Managing by Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD)

You’ll recognize the employee who is being managed by F.U.D. — he or she has contacted the EAP for stress, has fears for job security in spite of reasonable performance, doesn’t know how to please the manager.

What is F.U.D.?

F.U.D. stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, a term I co-opted from the marketing world. Microsoft sales staff are particularly adept at F.U.D… when asked if a 3rd party software will work with Windows, the F.U.D. answer is to respond “we have not tested that application with our system [uncertainty], and it is not an approved developer for Microsoft [doubt], and we have heard customers complain that installing that application has destroyed all of the data on their hard drive, they lost everything [fear]. But you could buy Microsoft’s application, which has been thoroughly tested and approved (and costs 100% more than the competitor).”

How Managers Use F.U.D.

Most managers who use F.U.D. techniques do so unwittingly (that is, without intentional malice). More likely, they are overwhelmed with the deliverables on the product they manage, as well as trying to manage a staff. Working on survival mode, the manager is most likely to abandon nurturance and patience in favor of pressure techniques and criticism–and that’s when F.U.D. appears.

Employees experience F.U.D. when there is:

• an absence of positive feedback and recognition from the manager, which then limits communication only to problems and complaints
• critical attention paid to details normally considered to be autonomous tasks
• frequent criticism of the employee’s work or choices
• non-verbal communication of frustration and overwhelm on the part of the manager [such as sighing, grunting, slamming doors, etc.]

How to Consult with the F.U.D. Manager

To start with, we’re not going to use the actual term “F.U.D.” out loud with the manager, right?

If your consultation is sought by a manager regarding an employee concern, and you happen to discern that the manager has a bit of F.U.D. style, consider these options for your consulting:

• engage the manager in describing his/her development or performance goals for the employee(s). This invites perspective-taking, and inserts the expectation that the manager can and should be thinking about where to lead the employee
• drawing from Emotional Intelligence concepts, look for opportunities in the consultation to build manager empathy by inserting some predictions of typical employee responses to criticism
• ask the manager what the employee is doing right, which introduces the opportunity for the follow-up question “and how do you normally prefer to provide rewards or recognition for positive performance or productivity?”

Feed What You Want to Grow

This concept is both for you and your consultee… for the manager, and using your own authentic vocabulary, revisit the wisdom of the ages that it is helpful to reinforce desirable behaviors with positive attention; for yourself, find ways to stay in touch with the manager so that you can look for those “teachable moments” that demonstrate your support for the manager.

Come back soon for my follow-up blog entry on a related theme, titled “Adopting a Manager for Uninvited Consultation.”

Now It’s Your Turn

Got any interesting anecdotes or confirmations for the concept of F.U.D.? Would love to hear from you by using the “comment” button below…