Fear-Based Leadership at Work: What Voldemort Can Teach Us About Ego, Power and the Price of Fear

Welcome And The Core Idea

Speaker 0: A great story teaches us something about being a demon.

Speaker 0: I'm Cheryl Paris, and this is Work stress anxiety. Together,

Speaker 1: let's borrow a little wisdom from a story to help us navigate a very modern world.

Speaker 1: Have you ever noticed that some people don't have to say anything before the whole room changes?

Speaker 1: 1 person walks through the door, conversation stops, people sit up straight, someone suddenly becomes fascinated by the little doo doo that they've just made.

Speaker 1: It's almost as if the room collectively holds its breath.

Speaker 1: Today isn't really about Harry Potter, it's about something much more common.

Managers who confuse fear with respect

Speaker 1: It's about the managers who confuse fear with respect.

Speaker 1: Hi and welcome to Work stress anxiety. I am Cheryl Parrotts.

Speaker 1: Welcome if you're new here.

Speaker 1: If you're listening because work has started following you home, if meetings replay themselves inside your head while you're trying to fall asleep, or if you're brilliant at your job but somehow keep wondering whether you're actually the problem, you are in exactly the right place.

Speaker 1: Before we start, I just wanna say thank you.

Speaker 1: Whether you've been here since my very 1st episode or you've just discovered the podcast, I'm genuinely grateful that you've chosen to spend these minutes with me.

Speaker 1: Every message I receive reminds me that none of us are struggling in isolation.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: 00 so everybody should be back at their desks.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Lunch has finished at this sheltered housing scheme, residents have wandered back to their flats, the staff are chatting while they're waiting for the afternoon meeting to begin.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: It's 1 of those ordinary afternoons that no 1 expects to remember.

The Meeting Where Everything Shifts

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: The atmosphere is relaxed, people are making cups of tea, eating too many biscuits, Someone wrestles with a photocopier while it seems to have some sort of personal vendetta, you know photocopiers.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: People are actually smiling and today's meeting is supposed to be good news because the organisation has agreed to invest in the building.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: There's talk of an expansion, an in house hairdresser, a regular podiatrist, better facilities nothing dramatic, just practical improvements that will genuinely make life better for the residents and everyone feels quite optimistic.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Then the area manager walks in and everything changes.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Nobody announces it, nobody says here we go.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: The room simply shifts, conversations stop halfway through, people straighten their backs, eye contact suddenly becomes optional. 1 of the managers there is a lovely lady called Tony.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Tony's 40 years old.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Excellent, truly excellent at what she does because the residents trust her, families ask for her, you know, she's that sort of manager who solves problems quietly before they become everyone else's problems.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: The meeting starts, Toni answers a question, then she's criticised publicly, not over something dangerous, not over poor care, not even over anything particularly significant, something tiny, something that could quite easily have been dealt with privately. And that's when something struck me.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: The criticism wasn't really about correcting a mistake, it was a performance, a reminder to everyone else in the room about who held the power.

The difference between respect and fear

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Funny thing about respect, it rarely arrives looking like silence, but fear does.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: And think that's where so, so many workplaces get the 2, I think, completely confused. So, where does this leave the meetings?

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Let's just leave the meeting for a moment because what happened to Tony isn't unusual, in fact it's 1 of those life lessons.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: That's exactly why it's worth talking about.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Most workplaces don't have a Voldemort or is it Lord Voldemort?

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Now don't get me wrong, I appreciate there are some people who just for whatever reason, they've had a bad time in life, but honestly, they just literally suck the positive energy out of any situation.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Not that I'm trying to be judgmental here, it's just that I've seen it so many times how 1 person can just literally suck the energy out of a room.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: But they have someone whose ego arrives about 30 seconds before they do. I'm not talking about someone who's evil. No, I'm not.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Most people aren't evil.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: I'm talking about the manager whose mood becomes everyone else's weather forecast.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: People check their face before they check their diaries.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: You know, you've worked somewhere like that where you can tell what sort of day it's going to be just by the sound of someone's foot steps in the corridor outside.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: And after a while you stop noticing you're doing it, you become an expert at reading those tiny signals the sigh, the folded arms, the raised eyebrow, the email that simply says can we talk?

