The Fear-free Organization Quotes

“Fear-based cultures foster short-term thinking: you become defensive, seek to avoid confrontation or reprisal and focus on eliminating any threats instead of working together to deliver shared targets and outcomes.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“Excessive and persistent levels of fear create changes in brain function that then interfere with decision-making processes.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“Make it full of energy, not adrenalin; focused on possibility, not profit; generating independent thinking, not obedience; and spawning meaning everywhere because what really matters there is what really matters.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“Leaders therefore need to be able to calm their own fight/ flight/ freeze emotions of anger, disgust, shame and sadness, but most especially of fear so that they don’t get passed on to others.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“When a leader is excited about a project, or trusts the people in the team, this too is infectious; fears are calmed and people are inspired to do their best.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“Fear is never healthy in an organization. It doesn’t encourage positive action; instead it destroys motivation and productivity, and undermines your confidence and morale.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“In many organizations not a decision can be made without calling a meeting. Fear of making a mistake trumps the willingness to take risks. And without some risk-taking there is little chance of creating an exciting future. So rather than risking a decision, leaders and managers have meetings.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“Fear experiences can produce dramatic changes in the brain’s architecture, resulting in profound alterations in our assumptions and perceptions.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“Fear… is the most depressing of all the emotions; and it soon induces utter, helpless prostration, as if in consequence of, or in association with, the most violent and prolonged attempts to escape have actually been made.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture

“But triggered persistently, it destroys brain cells, causes ruminative early morning waking, and damages the immune system.”
― Paul Brown, The Fear-free Organization: Vital Insights from Neuroscience to Transform Your Business Culture