What causes fear in an organization? How is fear hurting employee morale, productivity, and overall performance? What great things can happen when you remove fear? In this episode, John Dues and host Andrew Stotz talk about fear, and how managers can get rid of it.
TRANSCRIPT
0:00:02.6 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. This is Episode 14, and we are continuing our discussion about the shift from management myths to principles for the transformation of school systems. John, take it away.

0:00:32.9 John Dues: Andrew, it's good to be back. Yeah, we've been talking about these principles. We've sort of shifted from the myths to the principles that, you know, especially education systems leaders can use to guide their transformation work. I think we're up to Principle 8 today, and most recently I think last time we did, "institute training on the job" and "adopt and institute leadership." So we'll move on to Principle 8, which is "Drive Out Fear." So I'll start with just reading the principle verbatim from the book. So Principle 8: "Drive out fear so that everyone may work effectively for the school system. No one can perform their best unless they feel secure to express ideas, ask questions, and make mistakes." So I think maybe for me, when you look at the 14 principles, I haven't done this analysis, but I would venture a wager that Dr. Deming spent more time on this particular principle and related topics than any of the other ones.

0:01:44.6 JD: He discussed it numerous times in Out of the Crisis, numerous times in The New Economics. And one of the quotes that really stands out for me on this topic was in Out of the Crisis where Deming said, "Where there is fear, there will be wrong figures." And I don't think that... I don't think people sort of fully appreciate just how much sort of... "Writing fiction" is sort of how I've framed this in the past in one of our earlier episodes, but just sort of how much made-up data there is in every organization. And that can be wrong figures in the form of qualitative descriptions of important work, it can be quantitative data. But in either case, it makes it nearly impossible to improve our organizations. Because how would you even know where to start improvement if the figures and the descriptions of the work are inaccurate? So that'd be a good topic for today.

0:02:53.3 AS: Sometimes this one about fear is, sometimes it's easy for people to understand and sometimes it's hard. You know, like, when you think about fear, you can think about physical fear like, "Well, okay, am I in physical danger here?" Like, what are we talking about? Or, "Am I in fear that I'm gonna lose my job?" And some people may think that that's a good thing. And one of the first things I want to just think about is, what are the specific things in a school or in a school environment that causes people to be fearful? Maybe we could identify what you see, because you've talked about the outcome of fear is made-up data, wrong figures. It's all kinds of outcomes from fear, but what are the sources of fear?

0:03:47.2 JD: Yeah. Well, one thing I think of is you certainly can have sort of a tyrannical boss or manager. That certainly exists where there's actual fear, they yell, they threaten, passive-aggressive, those types of things. So that certainly can exist.

0:04:05.4 AS: Yep.

0:04:05.9 JD: I've definitely witnessed that in my almost 25 years in terms of career, you're gonna witness things like that. But I think more often what I'm talking about is sort of more subtle versions of fear that permeate throughout organizations. So sources, there can be different sources. I think they can come internally from some of the systems and processes you've set up in your own school or school system. Some of them are external, so, I mean, a go-to source of fear for a lot of people is, "How do my kids that I'm teaching perform on the state test?" That can be a source of fear, for sure. There is sort of internal to your system. I think the fear... I think a lot of people have sort of apprehension when the principal comes to your classroom to observe your class, and then there's sort of the ratings and rankings that go with a typical performance evaluation. So I think that can be another source of fear in a school system. And there's probably many other sort of versions of that. But I was thinking of...

0:05:25.4 JD: A lot of times when you hear people talk about driving out fear, you sort of get the negative stories. I think, not related to schools, but I think of a classic example of fear in the form of an unwillingness to speak up and say something is the...