Correcting a Culture of Fear

• Practice relatedness. One marker of the culture of fear is a tendency to treat people impersonally. In my early days of management I had a habit of focusing too much on efficiency. I wanted to dive right into the issue at hand, to get into the intellectual discussion, the status update, the problem that needed to be solved. I didn’t take a lot of time for small talk, for getting to know my team as people or letting them see me as a person, and as a result, I didn’t have much of a personal relationship with them.
  If you want a team that feels comfortable taking risks and making mistakes, one of the core requirements is a sense of belonging and safety. This means you need to take a little time for small talk. Ask people about themselves, get to know them as humans, let them know you. Most people are scared to take risks in front of people they think will reject them if they fail. Intentionally or not, by neglecting to create even basic personal relationships with many of my team members, I made them afraid of how I would react to mistakes, questions, and failures.
• Apologize. When you screw up, apologize. Practice apologizing honestly and briefly.

  “I’m sorry, I should not have yelled at you and I have no excuse for my bad behavior.”

  “I’m sorry, I did not listen to you and I know I contributed to your frustration at this situation.”

  “I’m sorry, I made a mistake when I neglected to tell you about Bob.”

  
  Apologies don’t need to be drawn-out affairs. A short apology that takes responsibility for your role in creating a negative situation or hurting another person is all that is necessary. If you go too long, it often turns into an excuse or a distraction. The goal with apologizing is to show people that you know your behavior has an impact on others, and to role-model for them that it’s OK to make a mistake but that you should apologize when you hurt other people. You’re showing the team that apologizing doesn’t make you weaker — it makes the whole team stronger.
• Get curious. When you disagree with something, stop to ask why. Not every disagreement is an undermining of your authority. When you take the time to seek out more information about something with which you disagree, you’ll often find that you were reacting to something you didn’t really understand. For those of us who care about doing the right thing or making the best decision, attacking something we disagree with makes that harder. When we attack, many people evade or shut down, and they learn that it’s a good idea to hide information from us so we won’t attack or criticize them. When you get curious and learn how to turn that disagreement into honest questioning, you can learn more about other perspectives on the issue because your team will open up. This is how you get the most information out and help everyone make the best decisions.
• Learn how to hold people accountable without making them bad. As a leader, you want your teams to do their jobs well. If they fail to meet their responsibilities, you’ll be the person to hold them accountable. But it doesn’t start with responsibility and end with consequences. Other elements are needed along the way. How do you measure success? Does the team have the capabilities needed to succeed? Are you providing feedback along the way? I think many leaders forget these requirements and hope they can get a junior team to achieve something just by setting the goal clearly, or believe a more experienced team shouldn’t ever need feedback. Think of the times you’ve made a person or a team out to be “bad” because they failed. Are you holding yourself accountable for setting them up for success? When everything is clear and you’ve all done your best, I bet you’ll find that accountability comes with far less character judgment, because you all clearly see what has happened.

The culture of fear is pretty common in technology, and it survives best in environments where things are otherwise going well. Don’t be fooled by external circumstances that enable your bad behavior. If you’re feared but respected, the company is growing, and the team is working on interesting problems, you might get along OK for a time. However, if you lose any of these elements, you can expect to see people who have better options leave for greener pastures. I know firsthand that having a team that fears but respects you isn’t enough when they’re frustrated by other things happening around them. So work on softening your rough edges, practice caring about your team as humans, and get curious. Building a culture of trust takes time, but the results are well worth it.