Managing Employee Fear: Running An Unstoppable Business

Fear can halt businesses like no other emotion. People of every nation in the world know this same powerful feeling. When fear is in the workplace, nothing else saps the efficiency, morale, and momentum from your organization like it.

How then can you make your business an effective and unstoppable force? Gayle Gregory, motivational coach, leadership consultant, and co-author of the book “The Grand Experiment: An Expedition of Self-Discovery”, feels that the key to an unstoppable business is identifying and eliminating the fears present in the minds of its employees. “The source of innovation is a place of fearlessness where we are not trying to force things to happen,” says Gregory.

Gregory has identified seven fundamental fears found in the human psyche that are reflected in everything, from personal lives to careers. “The seven fears are universal,” Gregory observes. Everyone in the workplace, from those at the top to those at the bottom can find some aspect of all seven fears within them. These fears are not always something people are aware of yet they have a profound effect upon the creativity, interactivity, and efficiency of a business workplace.

Gregory challenges that the world is not a scary place, but rather, an individual’s own perspective determines their intimidation level. There are thousands of possible ways to interpret the situations presented everyday. How to react is your decision. To dismantle the fear of the world, make a conscious decision to react proactively to a challenge rather than in a negative manner. “The world just is,” advises Gregory, “You give it meaning.”

Your workplace has an “Unstoppability Factor”. You can determine what that is by first identifying the fears that are present within it. So, where do these fears lurk? “Go out into the workplace and find out what prevents people from doing their work,” Gregory says, “Why are they standing around vending machines having conversations? What are those conversations about? Its all fear based.” Basically when fear is present, morale is low and employees are dissatisfied with their jobs and lose passion for the work they do.

The next step to making your company unstoppable is to take the power out of each fear. At first the process is difficult and uncomfortable because it requires open discussion and admission of individual fears. Take the initiative and lay out each of the fears to be discussed. This way you can manage the discomfort associated with sharing personal fear and turn it into a proactive game that can be won. “The only thing that holds fear in place is our unwillingness to look at it,” Gregory shares, “As soon as you place your fear out on the table, it begins to dissolve and lose it’s power.”

Gregory, who once held a lucrative position in a Fortune 500 company, left to explore the human condition by sailing to Mexico. Through her own introspection and spirituality, while sailing the Sea of Cortez, she realized what she learned about human fears realized had held her back. Knowing how costly fear can be in a work environment, Gayle now enjoys motivating and energizing the business world by purging their workplace fears, which she sees keeping all companies from reaching their fullest potentials.

To gain a competitive edge, your business needs to be perceived as bold and innovative. Fear prevents companies and their employees from reaching their full potential. In an enterprise where fear is present, internal conflict often diminishes a workplace or department’s ability to function smoothly as one contiguous unit.

Obviously a business that is fighting itself cannot also effectively fight its competition as well. “We’re so busy competing with each other that we forget to compete with competitors in the marketplace,” warns Gregory. Fears such as thinking that there is not enough resources, time, favor, and other commodities for all tend to breed individualistic attitudes rather than team spirit. To stop this, encourage an attitude of cooperation among your employees and share rewards among many rather than granting one first prize. Employees that are afraid to share their ideas or work together cripple the overall productivity of the workplace with their fears.

Ultimately, the unstoppability of your business lies with your decision to expose fears rather than let them hide. A fear kept in the dark, no matter how small, costs your company performance ability. The emotional environment of a workplace expands exponentially the vision of what you and your enterprise can do. Even if your business achieves its goals for the future, you are settling for far less than your full potential when you do not dismantle the fears within the organization and individuals. “When you take the fear away, the automatic outcome is you energize your performance,” says Gregory.