Driving Fear Out of the Workplace: Creating the High-Trust, High-Performance Organization

by Kathleen D. Ryan

Book Overview

Restore Creativity and Trust to Your Workplace
Much has changed since Driving Fear Out of the Workplace first made the undiscussable discussable back in 1991. Advances in technology, new employee/employer relations, and the corporate push to optimize intellectual capital have introduced a host of new workplace anxieties that, left unaddressed, can seriously inhibit individual performance and cripple a company's ability to compete. Which is why,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0787939684
• ISBN13: 9780787939687
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Excellent resource for OD, HR and all managers

This is one of my all-time favorite management/OD books. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in learning how to improve manager-employee relationships, trust, and communication in organizations. I think it should be on the bookshelf of every Organization Development specialist, Human Resource manager, executive coach, and leadership trainer. It contains useful, thoughtful, and often unique advice for managers, team members, trainers, and anyone else interested in reducing the climate of fear in their workplace. Some of the ideas translate well to personal and family relationships too.Fear is extremely damaging to organizations. It can harm trust, communication, quality, knowledge sharing, cooperation, innovation, retention, and overall organization effectiveness. Whether you are interested in improving morale, communication, and performance company-wide, or you just need to improve your relationship with one person, you'll find something useful here. This is not just the same old recycled advice you'll see in leadership books. Some of the ideas will be familiar to experienced people in the field, but the authors expand them and put them into a new perspective based on their work. They contribute many new ideas and examples that you won't find elsewhere. Portions of the book are particularly helpful for well-intentioned managers who just don't understand why people don't fully trust them. If you're not getting the level of communication, ideas, and candor needed to bring your organization to the next level, fear may be the problem. If you hear a manager say, "I don't know why they didn't tell me sooner," give him or her this book. Most of us don't realize all the little things we do to discourage good communication.My favorite concepts in this book include the cycle of mistrust and undiscussables. The cycle of mistrust provides a great understanding of how our perceptions and assumptions influence the behavior of other people. It's a great model for leadership, teambuilding and communication workshops. You'll be sure to recognize a few "undiscussables" in your own workplace. An undiscussable might be a sensitive issue that employees whisper about to one another, but not with those who might have the power to do something about it. It's just too risky to speak up. Management might not learn about it until they experience the shock of scathing comments in an anonymous employee survey, or they hear about it from someone in another company! You can prevent this from happening by driving fear out of the workplace and by creating an environment that makes it easier for people to speak up in the first place.

A vision for high-trust and high performance organization

"Our work on this topic has been inspired primarily by personal consulting experiences over many years...Ten years ago, these experiences confirmed the teachings of W.Edwards Deming and others involved with continuous quality improvement. Deming asserted in his fourteen obligations of managment that quality was impossible where people are afraid to tell the truth...Besides Dming, other voices strongly reinforce the need to understand the dynamics and effects of fear. Chris Argyris's extensive body of work clarifies how invisible and self-reinforcing miscommunication due to fear can be. Peter Senge's explorations of systems thinking illuminate its far-reaching effects. Both of these thinkers underscore the need to understand the negative assumptions about people that keep fear in place. Peter Block's works on empowerment and stewardship demand a wholesale rethinking of the concepts of management and leadership as a way to escape thses destructive beliefs. Most recently, Thomas Stewart's examination of the rapidly emerging value of intellectual capital demands that even more attention be paid to reducing fear and building trust" (from the Preface).In this context, Kathleen D.Ryan and Daniel K.Oestreich, with the following core questions, illustrate some important elements of the trust-fear continuum. They say that if your answers to these questions are all 'yes,' your workplace is clearly fear-based:* Do a high proportion of people in your organization frequently hesitate to speak up about certain issues?* Does a fear of speaking up exist at many levels in your organization?* Are people in your workplace associating managers and supervisors with th presence of fear?* Are leaders in your organization exhibiting behavior that causes employees to be afraid?* Are people reacting with strong emotions to a perceived environment of fear?* Is fear having an impact on work and how it is getting done?Thus, by describing the following 'core behaviors,' they define the vision of a high-trust workplace: *mutual helpfulness and understanding, *serving as a reality check for one another, *providing feedback for one another, on strengths as well as areas that need improvement, *influencing each other's ideas and decisions; willingness to be influenced, *humor; enjoyment of each other's company, *creative, synergistic problem solving where the results are greater than the sum of the parts, *respect for different backgrounds and talents; reliance on one another's expertise to ensure the best results, *willingness and ability to work through conflicts and disagreements, *common commitment to the same goal; commitment to one another's success, *a high level of rapport and honesty with one another, *straightforward communication.They argue that the vision of a high-trust workplace can draw people naturally away from the cycle of fear and mistrust toward a new set of possibilities for better workplace relationships, and hence high-performance organization.Highly recomme

Making the quantum leap from fear to trust.

A culture of fear permeates many organizations, draining them of their potential and vitality. Based on their interview findings, the authors examine how fear is a major obstacle to open communication and organizational effectiveness. The book also addresses fear during times of rapid change. In this work you will find strategies for building a high-trust work environment. The book is loaded with good, practical guidance for managers. From fear to trust is a quantum leap; this book can help you take that enlightening jump.