The Fear-free Organization

Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

Paul Brown, Joan Kingsley, Sue Paterson

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780749472962
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Neuropsychology
• Index: Psychology

Evidence from neuroscience shows that individuals and organizations are more successful when people are encouraged to take risks, explore new ideas, and channel their energies in ways that work for them. And yet many organizations are filled with bullies, vicious gossip, undermining behaviours, hijacking tactics, political jockeying for position, favouritism and other factors that instil fear and impede productivity. It is no wonder that organizations are actively looking at how they can improve and maintain the psychological health and wellbeing of their employees to the benefit of all concerned. The Fear-free Organization reveals how our new understanding of the neurobiology of the self - how the brain constructs the person - can transform for the better the way our businesses and organizations work. Academic yet accessible, The Fear-free Organization addresses head on the issue that scared people spend a lot more time plotting their survival than working productively. The book helps leaders understand the neurobiology of fear, face the damage it is doing, and replace it with building relationships, managing energy flow and fostering trust. It guides you in making your workplace one that's full of energy, not adrenalin; focused on possibility, not profit; and generates independent thinking, not obedience so you can promote the psychological wellbeing that is strongly correlated with greater energy, motivation and better cognitive function.

PART ONE

The person

01

Fear essentials and the development of the Self

We all know, from what we experience with and within ourselves, that our conscious acts spring from our desires and our fears. Intuition tells us that that is true also of our fellows and of the higher animals. We all try to escape pain and death, while we seek what is pleasant. We all are ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self-preservation and that of race. Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual’s instinct for self-preservation. At the same time, as social beings, we are moved in the relations with our fellow by such feelings as sympathy, pride, hate, need for power, pity, and so on. All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions. All such action would cease if those powerful elemental forces were to cease stirring within us.

Einstein (1938)

Fear… is the most depressing of all the emotions; and it soon induces utter, helpless prostration, as if in consequence of, or in association with, the most violent and prolonged attempts to escape have actually been made. Nevertheless, even extreme fear often acts at first as a powerful stimulant. A man or animal driven through terror to desperation is endowed with wonderful strength, and is notoriously dangerous in the highest degree.

Darwin (1872)

Introduction

Fear is the most primitive of all the emotions and pivotal in the development of brain and mind, from birth and throughout our lifespan. Thus, fear plays a major role in the development of the ‘Self’. Fear is essential to our survival, but persistent fear can destroy us. Advances in brain science show just how devastating and long-lasting the effects of trauma and abuse (mental as well as physical) can be on the structure and function of the brain. Fear experiences can produce dramatic changes in the brain’s architecture, resulting in profound alterations in our assumptions and perceptions.

In this chapter we explore the role that fear plays in our development from birth and throughout life. The chapter describes what fear is and how it is perceived; that is, what’s happening in our brain when we are overcome by it. We consider why fear is so easily triggered and why it is so readily used as a management tool. We set fear in the context of the eight basic emotions, and discuss how our psychological growth and development is in large measure shaped by the emotional experience of relationships.

We are our emotions

Human beings are very complex. We are also very simple. Even more importantly, we are immensely adaptable. This gives us the remarkable evolutionary advantage that humans have gained over all other mammals.

Starting with the simple, we have three – only three – main operating components. We think, we act, and we feel.

Underpinning all three are eight emotions. They are the results of at least 2 million years of evolution. They are what make us complex.

The emotions are hard-wired in. In consequence the architecture of the human brain has evolved with emotions in mind. Emotions create the dynamic interpersonal energy upon which our whole social system – our whole existence as humans – relies. Emotions are real, physiological events and they exist whether we recognize them or not in conscious awareness. Emotions also happen whether we like them or not. Emotions stir us to act.

Emotions create our psychological lives. In that sense they create ‘us’ through our psychological growth and development, which is parallel to, but much less visible and understood than, our physical growth and development.

The main drivers of bodily growth and development are genetic endowment and the supply of food. The main drivers of our psychological growth and development are the emotions and those who create the emotional environment around us during our development. That is the essence of nurturing: parent to child. We are psychologically sculpted by the emotional qualities of our relationships from minute one, day one. What happens emotionally in the womb also has a profound effect upon the developing brain and its non-conscious assumptions of the world it will inhabit. Experience sculpts and shapes the brain in order to make it the brain it is – unique to each individual, but with each brain structured from the same materials as every other brain.

Emotions are the primary colours from which the patterns of our lives are created and upon which our feelings, mindset and attitudes develop. We are continuously emotional. The bedrock of everything we do and are is emotional. Emotions underpin all our thoughts and actions. Without emotions we would be androids.

Emotions, basically speaking

The eight basic emotions are (see Table 1.1):

fear, anger, disgust, shame and sadness

surprise/startle

excitement/joy, trust/love

TABLE 1.1 The eight basic emotions

8 basic universal emotions	Responses	Key biology
Fear	SURVIVAL Escape/Avoid/ Fright/Fight/Flight	STRESS Cortisol
Anger
Disgust
Shame
Sadness
Startle/ Surprise	SURVIVAL OR ATTACHMENT?
Excitement/Joy	ATTACHMENT Wonder Frolic Growth	REWARD/PLEASURE Dopamine Noradrenaline Serotonin Oxytocin
Trust/Love

Without trust would we invest ourselves in intimate relations? Without joy would we find life bearable? Without fear would we recognize danger? Without anger would we fight for what’s important? Without disgust would we know what’s poisonous? Without shame could we ever know what’s right? Without sadness could we ever know who or what is important to us? Without surprise would we feel excited by all the possibilities in the world?

Of the eight basic emotions, five keep us safe and let us know about danger (top of Table 1.1), two get us closely involved positively with people and objects and action (bottom of Table 1.1), and one pushes us in either direction (centre of Table 1.1). The emotions of fear, anger, disgust, shame and sadness keep us safe or make us ready to deal with danger. They are the flight/fight/fright/freeze emotions related to escape/avoidance. Excitement/joy and trust/love are the two emotions to do with growth through attachment and belonging. Startle/surprise can take us in the direction of either escape/avoidance or attachment. If the likelihood is that it’s going to go in the direction of avoidance, then surprise appears as ‘shock-horror’ startle. If on the other hand the likelihood is that surprise is going in the direction of attachment, then it appears as ‘oh-my-gosh’ delight.

The numerical balance of the emotions is strongly in favour of the escape/avoidance emotions: five avoidance emotions as against two attachment, and one falling on either side of the fence. In the wilds, fighting, fleeing or freezing is, to put it mildly, very useful. Through fright we survive. In the sophisticated human jungle those responses can both be very useful but also cause big problems.

Socially we have come a long way from our distant social origins. But it’s still our biological origins that drive us. When we understand that not surprisingly, but very confusingly, the escape/avoidance emotions are easier to trigger than the attachment/growth emotions, then we can easily see the single simple reason why organizations find it easier to run on fear than anything else. It’s the emotion easiest to trigger because it’s the one most closely connected with survival. It’s also the fastest route to burnout.

From an organizational perspective, leaders who understand the eight emotions underpinning how we all think, act and feel can be much more effective. This is because they are conscious about their own emotions and consequently their behaviour, and they are also aware how their behaviour can trigger emotions in others. We will see that it is much more productive in an organization to trigger the attachment emotions of excitement/joy and trust/love than it is to encourage any of the fright/flight/fight emotions, wit...