was like, so you. Like six minutes of me entertaining the entire room and I go, that's. Yeah, yeah. So I, uh. I'm okay with crowds.

Speaker A: Right. But it's. But recognizing that, you know, the assumption is that because I stand up on stage and talk to people, sometimes large audiences, that I have no fear around it or no anxiety. That is, again, you know, somebody looking at my outsides and making assumptions about what's happening internally and then judging themselves. Right. So just because you're afraid does not mean that you can't do. I mean, I fly all over the world in airplanes. I am terrified of flying. Now, I will confess that, that at this point, I do sometimes have a pharmacological advantage because I'm not trying to have a straight up panic attack. And, uh, so there is that. But just recognizing that, like, uh, being afraid doesn't mean you can't do something or that you can't do it skillfully. You just have to sort of practice, Right. The other thing is, say again?

Speaker B: Manage it.

Speaker A: Yeah, manage it and then plan for it.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: So, like, if I am going to. If I have to fly somewhere for a business meeting, I always fly in the night before in case I do have to take medication for anxiety because I'm not trying to show up at a client's office, you know, like medicated. So I always come in the night before. Um, you know, you just. You plan for certain things the way you plan for certain things. If you have a physical liability or, you know, some other sort of limitation, you. You plan. So that's one thing. I think one of the things that I find gets people is they are afraid, and they don't understand that they're afraid. And so what I suggest sometimes to people is really try to understand what are you afraid of? What is presenting as resentment or anger or even sometimes overweening. Ambition can actually be a kind of fear. And you can't really fix the surface level until you've looked at some of the underlying issues. And again, I'm not a therapist, but I find for myself what's useful is to be clear about what am I afraid of and where do those fears show up?

Speaker B: Well, you're talking about subtle, nuanced things, uh, I'm guessing, versus what some of us on this call have experienced. Throwing, screaming, cursing in the form of convicted, uh, felon Carlos Watson, who we both worked for for a period of time. And those would make the average person, or even the above average person, fearful of their workplace lives. And indeed, a lot of people who work with us at Oz ended up having to seek therapy as a result of their time at Ozzy. So I'm assuming that you're talking about internal fears about things versus the very real external fears that might come from a convicted ex felon like Carlos Watson.

Speaker A: Yeah, and that's a great. And that's a great sort of caveat and reminder. If you are afraid at work because you are being abused, sexually harassed, bullied, tormented, whatever it is, you are having a reaction that is meant to protect you, and it is vital information. Right? It is Vital information, get the heck out of Dodge. So that's a really, you know, if you're having that sort of, you, uh, know, someone's screaming and yelling at me, someone is, is, you know, bullying me or sexually harassing me. If you are afraid of going to work, that is a sign that you should try to get the heck out and, and ideally get an employment attorney.

Speaker B: Yeah. I remember at one point he and I had a conversation and I said, you do realize that I come to work every day wanting to kill you? He said, he goes, that can't be good for you or me. And we both kind of laughed it off. But I was very serious. Of course, at the time, he was a terrible, terrible boss. Um, but I did have a boss that was terrible to everybody else, but was wonderful to me. And given my penchant for disliking fear, um, I wanted to dislike him for it. But there was a morbid fascination because I couldn't figure out why he was nice to me but terrible to everybody else. And it was still, it's been an incredible riddle to me. And the best I could do in that situation in terms of mitigating it was just to be kind of a helpful bystander. And I don't know that, ah, I wasn't really in a position to correct his behavior. Um, but it was a weird situation and he was an interesting guy. He got an executive coach, a board of directors forced him to have one, and they told him something interesting. They said, anytime you get angry and you want to throw something or hit somebody, God forbid, stand up and just go look out the window and count to 10. So then it became this weird performative thing where he would do that. And it was equally terrifying for everybody who worked for, um, him outside of me, who knew what was happening. So strange time.

Speaker A: Well, but let's. So let's just look at for a minute again, now that we've established we're not talking about abuse at work, right?