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: 5 words that have ruined most evenings that most people care to admit. And here's what I think is so fascinating.

Your nervous system's favourite question

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Your nervous system loves patterns.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Its favourite question isn't am I happy? It's I think am I safe?

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: If criticism has become unpredictable, your body starts scanning for danger before your conscious mind has even opened the meeting agenda.

Why Your Body Scans For Danger

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Maybe that sounds familiar, you rehearse what you're going to say before every meeting, you read the email 3 times before pressing send, you apologise for things that you don't actually need to apologise for, not because you've suddenly become less capable, because uncertainty has quietly become exhausting.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: And this is 1 of the biggest myths I think about overthinking.

The myth of overthinking

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: People think of it as a personality flaw. I don't.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: I think overthinking is often what your brain is doing.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: It's almost like it's trying to hold some sort of committee meeting, you know, version of you wants to have a vote, 1 says send the email, another says rewrite it, Another part of you says, well, what if she reads it in the wrong way?

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Another part of you says, okay, perhaps wait until tomorrow.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Nobody can agree. Nobody So, nothing happens.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Not because you're indecisive, because your brain is desperately trying to stop you making the wrong move and that's why And why is the committee meeting happening?

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Because somewhere along the line your nervous system learned that getting something wrong carried a heavy cost.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: A cost that you perceived as heavy.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Maybe it's embarrassment, maybe it's criticism, maybe being made to feel small, so now every decision gets referred to the committee inside your head.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Unfortunately, you know from your own experience, committees are famous at making you know from your own experience, I think it's fair wearing a because real leaders don't shrink the room, they expand it.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: It creates enough psychological safety for people to disagree, ask questions, admit mistakes well, well, well before they become big big problems.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: And yes, to me fear is expensive not just for the individual but for the whole team, the organisation, people just stop sharing ideas, innovation dries up like some dried leaf.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Problems that are there start getting hidden, states get covered over.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: The ironic thing is that that leader is trying the hardest to stay in control often ends up receiving the least honest information, which as a leader is crucial, you need honest information and this is where most of us accidentally, I think, make things harder for ourselves.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: 1 of the things that I've noticed, we start measuring our own worth through someone else's behaviour.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: She spoke to me like that. He ignored my idea.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: I mustn't be very good, maybe.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: But before you sentence yourself, let's just widen the camera here because there might be another explanation that you've never been taught to consider. What could that be?

2. Becoming a detective

Step Back And Look For Patterns

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Well, imagine you're no longer sitting in that meeting.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Instead, you're standing quietly at the back of the room.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Just imagine that for a moment.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: You're not trying to escape situation, you're simply trying to see more of it, more of what's going on because stress has a really annoying habit of zooming the lens right in until all we can see is ourselves.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: When you step back 3 or 4 paces metaphorically something interesting happens.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: You start noticing things you couldn't see when you were emotionally right in the middle of it.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: You notice that other people have stopped contributing.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: You notice nobody challenges the manager.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: You notice experienced staff suddenly become very quiet.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: The picture even gets bigger and here's something I've learnt over the years individual moments can be very misleading because we all have bad weeks and bad months and bad years and bad days but patterns, patterns really are.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: 1 difficult conversation might seem to be a bad day, the same pattern with everyone week in week out tells a very different story. Patterns are evidence.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: That's why detectives look for them and that's why we should too.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: So instead of asking, What's wrong with me?

