Taking Action and Middle Way Management

In my last post, I discussed many aspects of fear in the workplace. It’s been a while since that post for several reasons. First, I’ve been super-busy consulting and bringing the practice of Middle Way Management to organizations in the real world. Second, I’ve been ruminating on the mitigation of fear in the workplace and the management of its attendant emotions once it arises; both of these require pre-emptive action and reactionary moves.

As you may have noticed, I’ve exchanged the idea of “intervention” (from psychology) with “action”. I chose this exchange based upon my own experience and from recently reading an article in which the authors actively promote the idea of combining conviction with compassion, resulting in a scholar who “dares to care.” In this article, they advocate for the passionate, courageous researcher who not only speaks out, but acts out. We are taught at the university to view management and leadership in purely scientific ways, which are, at the end of the day, pretty dispassionate means for viewing just about anything. An activist scholar is a rare things these days.

What the authors of the article are really calling for is action, a kind of positive action based upon fundamental, closely-held values that require the courage of holding convictions dear as ideas are presented to the world. By creating an assessment instrument, consulting with organizations about how to apply it, and writing fairly extensively about it, it has been my intent to put Middle Way Management into action. Is this a courageous act? Only time will tell.

Back to the mitigation of organizational fear.

Pre-emptive Mitigation

I am not now nor have I ever been an advocate of pre-emptive war. The pre-emptive mitigation of fear is another matter entirely. The most critical aspect of any pre-emptive action is a necessarily overriding concern with making the right move at the right time. As you can imagine, it is never possible to plan for or prevent every possible cause of fear, especially in a workplace with so many souls who all have their own ideas about what makes them fearful. The best we can do is take action to clear the air of anything that might create an environment (i.e., culture) of fear.

 When taking action to clear the organizational air, deciding about what does and does not cause fear is crucial to a successful effort. In the context of organizations, several actions and, frankly, inactions create a culture of fear. For instance, feeding and then allowing the rumor mill to take its own negative course is a deadly concoction of action/inaction that will create a fear-filled environment and destroy morale across the board. A great way to accomplish this is to lay off several employees with no open discussion about why they were laid off or what the future holds for everyone else in the organization. This seems like common sense, yet you would be shocked at how many organizations mismanage even this seemingly obvious task.

The Heart of the Matter

At the heart of every negative emotion lies a black, smoldering core of fear. For example, a manager who feels he should have been promoted to vice president by now is driven by the fear of failure and of how his colleagues, peers, family members, and friends view his apparent failure with organization. In his mind, he has so tightly linked and defined himself by his job title that he has no choice but to create his own suffering by thinking he is not measuring up to preconceived idea about where he should be in his career at any point in time. In this way, he lets fear rule his life by conquering his mind with thoughts of inadequacy.

I call this “Willful suffering.”

Such thoughts and attitudes can be changed, yet many of us choose to measure ourselves against a fanciful standard that does nothing more than create suffering. Of course, we should all have goals, yet those should never create anger, frustration, sadness, embarrassment, or other emotions that lead to suffering. The magic is clearly in how we view ourselves as we pursue our short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals. If you are content with your progress, you will avoid the type of fear-based suffering that leads to hasty decision-making, bad choices, and deep personal misery.

As a Middle Way Manager, you must constantly value the progress you have made and are making. This is not dwelling in the past; rather, it is a recognition that remaining mindful and living in the present have worked to put you in a position where you can realize more good, meaningful accomplishments in the present and moving forward. You are a model to those you lead and it is encumbent on you to present a clear, coherent vision to your team members that helps them manage their own emotions with patience, empathy, kindness, and compassion.

So, go now, and management with compassion!

Onward! Darin

Article mentioned in this post:

Adler, N. J., & Hansen, H. (2012). Daring to care: Scholarship that supports the courage of our convictions. Journal of Management Inquiry, 21(2), 128-139.

Copyright © 2009-2012, Darin R. Molnar, PhD. All rights reserved.