In healthy work environments, the employee is supposed to feel sufficient safety to express his opinion, share his ideas, and fight his professional experiences without heavily on his shoulder fear of punishment or marginalization. However, the reality says something else!
Many institutions are still managed by a culture that is dominated by intimidation, as the manager becomes instead of being a source of motivation and inspiration, becomes a source of anxiety and pressure, which reflects negatively on the entire work environment.
Fear in the workplace is not limited to being an annoying internal feeling, but rather turns into time into a real institutional obstacle. The employee who is afraid to express his opinion or refer to a defect, soon turns into a silent, negative, and perhaps enthusiastic. With the repetition and accumulation of these cases, an environment that lacks transparency is formed and disappointed, and the culture of silence and unannounced collusion is established, as errors prevail, accuracy, and weaken the team’s spirit.
Such environments expel real competencies. Creative and talented employees do not stay long in a place where they do not feel appreciation or safety, but rather to search for institutions that give them space for expression and an opportunity to grow. Thus, the institution finds itself and has become a shelter for compliments or those who prefer silence over risk, which reduces the chances of development and innovation.
How does the employee deal with a reality like this?! Here it is not easy to face an entrenched fear culture, but to overlook it or coexist with it may be more harmful. The first thing that the employee needs in this case is the full awareness of his rights and duties, knowledge of the institution’s regulations and official grievances, and how to protect himself legally and administratively.
It is also important to document business, tasks and correspondence, as a kind of protection in the event of a dispute or an attempt to hold responsibility unjustly. This is no less important than that building balanced professional relationships with colleagues who share the same values, to form a support network that enhances the feeling of belonging and reduces the weight of pressure. And when matters worsen to an unbearable extent, resorting to the competent authorities remains within the institution, or even outside it, a legitimate option.
Of course, the employee alone cannot be held responsible for addressing the culture of fear. The official or the leader is the most important party in the equation, and it is the one who bears the lion’s share of responsibility in shaping the work environment. The real leader does not only manage the tasks, but also makes the climate in which his band works. And if fear prevails, then the first thing that must be reviewed is the follow -up method, and the extent of the leader has the skills necessary to build confidence, open communication channels, and convert errors into opportunities to learn, not to justifications for punishment.
Driving in intimidation may achieve temporary results, but in the long run, it is destroyed by any organization that seeks to continue. The employee who works in an environment based on respect and confidence, gives his best without hesitation. As for the one who works under threat, even if he obeyed, his giving will be faded, free from passion.
Successful institutions cannot be built on fear. Rather, it is based on trust, and leaders who believe in people before the regimes. The employee is not a machine produced, but a person needs a human climate to be creative. And trust, as it is said, inspires, while fear does only to be silent. And between a leader who inspires, and another to be terrorized, the difference between an environment that grows, and another wither in silence.