Speaker B: Yes. Correct.

Speaker A: One of the things that happens in. When you go through the 12 steps in a 12 step program, there is a step called 4, which is an inventory step. And part of the inventory step is to write down everything you're afraid of without judgment. Right. Spiders, clowns, you know, being a bag lady, like whatever it may be, right. To write it down. Just, you're doing an inventory, you just write it down. And what I think is useful about that exercise is it brings to the forefront some things that are, um, hidden. And it also reveals some of the, uh, kind of Just oddness about fears. Right. Like, so I am afraid of rodents. If a mouse or a rat crosses my path, I am known to scream. What about squirrels? Squirrels, I'm fine with. Snakes, I'm fine with. Spiders, I'm fine with. Right. There's something about rodents that just. It's not rational at all. Right. And so when other people have irrational fears, I can relate to them. Right. So I have an old friend who is so afraid of tent caterpillars. You know, the ones that get in those big. Yeah. She's so afraid of them, as if there is a tent caterpillar in my yard, she would not be able to enter my yard or my home.

Speaker B: Is this long standing or long standing

Speaker A: since she was in shock. Right. And so, you know, people have so one, we all have weird stuff. The other thing is to recognize some of our fears. So, for example, I have a fear of financial insecurity that happens so often. I use it acronym fofi. And, uh, I realize that because I have that fear of financial insecurity, which I came by honestly. We've talked before about periods of our lives where we were broke. I recognize that when I have to make a decision about finances, I need to get some help because I don't have clear thinking. Right, right. And so the way that this works for me is, again, I understand what to prepare for. I, rather than kind of, you know, despising people for having fear or not wanting to engage with it, for me, it actually is kind of a bridge to compassion because, you know, if I have a fear of financial insecurity, what do they have a fear of? Right. And so I took a note of, um, what I see as the most common fears at work. And again, a reminder, this comes out of my brain and my experience. Not a large language model. This is not an AI generated list. So it is idiosyncratic and not comprehensive, but hopefully helpful. Um, and, you know, it will be showing up in some AI soon, now that I put it out in the world. So here are the most common fears that I see at work. So the first is a status fear. I'm going to lose my job, I'm going to lose my status. I'm not going to be as important. I'm not going to have these kind of key relationships that define my sense of value with the work. The next one is a security fear. So these are people who are very invested in security. I want to keep my job, to keep my benefits. I need to see my career path, promotions, opportunities for the future, whether it's financial or career. And then there's, there are people who have what I call attack fears. Right. Like, and these obviously can overlap, but I'm talking about like kind of a primary motivator. And to me the attack fear is somebody's out to get me, you want to humiliate me, denigrate me, I'm going to be bullied. Often that happens because people have had that experience before. Correct. But they take that trauma or difficulty, sometimes unprocessed, and put it on to somebody else. And so if you have those fears or you are working with somebody who's acting a little weird, they might have those fears. What do you think of my Stephanie Pierollo generated list of fears, status fears, security fears and attack fears? Did I miss any big.

Speaker B: No, no. I think those are generalized wor. Work fears. Um, but, um, yeah, I mean, I think those are in my experience in Silicon Valley, you know, 30 plus years. Those are the, those, those are the major touchstones. I mean, because you have people at various points in their lives, in their 30s, married, I remember when they killed Corporate Computing magazine, how much of the room had burst into tears because they had either just put a down payment on a house or a car. So these are, you know, they, they weren't crying for a loss of a job, they were crying for, you know, the stabilization of what they called their lives. Um, and my, my, you know, as a guy who used to live in a van, my heart in a shed and ate dead grass, you know, would have dead grass to eat. Um, you know, I was uh, quite comfortable with downward mobility, you know, so it never, it never, it never hit me. I always knew I could go back to the streets. You know, it never hit me in the same way. But I think, I think generally those are, those were, those are. You hit the mainstays so.

