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It may seem overly dramatic to compare abuse at home with abuse at work. After all, a child at home fears for his life whereas an employee merely fears for his job.
But a commonality can be found in our reaction to fear and how it debilitates our ability to function.
I had never heard of Alan Cumming. He's a Scottish actor of some note who is a regular on The Good Wife, a show I've never seen. He was nominated for an Emmy this year.
I was strumming along the biographies at Barnes and Noble a couple of months ago and came across his memoir, Not My Father's Son. Something about the book piqued my interest and I picked it up.
I gotta tell you, I know he's an actor, but this Cumming is an excellent writer.
It's the story, in part, of a young man terribly abused both emotionally and physically by his father. And it's the story of him discovering his roots through the British show Who Do You Think You Are?, which traces the genealogies of stars and reveals interesting stuff.
I'd like to take you to one scene early-on in the book.
Alan was a young teenager, old enough to work for his father fulltime when he was on break from school. His father was a caretaker of a very large property in Scotland.
Alan's job this summer day was to separate strong spruce saplings from the "runt" spruce saplings that would be discarded.
His dad grabbed up a bunch of saplings in his hand, good and bad alike with no discernable difference, and ordered his son to put the good ones "over there" and the bad ones "over there."
Alan asked how he could tell the difference between the good and the bad. His dad growled that he should use his "common (f-ing) sense!"
Knowing and experiencing his father's wrath for his apparent failures in the past, and seeing the volatility of his father at that moment, Alan jumped into the chore petrified.
His description is instructive:
For the next few hours I sifted through the trees like a mole, blinking and wincing in the semidarkness. After a while the saplings began to blur into a prickly procession, spilling through my fingers.
I would check myself and go back through the discarded pile at my feet and wonder if I had been too harsh in my judgment. The pile of rejected saplings seemed to be bigger than the successful ones, and I questioned if my criteria was too harsh.
Then pragmatism would win over and I'd tell myself I needed to be ruthless, that this pile had to be shifted and it never would be by prevaricating or becoming sentimental.
And a paragraph or two later:
At times I felt I was on a roll, but then the panic would set in. I would glance down at the mound of discarded trees and realize I had been too hasty in my judgment. They seemed too healthy, too thick, too tall. But I couldn't save them all, could I?
Every moment of doubt was compounded by the knowledge that I was wasting precious time and before long my father would return. And of course, he did.
Fear is a motivator, no doubt. If my house is burning down fear of pain and death will motivate me to run for safety.
But fear wielded by a leader is often cruel.
When one's focus is on the reaction of the leader rather than simply producing an excellent result the consequences are generally distraction and negative outcomes.
For Alan, fear of his father bred panic. Panic is debilitating and breeds self-doubt. Self-doubt breeds indecision and indecision inaction.
A workplace ruled by fear produces the same.
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