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Driving Fear Out of the Workplace
Book

Driving Fear Out of the Workplace

Creating the High-Trust, High-Performance Organization

Kathleen D. Ryan and Daniel K. Oestreich
Jossey-Bass, 1998

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Many modern managers unconsciously evoke fear to get results from their subordinates. Kathleen D. Ryan and Daniel K. Oestreich build on their consulting work and 260 interviews with staff members across organizational levels and industries to show how fear pervades the modern workplace and why it’s problematic. Powerful first-person vignettes from their fieldwork demonstrate how fear can motivate short-term results but erode trust and undermine productivity in the long term. Plenty of legitimate anxieties arise in the office, but this incisive primer will help you spot the subtle ways your organization might be adding to them by creating a harmful backdrop of fear. Managers will find this manual’s clear organization and detailed steps practical and helpful. As anxiety-inducing corporate changes grow more common and as workplace hierarchies flatten, this book’s advice has only become more relevant since its classic first edition. getAbstract recommends this eye-opening guide to any manager willing to take the challenging steps toward creating a healthier workplace environment.

Take-Aways

  • Managers often utilize fear as a short-term motivator without reckoning with its corrosive long-term effects.
  • Assessing an organization’s level of fear is difficult because fear becomes part of the background or context.
  • Stereotypes and negative assumptions create “cycles of mistrust” that fuel fear.

About the Authors

Kathleen D. Ryan, co-producer of the film, The Workplace Hustle, is a principal at a major consulting firm. Daniel K. Oestreich leads an organizational development consulting firm. Together, they also wrote The Courageous Messenger: How to Successfully Speak Up at Work.

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