Speaker A: Well, and it's, and these are all really valid fears. I mean.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, you know, like you need your paycheck. Most of us need our paycheck. We are, you know, live in a country in the United States where there's no guaranteed basic income, health cares even. It's, these are real fears. I'm not in any way like denigrating them. What. Let me give you an example of why it's useful to be able to understand this. Right. So people with status fears tend to get very territorial.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And one of the dynamics that I've seen in team coaching and working with groups and teams is a dynamic where someone who has a status fear, who isn't necessarily. The boss maintains their status by holding on to information. Correct. So there are lots of organizations that lack transparency. The leaders are not clear about what's happening. And, you know, you've probably. We've all worked in them. There's a lot of gossip who's going to be laid off? Are we going to get acquired? What's happening? And these people will use their fear of status diminution to hoard information, and they'll use it like currency. And it can be very effective to build personal power, but it can be super destructive in a group or in an organization.

Speaker B: I've seen. I had the occasion of working with somebody who came from a very large company to a very small company, and they were trying very specifically to do that kind of gamesmanship. And that might work in a company where you have 200 direct reports, but in a company where you have like five, it was absolutely a failure. And, uh, she was soon separated from the company. So it's interesting what works one place and doesn't work other places. Uh, um. It was nettlesome. It was nettlesome because you could just see it was never gonna work. And it was not working. It just was sort of embarrassing. So.

Speaker A: But if you, if, if I was to manage a person like that. Right. And I have coached people like that, I will name it to them. Yeah, right. That, like, I, uh, you know, is this why you're doing this? And then, you know, if they're like, yeah, it is. I'll talk to them about how that ultimately is not benefiting their brand. Right. It is not building their reputation. It is actually potentially damaging to them. So it can be a way, in another way, this idea, like some of the people who are afraid of security can become very afraid of making mistakes. Especially people who in the past have been shamed either by their family growing up or, you know, the culture in which they live or by previous bosses. A lot of bosses, and we've talked about this before, a lot of bosses managed by shame. But anybody that has a real fear of security, if there's a, like, should I take this risk? Should I try something new? Should I suggest a way to innovate? Oh, no, that's too risky. I might get in trouble. And what ends up happening is that individual does not grow in their career and the company does not benefit from what could be a valuable innovation moving forward. Why are you smiling?

Speaker B: I just, I just had an internal reaction and it's just, it's just inborn, internal, uh, completely involuntary when you use the phrase in trouble. And I just, I constitutionally, when I hear that like as an adult, I'm like, no, no, no, no, there's no such thing as in trouble with your. You, you got all the line as an adult because you know, kids, you know, I've got a kid in the house, I come home from school, so. And so got in trouble. In trouble. And that's a uh, concep you have to leave behind in your childhood. But adults carry it with them because we were children once too. So in a workplace. Oh, somebody got in trouble. Oh, I just hate the idea so much of adults getting in trouble really. Except unless you're Bill Gates. And then I enjoy it quite a lot.

Speaker A: Well, but, and again, I think this is interesting because you carry energy around the phrase in trouble.

Speaker B: Yeah, correct. Yeah.

Speaker A: But what can happen is someone who carries energy around the phrase in trouble if you know that about yourself and your boss sits you down and says, you know, in all the appropriate ways, I need to give you some feedback about ways in which you could have been more skillful in this interaction.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: That is her job as your boss. If you hear I am now in trouble and all that energy comes up.

Speaker B: No, you would have to use those words very specifically. Okay. You would have to say you're in trouble and then.

