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Organizational Leaders' Experience with Fear

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Organizational Leaders' Experience with Fear ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERS’ EXPERIENCE WITH FEAR-RELATED EMOTIONS: A CRITICAL INCIDENT STUDY AL BARKOULI A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Ph.D. in Leadership and Change Program of Antioch University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May, 2015 This is to certify that the Dissertation entitled: ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERS’ EXPERIENCE WITH FEAR-RELATED EMOTIONS: A CRITICAL INCIDENT STUDY prepared by Al Barkouli is approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Leadership and Change. Approved by: Alan Guskin, Ph.D., Chair date Jon Wergin, Ph.D., Committee Member date Philomena Essed, Ph.D., Committee Member date Michael Bassis, Ph.D., External Reader date © Copyright 2015 Al Barkouli All rights reserved Acknowledgements There are so many people I would like to thank for helping me through this rich journey of learning and growth and for reaching this milestone. First and foremost, I would like to thank my father for getting it all started and inspiring me to begin this journey more than four years ago when there were so many good reasons not to take this on with everything else in my life. Your last words are still with me every day. I wish you were still here so we could celebrate this together. I want to express my sincere gratitude to Al Guskin, my advisor and Chair, for his friendship, support, guidance and wisdom throughout this journey. It was a blessing to have Al as my Chair who has helped me bridge the gap between theory and practice because of his many years of experience in both worlds. I appreciate the support and guidance from my committee members; Philomena Essed, who helped me focus on leaders’ fears as the research topic and was there when I needed help; Jon Wergin, who was my methodology mentor and shared a pragmatic perspective of life with me. Also thank you to Michael Bassis, the external reader. I want to also express my deep gratitude to Marty Linsky who was my external mentor and who helped me better understand Heifetz and his work on adaptive leadership. To all the faculty and staff at Antioch University: thank you, you are first class professionals. I am so grateful to everyone in Cohort 11 who made this journey so much more enjoyable through the authentic relationships and rich dialogue over the three years we were together. You are friends for life. I already miss every one of you. A special thank you to my company, David Evans and Associates (DEA), for supporting me with time, resources, and encouragement—especially Suzie Willard who edited my drafts and much more and Sanjana Kapur for all the graphic support. I also want to thank the fifteen brave executives who agreed to talk to me about this very sensitive topic. Finally, I am forever thankful and indebted to my family for their support and patience over almost four years. i Nagat, my wife, and my kids; Sara, Adam, Sabrina, Lina, Omar and Salma, I could not have done this without your many sacrifices. You are the biggest reason for every breath I take. I love you. Dedication To the special person and great human being who inspired me to go on this journey. To my father, Abobaker Al-Barkouli, I hope you are looking down and smiling from heaven. God bless you, Dad. ii Abstract This study used the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) to better understand how organizational leaders experienced fear-related emotions. Through semi-structured interviews, fifteen executive leaders, mainly chief executive officers (CEOs), shared their experiences in response to threatening, risky, or dangerous incidents. In addition to a phenomenological understanding of the experience, participants illuminated the role that fear-related emotions play in leader decisions, how these emotions influence leader-follower relationships, the impacts of fear-related emotions on leaders’ health and well-being, and the ways leaders managed their experience with fear-related emotions including the role courage played. Leaders often faced threats, risks, or dangers (stimuli) from within the organization itself and from the external organizational environment. The fear of not-knowing enough or not being good enough (self-doubt) and the fear of loss that often accompanies change were experienced the most by these leaders. The participants decided between a fear-focused (maladaptive) strategy and an incident-focused (adaptive) strategy when they were susceptible to a threatening, risky or dangerous stimulus. Leader efficacy was the key to a leader’s choice, where strong leader efficacy resulted in adaptive decisions and weak leader efficacy resulted in maladaptive ones. In the follower-leader relationship, the participants often suppressed their fear-related emotions by using surface or deep acting, which at times affected leader authenticity and trust. Leaders experienced serious to mild health and well-being effects as a result of the emotional experience, while leaders who used suppression techniques experienced more serious health impacts. Supportive relationships, practicing mindfulness, and a leader’s personal courage, including the courage to be emotionally vulnerable, played an important role in how leaders managed fear-related emotions. This study has important implications to both leaders and leadership. Using complexity leadership iii framework, this study provides a better understanding of the risks, dangers and threats within the leadership context and how fear-related emotions can influence leaders and the leadership process including decision making, relationships with followers and the health and well-being of leaders. This study also highlights the important role leader efficacy plays especially when dealing with complex adaptive challenges. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA http://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLink ETD Center https://etd.ohiolink.edu/etd iv Table of Contents List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. v List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. x Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Purpose Statement ........................................................................................................................... 5 Problem Statement .......................................................................................................................... 5 Brief Review of Leadership and Emotions Literature .................................................................... 9 Leadership ....................................................................................................................................... 9 Emotions and Complexity ............................................................................................................ 11 The Perils and Risks of Complexity Leadership .......................................................................... 14 Fear Emotion ................................................................................................................................. 18 Research Questions ....................................................................................................................... 20 Research Design ........................................................................................................................... 21 Scope, Limitations, and Ethical Considerations ........................................................................... 22 Chapter Summary ......................................................................................................................... 23 Literature Review.......................................................................................................................... 25 Fear-Related Emotions: Psychological and Biological Perspectives ........................................... 27 Relevant Models and Theories ..................................................................................................... 30 Stimuli of Leaders’ Fear-Related Emotions ................................................................................. 39 Leaders’ Experience of Fear-Related Emotions ........................................................................... 42 Fear-Related Emotions Within the Leader ................................................................................... 43 Variation of the Experience of Fear-Related Emotions Between Leaders—Emotional Variation ....................................................................................................................................................... 50 v Fear-Related Emotions and Interaction Between Leaders and Followers .................................... 53 The Impacts of Fear-Related Emotions on the Leader’s Well-Being ........................................... 57 The Need for Courage as the Way Forward ................................................................................. 59 What Is Courage? .......................................................................................................................... 62 Relationship Between Fear and Courage ...................................................................................... 67 Hardiness .....................................................................................................................................
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