Fear At the Top

The fact of the matter is that we have burned out, mental health challenged, actively disengaged and unhappy employees.

It is so pervasive and monumental in particular now, in the wake of the pandemic and the midst of heat another war that it’s a miracle any enterprise gets enough productivity out of their mistreated employees to even be functional.

No one has bad intentions. There is no overall evil force that derives pleasure from employees being unhappy, this is not anyone’s fault. Sure, there are leaders, people and departments that can and should do better. Not work harder but be truer, more courageous, more willing to challenge each other and rethink everything. But they don’t not because they are lazy or malicious but because of fear.

They would disagree, they’d say they are other things holding them back from moving the needle significantly and that’s why there is no EQ practice, no measuring of happiness and high performance, no true feedback loop and no exploration of the team dynamic and the individual needs leave alone any definitive clarity on D&I and so on. They would say they are too busy; overextended; not supported by their peers; putting out fires; in competition; doing things as they always have; not wanting to rock the boat; burned out themselves; or stopped by “the organisation”; but the truth is each and every one of those can be stripped away and what we are left with at the most fundamental of levels is just fear.

Fear at the top. Fear at the organisational level. Institutionalised fear.