The fine line: navigating fear & respect as a business leader

Being a good boss requires many skills, or ‘building blocks’; these are what help you build relationships with your people that are strong, solid and able to withstand the challenges that work and life throw your way. One of these building blocks is respect, which is when you believe in and recognise another person’s value, abilities and contributions.

Drilling down a bit deeper, it’s when you treat your team with dignity and courtesy, listening to their different opinions and perspectives without judging or criticising them, treating them with kindness and consideration, showing interest in their thoughts and feelings.

Sounds pretty basic: obviously as a boss, you respect your staff, why wouldn’t you? You hired them because you thought they were best for the job, so certainly you respect them. But what happens when it doesn’t go in both directions; when you respect your people, but they don’t respect you? Or even worse, when they seem to respect you, but in reality, they fear you.

That is exactly what happened to me years ago when I went to work at my dream company for what I thought, at the time, was my dream boss. They were intelligent, creative and respected by others, so at the start, I absolutely respected them. But this soon turned to fear, going along with what they said just to avoid their angry outbursts. I lost respect for them because of this, not believing and valuing who they were and how they acted towards me and the rest of the team. Did they know this? Absolutely not – I put on my protective armour, acting in a respectful way as I felt I had no choice.

This didn’t change until about half the people in our team left the company, and my boss sat me down to ask me why I thought this was happening. This time I decided to be brave and take off my armour, telling them how I (and others) felt. Were they surprised? Utterly, because they had mistaken respect for fear.

As Garry Ridge, chairman Emeritus at WD-40 Company, explained to me in an interview on fear, it is “one of the most disabling behaviours we have, it can stop your people in their tracks. Think of a deer standing in the road – why don’t they move? Because they are afraid. This is the last thing you want for your people, to be paralysed by fear.”

So, what can you do to ensure this doesn’t happen to you, that your people respect rather than fear you? Here are two actions to take:

                Show your people you genuinely care about them
Have you ever had a selfish boss, one that cares for themselves more than their team? Even if an action looks good on the surface, you know it’s really for them, not you. I have and in such cases there is no way I would ever trust them. Caring for your people is no longer just a nice thing to do, but an integral part of building and maintaining trust and employee engagement.

                Focus on psychological safety
Another key element of respect is psychological safety. In her book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, Professor Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School defines it as a “shared belief held by members of a team that it’s alright to take risks, to express ideas and concerns, to speak up with questions and admit mistakes – all without fear of negative consequences.”

Studies have shown that creating an environment of psychological safety can deliver excellent results. That’s because respect will not and cannot develop or flourish if your people don’t feel safe. If I think back to what caused the most problems when I was working for the boss I previously described; a lot of it had to do with a lack of psychological safety. Everything they did made me feel unsafe, vulnerable and certainly not cared for. And, of course, there was absolutely no respect between us.

Showing genuine care and fostering a culture of safety can help set you up to be a boss who has the respect of their people instead of creating an environment and relationship based on fear.