Speaker A: Yeah. Which should never happen because we're not. Yeah. We're not talking about children. But you understand what I mean. Right. I got, you know, it's because I think what I say to myself and to my clients is anytime someone has an emotional reaction that is completely out of proportion of the circumstances that are happening, something is going on. And I would say 70% of the time it's going to be one of these fears. Yep. Uh, right. And they have a reason for having it. Right. You just need to understand, oh, so this is not about what's happening here and now. And uh, figure out ways that just to acknowledge you don't necessarily have to over function for the person or be responsible for calming them down, but just sort of, sort of getting it. Right. And I think, you know, one of the things that will happen and again, looking at what is the ultimate impact on the team. Right. So if somebody is afraid of making a mistake, they're not going to try new things that could benefit the team. If someone's withholding information that's also going to be damaging to the team or to the group. With people who have attack fears, they will do one of two things. In my experience, they will completely withdraw. M. You know, I've been. I've had. So, you know, this. I'm imagining a scenario. A woman sits down in a large meeting and says, every single time I talk, this guy over here interrupts me, and this guy over here takes my ideas. So I'm, um, opting out. I'm just not gonna talk anymore because she's so tired of that gendered behavior and she's had it so often. Right. And that is something that happens as a very valid response to people who, for whatever reason, whatever marginalized community they're in, have been treated badly and at work. So they just opt out. The other thing that will happen is they become super sensitive. Uh, they see a slight where slights are not actually happening. And, you know, I can't speak to other people's experience, but I've noticed this. I've had so much gendered harassment, sexual harassment. I tend to see gender dynamics where they aren't always there. Right. And so I have to really stop myself, particularly if I'm working in a team situation, and be like, did this woman say that that man's behavior was gendered? Or am I putting that on there? Right. Which is what I'm talking about. Right. If I understand that I have an attack fear, based on my experience, it gives me that double beat of, let's check in with somebody. Let's figure it out. And again, you don't want people on your team or in your group who do not contribute their expertise and their abilities and their knowledge. Because all of these are essentially talking about, um, the ways in which groups can develop psychological safety. So if you have people who are operating from these fear places and being activated at work consistently, you probably do not have a workplace that has psychological safety.

Speaker B: Correct.

Speaker A: And, um, I don't think m. Most workplaces have psychological safety, although you can pay lots of consultants.

Speaker B: Well, they don't prioritize it. Right. At the end of the day, it's about the job getting done. But I think the job could get done more effectively if it were sort of focused on. But they do have these programs that you can go to. Right. To participate in. I mean, most standard workplaces I remember at this point do this, so.

Speaker A: Right. But I think some of it also, if you do, you know, if some of this resonates for you, some of it can just be something simple you can do as a co worker or manager. Right. A lot of times managers can just say, you know what I like, I like to see a, um, rough draft. I don't expect everything to be perfect. It's Fine. To make mistakes. They can name their own mistakes.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Totally screwed that one up. Made a mistake there. Like, it's. And moving on. So there are some ways in which you can sort of articulate these things.

Speaker B: Um, yeah. It's also too. I think that probably somewhere in some dark book of management theory, um, there are people who believe that fear is also a useful workplace motivator. And those people versus the ones who actually lose control are the studious use of fear. Those are the people who I kind of enjoy the least. Uh. Cause in my mind, we're all smart here. And you don't have to do that. You've chosen to do it, in my mind. Makes you kind of dangerous.

Speaker A: Uh, well, but that's an interesting. Because was it Machiavelli? I'd rather be feared than loved.

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: And for a lot of people, that is actually what's happening. And I think it is useful to acknowledge, like, particularly now in the political situation in the United States with this administration. It's like fear is the weapon. Right, Right. And fear and retaliation and that sort of like unpredictable chaos when everything is like, oh, you know, the bully in chief is activated and, you know, all those kinds of things.

Speaker B: However, what you're seeing is people get. They grow fatigued of fear. And, um, it's much you don't. People. I'm not knowing, too many people get fatigued of love, you know. Right. Fatigue. You get fatigued to fear. And, you know, that's why we have Bastille Day to be afraid. Right. So, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, but I think it's. I think that, you know, the idea that they're. I mean, my guess is most organizations would like to think that they are trying to create cyclones. Psychological safety. The majority of organizations that I have worked for have failed in that and are explicitly or implicitly just trying to have power.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: I mean, there was a lot of conversation in social media about an article last week, uh, in the New York Times where they did a study and they found that the main reason for back to work mandates where people need to be in the office full time. I'm not talking a couple days a week, but full time was just the boss's ego because the boss wants to, um, intimidate and influence in a negative way the people that are there. They want to be able to glare at them from their office and put their thumbs.

