to them later.

Jane thought she was being a good leader. She was absorbed by what she felt was the most important priority – getting the story of the new merger clear with her boss. But the mixed message of assurances to her direct reports and her unavailability proved destructive.

Within a short time, her team was disconnected from the acquisition

What’s the biggest threat to your company? Competition? Regulation? Changing technology? Maybe you should put fear on your list. Fear is a small word that somehow touches our lives in a big way. Fear of danger is a survival mechanism. Fear of the change and the unknown is a destructive force that can consume workplaces and degrade the performance of our companies. As leaders, one of our most important jobs is to ensure that fear does not take root.

The way to diminish fear in the workplace is direct and clear communication. This is often more easily said than done however. Even leaders with the best intentions wind up sending mixed messages, what experts in organizational behavior call meta messages. How so? The way in which you couch the message itself—the words you use, your manner of speaking—communicates additional, sometimes conflicting information. Whom you communicate with sends another message—and whom you exclude sends still another.

For example, Jane became VP of a small consulting team after a merger. She was well respected for her leadership and determined to make the integration as smooth as possible. She assured team members that she would meet with them and keep everyone in the loop. Soon, however, Jane was being pulled into meetings with her new boss, leaving her direct reports without a leader. She was also traveling more. She sent emails, assuring everyone that all was well and promising to get back to them later.

Jane thought she was being a good leader. She was absorbed by what she felt was the most important priority – getting the story of the new merger clear with her boss. But the mixed message of assurances to her direct reports and her unavailability proved destructive.

Within a short time, her team was disconnected from the acquisition

es. As leaders, one of our most important jobs is to ensure that fear does not take root.

The way to diminish fear in the workplace is direct and clear communication. This is often more easily said than done however. Even leaders with the best intentions wind up sending mixed messages, what experts in organizational behavior call meta messages. How so? The way in which you couch the message itself—the words you use, your manner of speaking—communicates additional, sometimes conflicting information. Whom you communicate with sends another message—and whom you exclude sends still another.

For example, Jane became VP of a small consulting team after a merger. She was well respected for her leadership and determined to make the integration as smooth as possible. She assured team members that she would meet with them and keep everyone in the loop. Soon, however, Jane was being pulled into meetings with her new boss, leaving her direct reports without a leader. She was also traveling more. She sent emails, assuring everyone that all was well and promising to get back to them later.

Jane thought she was being a good leader. She was absorbed by what she felt was the most important priority – getting the story of the new merger clear with her boss. But the mixed message of assurances to her direct reports and her unavailability proved destructive.

Within a short time, her team was disconnected from the acquisition

e way in which you couch the message itself—the words you use, your manner of speaking—communicates additional, sometimes conflicting information. Whom you communicate with sends another message—and whom you exclude sends still another.

For example, Jane became VP of a small consulting team after a merger. She was well respected for her leadership and determined to make the integration as smooth as possible. She assured team members that she would meet with them and keep everyone in the loop. Soon, however, Jane was being pulled into meetings with her new boss, leaving her direct reports without a leader. She was also traveling more. She sent emails, assuring everyone that all was well and promising to get back to them later.

Jane thought she was being a good leader. She was absorbed by what she felt was the most important priority – getting the story of the new merger clear with her boss. But the mixed message of assurances to her direct reports and her unavailability proved destructive.

Within a short time, her team was disconnected from the acquisition

ermined to make the integration as smooth as possible. She assured team members that she would meet with them and keep everyone in the loop. Soon, however, Jane was being pulled into meetings with her new boss, leaving her direct reports without a leader. She was also traveling more. She sent emails, assuring everyone that all was well and promising to get back to them later.

Jane thought she was being a good leader. She was absorbed by what she felt was the most important priority – getting the story of the new merger clear with her boss. But the mixed message of assurances to her direct reports and her unavailability proved destructive.

Within a short time, her team was disconnected from the acquisition

to them later.

Jane thought she was being a good leader. She was absorbed by what she felt was the most important priority – getting the story of the new merger clear with her boss. But the mixed message of assurances to her direct reports and her unavailability proved destructive.

Within a short time, her team was disconnected from the acquisition activities. They started to talk to people throughout the company, and got more mixed messages about what was going on. Within a few months, rumors of worst-case scenarios (bad acquisition; culture conflicts) began to circulate.

As fear took hold, employees:

- Began to distrust Jane’s leadership capability

- Turned to other leaders outside her team for advice and information

- Created concentric circles of communication (gossiped), building mountains out of molehills

As a further consequence:

- Performance in the team went down

- Jane felt disappointed

- Jane grew angry with team members whom she perceived as no longer committed to their jobs

- What Jane overlooked is that our sense of security and well-being is profoundly affected by how much we are kept in the loop; in the absence of clear, consistent and regular communication from the leader, fear takes over.

Employee fear takes hold when people in positions of authority are suddenly behind closed doors, speaking in hushed tones, refusing to address rumors directly and so on.

Ironically, this attempt to avoid communication conveys a very clear message: Something is brewing that is so bad that the boss is afraid to talk about it.

That, surely, is not what the boss intended. Indeed, Jane was doing everything she could to make sure her team, her direct reports, would continue to have a key role and that the