Lead with Repect or Fear?
This is the first podcast episode I’ve listened to twice, and each time, I felt really torn, both during and after. For context, in case you don’t want to listen to the podcast: Niall Ferguson believes that sometimes you need a bit of harshness to be more effective—he argues that being feared is crucial. On the other hand, Adam Grant takes the opposite view, saying that he has never needed to create fear to be successful or effective. As a fan of Adam Grant’s, I find it hard to disagree with his perspective, but at the same time, I feel that fear is a major motivator for people. If you look at the political landscape both historically and today, many leaders reached their positions by generating fear and ruling through it—even in the most democratic regimes. Fear of Nazis, Communists, Islam, the West, the East… it's everywhere. However, I also don’t believe that using fear as a weapon is the right approach. If your people are walking around afraid of you, they’re not operating at t...