I hope you have had an experience where the group you are in catches fire — ideas are bouncing off the walls and everyone is enthusiastic and you all have unlimited amounts of confidence and energy moving forward.

I’m afraid more and more I see the opposite — organizations that are afraid. A friend and I were talking about this today, how the fact of the matter is a lot of organizational leadership is about making decisions you know are likely to be “wrong” (or as a CEO I worked with liked to say, specifically wrong but directionally correct). But rather than accept the idea that the best they can hope for is to be “right enough” to have the chance to course correct later, many organizational (and individuals) move into paralyzing fear.

Of course, if the people thought it was ok to admit they were afraid, they might be able to move through the fear. Instead, they seem to adopt any number of ineffective “fear minimization techniques” — excessive arguing, never making decisions, criticism and blame of someone else if something goes wrong, “us vs. them” fueds, avoidance, etc.

As Jack Kornfield puts it in A Path with Heart, our fear causes us to “contract”, to begin building a “false sense of self”. Rather than say we don’t know, or feel the anxiety of not being sure, we limit our choices, make hasty decisions or refuse to decide, snap at whoever brings issues up, isolate ourselves…We cut ourselves off from asking for help, enlisting others in the decision, really looking at where the fear comes from. Instead we put forward a “false self” that seems bigger and more confident (and less approachable) than we really are.

Unfortunately, fear in organizations is contagious. The “contracted behavior” from one person triggers contracted behavior in others. The CEO becomes critical of any ideas, so the VP’s begin to join the game of “criticize others but offer nothing yourself”, so “us and them” wars spring up between departments so the employees begin taking less responsibility….Pretty soon you have an organization where nothing positive can happen.

It can be confusing to me coming into an organization like this. I can feel all the blocks, but no one else is willing to admit they are there — because if they admit it they will have to change it, which they think means they have to go back to feeling the fear they have defended against. But the “blocks” CAN be taken down, if enough people within the organization are able to take one more risk…with help.

Is your organization in fear? Think about the last time you openly discussed a new idea, or identified a problem, or took on the responsibility to try something new…Don’t you miss it?