FEAR as a tool for Managing People

‘The image of my physical training instructor at the school standing with a stick in his hand and making us do drills has still not faded my mind’ – one of my colleagues was telling me the other day. We were discussing the use of fear as a tool for managing people. He continued – ‘We used to hate all our drills and exercises just because of ‘Sir’. In fact we never liked him. We used to think that he was really a bad person whose only objective was to terrorize children. However many years later after passing-out from school when I met him, he was not keeping particularly well and was bed-ridden. I had gone to pay a visit to him with one of my school friends, knowing about his condition. I had been kind of forced by my friend to visit ‘Sir’. I was initially very hesitant to talk to him. But as the conversation progressed I understood that he was not a bad person. He too had a ‘heart’. However he had an unhappy life. His only son had left him after college because of his extreme strictness, for his penchant to talk with the stick then with words and to enforce his choices and decisions on him. He lamented his behaviour with his son. But it was too late perhaps. His wife had died a few years earlier. He was all alone. I felt really bad for him. However I still couldn’t reconcile with the image that I had of him in my mind as a physical training instructor…’

Fear works faster than any other tool when it comes to managing people, but it comes with a huge baggage of side effects that does not wear -off easily. Fear may achieve short-term objectives with ease however may not only jeopardizes long term purposes but also become successful in scarring people for lives.

One of the families I know, the children and the spouse of a gentleman are happier when their father/husband is touring or is in the office more than when he is at home. He unleashes fear amongst his spouse and his children and they literally are on tenterhooks when he is around. What a misfortune for that gentleman, I thought…his own family despises him.

Fear is many times also unleashed in name of discipline. I do not think both words are quite synonymous.   In fact fear-based discipline is like a spring that has been pressed hard by a palm and as soon as the pressure of the palm ceases, the spring recoils, rebounds and jumps away. You know what I mean… The effects of fear are short-lived and once the cause of fear is gone, people may answer that oppression with a huge boomerang.

I have often heard moms or dads disciplining their toddlers or kids by invoking fear in them, sometimes of the unknown spirit, sometimes of the monster waiting behind the curtains and sometimes of the stick. The impact many times may in terms of growing kids who are fearful and unsure.

Fear-based management of employees leads to a disengaged workforce who tend to develop the ‘yes Boss’ attitude. A team of ‘yes-men’ puts the company in peril for no one dares to differ or say the truth. Fear rules, everything else fails.

Similarly a country that is ruled on the basis of fear is destroyed from within. History is evidence to the damage that fear has done to some nations. Contrary to that, there is also evidence of nations where individual liberty has been respected and upheld, have marched far ahead of others. North and South Korea are excellent contrast in that respect.

Even when it comes to God, most people fear god and few love him. That is why all these touts and middle agents of religion take us for a ride and make us fight over religion, make us scapegoats in the name of religion and in return make a fortune out of it. Mahatma Gandhi had once said – ‘Where there is fear there is no religion. Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.’

When does fear work?

A person should only fear when he/she does something wrong that dangers or encroaches the liberty of others. Fear should be invoked for correction in such cases but with extreme caution and in very measured doses. That should only to secure the endangered liberty of the innocent individuals. Hence this is reserved only for habitual offenders and criminals.

For correction of everyday normal individuals fear should be the last resort and not the first or the immediate one. Even if some fear has to be instilled then that should be done with care so as to not to scar people, especially children, and should be done with an intent of helping the individuals to be corrected and not for venting frustration.

The end result should be to liberate and not captivate. The latter is something that fear does more often than not and with disastrous consequences.