Life & Business By Mike Hoppe

Fear Driven Management

Mark was one of those supervisors that his new people thought was just fine, but subordinates that had been around for 18 months or more, had developed a distaste for his management style. This conflicted with the fact that they really did like him as a person. Those that had been under his supervision for a couple of years or more, weren’t so sure they liked him much anymore. It was a slow, degenerative process that happened almost imperceptibly, and it was certainly not intentional.

Julie has some similar management characteristics. Additionally, one would soon discover that she had a strong religious streak in her that she would subtly refer to as her moral compass. This is how she defined her personal value. Julie was promoted to a strategic management role within her company, as was Mark. Both were dismissed from their new positions within 2 years of their promotions ending 10+ year careers with their respective organizations.

Both of these individuals had the intellectual and emotional capacity to succeed in their new roles…so what happened? First of all, we have to be realistic about the situation. Although they had been in their supervisor roles for quite some time, neither one of them were effectively managing their teams. They were about 80% effective in what they were doing, but they were chewing up people in the process. Their good people would only hang for 2-3 years and the cycle would begin again. The only long term employees were the ones that were dysfunctional enough themselves to remain. Both of these managers took with them marginal managerial skills to a much more intense and rapidly changing environment. Issues that used to take 2-3 years to surface were now popping up in 6 months and there were lots more of them!

Secondly, and perhaps giving us more of a clue to the root issues, was a struggle that each of them could not overcome. They failed to overcome their unwillingness to become dependent on other people for their own success. In their previous supervisory roles, it was possible to monitor the outputs of their department, and thus control (or filter) everything that was being produced. In their new larger roles, this was impossible. Neither one of them had a history of developing their subordinates, building trust, or setting others up for success. They knew the right words (especially Julie’s religious platitudes), but the actions and the words were not consistent. It looked good on the outside, but what was on the inside was fear-driven control. More next month on the dark side of the fear-driven life…

Mike is one of the Associate Pastors at Casas Church, is a graduate business school instructor, and still actively works with companies to develop their organizations after 15 years in management with a Fortune 100 company. Mike can be reached at mikeh@casaschurch.org or www.casastv.com