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Try asking yourself this.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: As you stand there observing what's going on what pattern am I actually looking at? Because they're very different questions.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: 1 assumes guilt before you've gathered any information and the other asks you to become curious, just a little bit curious, before you become self critical.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Okay, so here's a sentence I'd love, absolutely love for you to remember Someone else's behaviour is data, it isn't automatically my identity. Say that again. Someone else's behaviour is data.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: It isn't automatically your identity.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Because if you remember nothing else from today, remember that, please.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: So here's an experiment that you might want to try this week.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Become a detective.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Not a prosecutor, not a defence lawyer, just a detective.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: When something happens that knocks your confidence, I want you to take a moment and write down 3 things.

The Detective Method For Confidence

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: The 3 things are question number 1, what actually happened?

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: The facts. You know, rip, is it Kipling's number 6? Kipling's 6?

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Who, what, why, when, how, where, I can't remember them, but use that as a guide, only the facts.

So let's take you to a Thursday afternoon, it's just after 02: Imagine the meeting was recorded by your own personal security camera, No assumptions, no mind reading, no filling in the gaps, just what actually happened.

Question number 2: What evidence says I genuinely handled this badly? Notice I said evidence. Not feelings evidence.

Then question number 3: What evidence tells me something about the other person's behaviour?

Then question number 3: Because that's evidence too and we often forget to collect those things.

Then question number 3: Okay, So before we finish, let me leave you with these 3 thoughts. What do I hope?

Then question number 3: So before we finish, let me leave you with these 3 thoughts.

What to remember

Then question number 3: What do I hope you understand now?

Then question number 3: What I hope is that you understand that your nervous system isn't making you weak, it's trying to keep you safe in an environment it has learnt might not be so.

Then question number 3: What can you stop blaming yourself for?

Then question number 3: Every emotional reaction that you have to an unpredictable leader, that reaction makes sense.

Then question number 3: And what 1 thing you can try next.

Then question number 3: I invite you to become curious before you become self critical.

Then question number 3: Become curious like the detective.

Then question number 3: Remember some managers build confidence, others collect fear.

Then question number 3: I want you to know the difference because your confidence is way, way too expensive to leave in someone else's hands.

Then question number 3: Like Andy, my friend often says, don't let anyone live in your head rent free.

Then question number 3: So if today's episode resonated with you, I'd love for you to podcast at followthepodcast.com/workstressanxiety so that you never miss an episode and until next time remember someone else needs to feel powerful, someone until the next time remember someone else's need to feel powerful isn't evidence that you're powerless.

Final Takeaways And Follow Link

Then question number 3: So every step you take, no matter how small, is a step towards a brighter and more balanced future.

Then question number 3: Trust in your journey and remember progress is progress no matter the pace.

Then question number 3: I'm Cheryl Paris and thank you for listening to Work stress anxiety. Bye for now.

Then question number 3: I hope today's episode gave you something useful to carry into your week.

Then question number 3: Now finish your coffee, take a breath and remember progress is progress no matter the pace. Until next time. Bye for now.

Fear-Based Leadership at Work: What Voldemort Can Teach Us About Ego, Power and the Price of Fear

About this episode

Welcome And The Core Idea

Managers who confuse fear with respect

The Meeting Where Everything Shifts

The difference between respect and fear

Your nervous system's favourite question

Why Your Body Scans For Danger

The myth of overthinking

2. Becoming a detective

Step Back And Look For Patterns

The Detective Method For Confidence

What to remember

Final Takeaways And Follow Link

Chapters

Fear-Based Leadership at Work: What Voldemort Can Teach Us About Ego, Power and the Price of Fear

About this episode

Welcome And The Core Idea

Managers who confuse fear with respect

The Meeting Where Everything Shifts

The difference between respect and fear

Your nervous system's favourite question

Why Your Body Scans For Danger

The myth of overthinking

2. Becoming a detective

Step Back And Look For Patterns

The Detective Method For Confidence

What to remember

Final Takeaways And Follow Link

Chapters

How to Stop Being a Perfectionist (Without Lowering Your Standards)