Speaker B: Put their thumbs on them. It's not about getting work done.

Speaker A: And that. That was it. And they had all this study and all this, you Know, uh, like backing to it. And it was so funny because I'm like. And yeah, I mean, and like, like is this, this is a shock to anybody? Like, did you really believe all of that foolishness? And so I guess that's what uh, realizing and naming. We work in a capitalist system and at least in my case, in a country and administration that is full of fear and corruption and there's a lot of bad things that are happening. And so I guess the idea is, my hope is to have a little bit of. If I can better understand the fear that I might be dealing with, I can deal with it more skillfully because all this stuff works at home and in your family and friendships as well as at work. And maybe I can use that as a bridge to have some compassion for a difficult co worker. Like the smile that's on Eugene's face right now. Like

Speaker B: there is some, there's one of these shows which I never, I don't watch any like south park or Simpson. I don't watch any of these shows. Um, but there was a meme that somebody told me about, um, on one of those shows with a sports dad, you know, the kids are playing some kind of sport and there's always inevitably that one dad who shows up, he's got a shirt off and he's like saying like, you want a piece of me? You want a piece of me? And I find that my consistent attitude at ah, work has been to be that guy, you know, I mean, not outwardly, but in the back of my head, you know. Oh, can I talk to you for a second?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Want a piece of me? So any, any, this is my, this has been my response to fear in the workplace. In, in my head, just that guy without the shirt on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here, here I am. So when I hear about fear in the workplace, I like, I, I, I, I've done a tremendous job concealing that over the past 36 years. But that's always who I'm imagining I am in my head. So.

Speaker A: But again, we have to recognize, and I mean I too have a real, you know, second generation Italian attitude of like, come on, bring it.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: The problem is, is that I have, you know, I am pushing 6ft tall. I have this, I'm not gonna lay hands on anybody because I do not have a black belt in anything. But the idea of recognizing that we have physical power, you have a lot of physical strength and training. I have to also acknowledge that there are many, many people who don't like, who are not built for conflict, who maybe had pretty significant trauma or difficulties, and they're placed in workplaces. Again, we're not talking about overt bullying. And so for some people, they have to really navigate what do they do if they are conflict avoidant, if they shut down, if they perseverate, and again, if it's really a problem, see a therapist, talk to a counselor. Like, we're not trying to play in that arena, but, uh, I think just recognizing, like, you know, everybody's afraid of something, and how can we use that as a bridge for compassion for ourselves and for other people? And how can we. How can we sort of manage that?

Speaker B: Um, yep. And I think basically we share the same one. Financial insecurity. Always in my head.

Speaker A: Yeah, always.

Speaker B: Always, Always.

Speaker A: Yeah. And there's a couple other ones that we share as well, which I won't necessarily say. All right, I think that's all we've got time for. Uh, if you have anything you want us to talk about, any questions, advice, whatever. Wtfadbossbrief.com, wtf? Badboss brief.com I read every single one. Talk to you later. See you in a couple weeks.

Speaker B: Adios.

Speaker A: Uh, thanks for joining us for another episode of the Bad Boss Brief with Eugene S. Robinson and Stephanie Pierollo. You can find Stephanie on, um, substack@sprolo.substack.com and you can find Eugene on substack@eugenesrobinson.substack.com as well as over on Instagram @mrsleep3. That's the number three. If you've got a workplace question, situation or story you'd like us to discuss, send it to me, stephanie@wtfadbossbrief.com. be sure to join us every other Wednesday@ah, badbossbrief.substack.com for new episodes. Until next time, don't be an asshole at work. Thanks for listening.