Sylvia Lafair

Global financial tensions cause epidemics of fear and defensiveness in organizations. As stress escalates survival behaviour increases and responding maturely decreases.

Leaders who understand how to defuse anxiety provoked responses can help employees cope effectively.

Global anxiety

Back biting, gossip, and "in your face" fights are at the forefront of the present workplace environment. Office politics have always been a constant part of everyday business relationships, yet as economically induced stress escalates the desire to protect one's turf increases. There is global anxiety that everything is at risk that the proverbial wolf will huff and puff and blow the house down. No one and nothing is safe and so the only thing to do is hunker down and defend. Sadly, we can catch each other's emotional fears as easily as we can catch a cold.

Facing the epidemic of fear

In recent months I have received call after call from the "C suite" to mid-level managers bruised by the onslaught of angry and disillusioned employees who only want to blame others for mistakes and poor decisions. The lack of individual accountability has increased as economic indicators have been sliding. Leaders who have not spent time looking into their own personal reactions to the emotions surrounding economics are prone to take the path of least resistance and give knee jerk superficial responses when asked to intervene.

Personal behavior enhances strategic planning

Most business people have spent time pouring over spread sheets, analyzing profit and loss statements, and doing strategic plans. Fewer have delved into understanding personal behavior around economics and how we gain our perspectives around money. Once leaders can better observe and understand the emotional patterns around money, clearer and more effective interventions and decisions can be made.

Early stages of behavior

Our first learning about the glories and evils of money were learned in the family. That is where decisions surrounding the nature of the world were made and then "hard wired" into our nervous system. We learned early, before we took our first steps, to see the world as trust worthy or lacking. We take these beliefs with us throughout our lives. 

When stress and anxiety hit the hot button the early beliefs takes hold and determine much of our behavior. The reflexive part of the brain, an almond shaped structure deep in the brain called the amygdala is the warning bell. It tells us in milliseconds to fight or flee.

Responsive behavior

This fear reflex helped our ancestors survive and can still keep us from being hit by an oncoming car or ducking when someone wants to throw a shoe at our head. However, to base long term success on early survival patterns without first sorting through whether we are responding out of childhood reactions keeps us hostage to the past. It is helpful for leaders to explore the beliefs and behaviors of parents and grandparents as well as the culture of one's youth for messages about money and meaning.

Rethinking inherited behavior

Take some time and ask yourself the following: Who made the financial decisions in your home? What was deemed of value? Was money horded or spent? What were the parameters of success? How and what was rewarded? What constituted helping others? How were goods and services prioritized? What are the financial legacies handed from your family? Your culture? As you begin the process of looking back at your inherited patterns you are then in a position to keep what is life enhancing and release the rest.

Leader’s scenario

One executive who took the time to look back on his life was awe-struck to realize that his "squirrel mentality" to save every penny and literally hide many of his assets in multiple bank vaults was based on a story his father told him over and over as a young child that: "you could be cheated out of every cent the way I was, so never trust anyone and never, never tell anyone where you hide your money."

The family lawyer was the only one who knew where the safety deposit boxes were. While the man felt "safe" by following his father's admonitions, it had not only cost him his marriage, he was estranged from his two grown daughters who said he was obsessed with money to the detriment of all else. They saw him as fiscally sound albeit emotionally bankrupt. He was also shocked to learn that his entire staff saw him as an unhappy Scrooge who cared about nothing but accumulation of cash.

New insights and resolution

While it took time to sort through the cacophony of emotions he recently came to new realizations about money and meaning. Economics based on fear have diminished for him and he has recently chosen to keep many employees who "need their jobs more than I need to hoard more money." 

Key to being a good leader

When emotions run high it is your responsibility to harness them. Once you can target some of the older patterns that were handed to you, much like a family heirloom, you can make reasonable choices. Knowing that your mood can impact your decisions and that consequences last well beyond the present time it is to your benefit to take time out and think through implications of fear based economics. This is the right time for leaders to ask the important questions and take a new look at what really matters and how to lead from a place of deepened strength and integrity.