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Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

One of the most pervasive emotions in the workplace today is fear.The reason that there is so much fear is that everybody wants to build a learning organization, but nobody actually wants anyone to learn. Learning requires tolerating inefficiency and failure. If you genuinely want to build a learning organization, you have to accept the fact that learners are never as proficient as experts. Learning comes at a price: the experts might not get to use their expertise, and the learners might make mistakes.

One of the side effects of fear is that it absolutely retards the flow of information inside a company. So you have this anomaly: Companies pat themselves on the back as knowledge-management businesses, but because nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news, nobody inside those companies knows what is going on.

...Yet another side effect is that fear causes individuals to focus only on the short term and on their own survival.

Organizations of all kinds are cluttered with control mechanisms that paralyze employees and leaders alike. Where have all these policies, procedures, protocols, laws, and regulations come from? And why is it so difficult to avoid creating more, even as we suffer from the terrible confines of overcontrol? These mechanisms seem to derive from our fear -- our fear of one another, of a harsh competitive world, and of the natural processes of growth and change that confront us daily. Years of such fear have resulted in these byzantine systems. We never effectively control people with these systems, but we certainly stop a lot of good work from getting done.

Fear constrains behavior. Love liberates it. So, if all you need is compliance, fear will probably do. But fear freezes initiative, stifles creativity, and provides no incentive to stretch and grow. Love is about wanting and allowing people to be at their best, and engaging with them to help them achieve that.

And the antidote to fear? Pull people out of their panic and self-protective impulses by first acknowledging the difficulties, then raising their eyes and hearts to a possibility of success.

At that point you can take advantage of their newly available and hopeful energy to make that possibility a reality.

Hate is the consequence of fear. We fear something before we hate it.