Here’s an article about passive aggressiveness at work (which is something that ideally would have ended in the 1400s), and the author brings up an interesting point near the end. There are essentially three types of fear at work (there are actually probably many more types, if we’re being honest) and your relationship to / avoidance of those fears drives a ton of actions and behaviors around you:
- Fear of failure/incompetence (you probably see this a bit more at senior levels)
- Fear of rejection
- Fear of conflict
I could probably come up with a few more “fear of…” for different workplaces, including “fear of authority” (which oftentimes authority uses back to their advantage), but this is a solid list. I’d estimate, total without scientific fact, that about 47 percent of all workplace problems come from these three fears. Add this into “The Four Horsemen” of the workforce, and bam.
Here’s how this all works, IMHO:
Fear of Failure: This is pretty common at all levels. If you’re lower, you don’t want to be seen as unable to deliver; that can stagnate where you are and who you are in a company. If you’re higher up the chain, you want to maintain the respect of your employees — but oftentimes rather than doing that through actual organic conversation, you do it through…
