Fear, Accountability and Approval

Fear is an interesting thing. Fear is an emotion that is at the root of many other emotions. If negative emotions comprise a spectrum, then fear is like the sunlight, which, passing through our situational prism, produces the stress, anxiety, mistrust that we actually feel. It takes a lot of self-examination and hard work to be able to let the lesser emotions go and find the fear and its source.

Of all the ways that fear manifests, perhaps the most destructive for a business is that of controlling behavior. The need for control is based on feelings of inadequacy. Many people feel inadequate and still manage to function well in a cooperative environment. Sometimes, though, a person finds himself in a position that he never dreamed of being in and inadequacy, fueled by the fear of losing it all (by proving that he really is inadequate) creates a desperate need for control.

This person will find a way to insert himself into as many important committees as possible and will create new committees if there seems to be a gap in the information flow. This person can't tolerate subordinates who are successful because they become a threat. They have a dislike for group contexts and prefer to use one-on-one meetings to better control the message.

The single worst thing effect of controlling behavior is that the controller manipulates everything so that he has the key decision. This produces several negative impacts including

• an entire organization is slowed to the pace of one individual
• decisions are arrived at through discussion with peers rather than with knowledgeable subordinates
• information needed by subordinates may be concealed in order to preserve the decision authority
• frantic scrambles to meet deadlines arrived at without benefit of process
• no closure on "projects" because of information hiding and diminished credibility
• frustration among subordinates--although a really talented controller will be able to keep this frustration focused among and between subordinates
• after-meeting meetings among subordinates for the purpose of validating perceptions
• much talk about accountability without any accountability
• lack of standards because control diminishes in an objective environment

Do you have someone like this in your organization? How do you deal with it?

One approach might be to create standards around process and measure compliance. With good, useful and actively used standards accountability can be made real. Without them, the best we can do is approval. Accountability is objective. Approval is subjective. Accountability creates no fear. Approval is all about fear.

Your best people have a set of internal standards to which they hold themselves accountable and they won't stay long in an approval environment once it becomes clear that they will have to compromise their standards. The ones who do stay...