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WORK & MONEY THE ETHOS OF FEAR Published October 10, 1996 Other Columns by Bruce Tulgan Read the Tripod Interview with the author.

Information systems analyst: "Her style is so cruel that morale is really low. It makes you feel like a bull in a China shop. Making mistakes that would seem small to anyone else, in our small world are pretty grave... People are really tired of it and they are out of here like there is a revolving door." Staffer in a Washington political office: "I had to always be ready for the worst case and I would just hope that the screaming wouldn't be as bad as normal. At first it makes you try to do more work, because you are like preparing for the worst and trying to do extra to avoid getting yelled at. After a while, you get a learned helplessness. I would feel that whether it is good or bad I am going to get screwed..." Intimidation tactics have always been wielded by less than disciplined managers and that has always damaged employee morale. While it was never a revered practice, bully managers were tolerated in the hierarchical, dues-paying oriented workplace of the past. In the post-job-security workplace, where individuals and organizations must invest in each other, the ethos of fear has no place. Still, it remains a rampant problem. Most people would be very surprised to hear the stories of workplace abuse which Xers have shared with me. Too many managers cannot or will not control their tempers at work and, because Xers are the newest employees in the workplace, we suffer disproportionately from management abuse. Managers with volatile tempers keep Xers in a state of fear, which is the greatest motivational dead-end. Xers are eager to learn from intelligent feedback, however, it is impossible to learn from irrational outbursts because they are not connected to reliable predictors. Abusive managers make it impossible for Xers to learn to improve our performance. Xers are not afraid of abusive managers, per se. That is, the actual consequences of authority are no more pernicious at the hands of abusive managers. What causes fear in Xers is the unpredictability which makes it impossible to prepare and condition our behavior to accommodate our managers' authority. Fear motivates avoidance and paralysis. In an environment of fear, we learn that we are unwilling to indulge our managers' self-indulgence. Rather, we learn to hate our managers and to hate our jobs. We spend too much time and energy ducking for cover and looking for a way out, wading in bruised egos, hurt feelings, vicious gossip and high turnover. Before we leave, however, abused Xers begin singing contempt -- building the cynical chorus in the workplace which drives morale through the floor. Remember, Xers are not dealing with abusive managers in a vacuum. We have each other and a tidal wave of information with which to interpret abuse in the workplace and shape complex responses. Xers are a well educated workforce -- we are thinkers and talkers. More important, Xers were raised amidst the discourses of wellness and victimization floating over the satellite beams and airways and pages and conversations. We know about abusive relationships and we know they pose a danger to our well being. Xers observe psychological dysfunction in the behavior of abusive managers, placing them in a category close to that of spouse-abusers and child-abusers and all the rest made famous in the news and in made-for-TV-movies. Xers assume that managers' abusive behavior has more to do with their own psychological issues than with Xers' actual work performance and tend to describe abusive managers with a familiar pop-psyche spin: "non-people-persons," "school-yard bully syndromes," "abusive family situations," "painful childhoods," "venting frustrations," "a lot of anger," "problems with women," "problems expressing anger," "power complexes," "abusive attitudes," "control issues," "mood swings," and "stressing out." If you have an abusive manager, how can you manage the situation so you can still maximize the creative opportunities in your job? You have a range of available strategies: documenting abuse, hiding out, building support networks among colleagues, going over the head of your manager, forcing a private confrontation, staging a public confrontation, taking legal action, fomenting employee rebellion... I think the best approach is a combination: Document every instance of abuse, while seeking support from your colleagues. After you have compiled a decent record of the abuse, engage your manager in a private confrontation about the problem and propose "setting guidelines to make possible a more professional relationship." And remember, the more extreme responses are always available to you. Check out the range of responses to abusive management described in "Sabotage in the American Workplace: Anecdotes of Dissatisfaction, Mischief and Revenge," Edited by Martin Sprouse (Pressure Drop Press & AK Press), ISBN 0-9627091-3-1. Bruce Tulgan is the author of "Managing Generation X" and the President of Rainmaker, a consulting firm that specializes in teaching organizations how to retain and motivate young talent. © 1996 Bruce Tulgan. All Rights Reserved