Most organisations reward a certain type of employee without thinking twice. These employees are agreeable, avoid conflict, and “just get on with it.” They take on additional work and keep the peace.
On the surface, this seems ideal.
In reality, this pattern indicates that your system operates on fear.
I’m not referring to bosses who yell or throw staplers, but rather the unspoken rule to keep your head down and your mouth shut.
This leads to what you think you want… high output and low friction… until reality catches up.
The “good employee” pattern is a response to fear.
People often connect workplace fear with obvious behaviours like defensiveness, conflict, withdrawal, and poor performance.
But fear also produces “good behaviour” as a form of self-protection. In high performers, fear manifests as excessive competence:
- over-preparing
- over-explaining
- over-delivering
- taking on tasks outside their scope
- smoothing over tension to prevent upset
This behaviour gets praised as “reliable” and “professional.”
The real driver is the belief that “if I’m easy to work with, I’ll be safe.“
Some people mistake this for personality traits when it’s actually how your nervous system reacts in threatening situations. Under pressure, people find ways to minimise risk. At work, this looks like:
- Fawn: agree, appease, please
- Freeze: go quiet, stay small
- Flight: avoid conflict, avoid visibility
- Fight: push back hard (everyone notices this one)
The first two are the most damaging. They look just like cooperation.
Fear doesn’t stop work; it distorts the flow of information.
Most leaders think fear harms productivity but they are looking at the wrong thing. Fear doesn’t immediately cut effort. It changes what people communicate, when they share it, and how honest they are willing to be.
People edit themselves before they speak:
- They soften the truth
- They leave out anything that sounds critical
- They hide uncertainty
- They wait for perfect evidence
- They mention the smallest version of the problem
You don’t receive reality; you receive a filtered version.
That’s why fear is a performance issue, not just a feelings issue.
A team can appear calm and productive while the quality of information declines.
Here’s what it looks like on the ground:
- Risks get flagged late (when they are expensive to fix)
- Assumptions go untested (because challenging them feels risky)
- Errors repeat (because no one wants to be “that person”)
- “We’re fine” becomes the automatic response (even when people are drowning)
HR notices the signs (tension, complaints, sick leave, resignations) while operations say “performance is okay.”
For a while, performance is acceptable because your best people are working twice as hard to fill the gaps. Then they leave, and you realise how much was held together by sheer willpower.
Over-compliance isn’t loyalty; it’s just shifting the load.
Fear-based systems quietly push responsibility upward.
When disagreeing feels risky, people stop making clear decisions. They escalate issues. They seek approval for things they should handle. They CC everyone and document everything to protect themselves (I even learned very early on in my career to C.Y.A. – Cover Your Ass)
It looks like “good governance” but it’s actually self-protection disguised as process.
The results include:
- Leaders become bottlenecks
- Decisions slow down
- Initiatives die
- Managers act as buffers instead of coaches
- Everyone waits for “sign-off” to avoid blame
A useful indicator is how often you hear, “I just want to check before I…”
That question can mean two different things. Someone might be being appropriately careful, or they might be afraid to make a decision without cover. You need to identify which one it is.
The quiet erosion that never appears in monthly reports.
Fear-driven teams don’t explode. They wear down gradually, and the early signs resemble operational issues, not people problems:
1. You lose early warnings
People stop bringing the raw initial signals:
“Something feels off with this client.”
“This timeline doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m not convinced this will work.”
They wait until they can defend their thoughts or until the problem is undeniable. That delay is where the damage happens.
2. Meetings sound productive but decisions are weak
Listen for lots of agreement and little challenge.
Good meetings have tension, not drama. People push back on ideas and test assumptions.
Fear-based meetings sound smooth:
“Sounds good.”
“Happy with that.”
“No issues from my side.”
“Cool, we can make it work.”
Then the real conversations take place privately afterward.
3. “Good employees” become single points of failure
The same people get relied on repeatedly: They fix what others neglect, hold the team together, prevent escalations, absorb customer frustration, and manage risks quietly.
They become the glue.
When your strategy depends on glue, you’re already in trouble.
When they burn out or leave, it seems sudden. It never is.
4. Employee relations issues don’t start where HR notices them
By the time it’s an HR issue, it has been building: Resentment that no one voices, uneven workload, passive compliance, broken agreements, and managers avoiding friction until it explodes.
Fear doesn’t eliminate conflict. It delays it, and by the time it surfaces, it’s three times more expensive to fix.
Why leaders accidentally reward fear.
I don’t know many leaders who want fearful teams.
But look at what fear produces in the short term: Fewer disagreements, quick “alignment,” “positive” feedback, fewer escalations (because people stop escalating), and high delivery driven by over-functioners.
So leaders start to think that this is what good looks like.
Without realising it, they double down: Shutting down dissent (“Let’s not be negative”), shaming mistakes, rewarding “no drama” people, treating questions as signs of incompetence, and getting annoyed when risks are raised late (even if the earlier environment wasn’t safe).
You don’t even need a villain in the story. Just apply pressure, take away patience, and watch what happens.
The hidden cost: fear creates compliance that conceals risk.
Walk into most organisations, and they’ll show you their risk register. Neat rows in a spreadsheet, all colour-coded.
The real risks aren’t in the spreadsheet. They lie in what people don’t say.
Fear produces “green reporting” where Projects appear fine until they suddenly aren’t, client issues get managed quietly until they churn, quality gets patched rather than fixed, near misses remain private, and people protect their reputation instead of the work.
Your organisation becomes less accurate with every conversation people choose not to have.
What safety changes (and what it doesn’t).
Let me be clear: psychological safety isn’t group therapy. It isn’t about lowering standards. It isn’t “being nice” or training in soft skills.
It’s a performance driver.
When people can share the truth early and especially under pressure, decisions improve, risks get managed faster, and problems are resolved before they become expensive.
It’s that simple.
When safety improves then concerns get raised early while they’re still small, assumptions are challenged before money is spent, responsibility remains where the work is done, there are fewer unnecessary escalations, and “I don’t know” becomes normal (which enhances decision-making).
Safety boosts performance by keeping information clear.
How to tell if this is happening in your organisation:
If fear is creating “good employees” in your organisation you’ll see:
In meetings:
- Lots of agreement, little challenge
- People speak vaguely instead of directly
- Junior staff rarely disagree with senior staff
- Real questions arise afterward, privately
- Decisions keep getting revisited because they weren’t tested properly upfront
In workflow:
- The same high performers constantly carry others
- Frequent last-minute escalations
- Approvals needed for routine decisions
- Wide CC’ing to stay safe
- “Busy” with little improvement
In employee relations:
- Rising “misunderstandings” and passive conflict
- Resignations that feel unexpected
- Repeated complaints about the same team dynamics
- HR addressing symptoms while operations claim “the work is fine”
If several of these signs appear in your organisation, you’re not facing personality problems. You’ve created an environment where staying quiet feels safer than speaking up.
What truly changes things is how leaders respond when someone speaks up.
The fastest way to build safety is how leaders react when someone raises an issue early.
Your team is unconsciously focusing on one question:
“Is it safe to share the early version of the truth here?”
And they’re watching your reaction closely to find out.
So pay attention when pressure mounts:
- Do you seem annoyed when someone raises a risk?
- Do you prioritise speed over accuracy?
- Do you treat dissent as disloyalty?
- Do your questions feel like interrogations?
- Do you say “why didn’t you tell me earlier” when it wasn’t safe to tell you earlier?
You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to be consistent enough that people trust what happens when they speak up.
The bottom line:
You don’t need more compliant people.
You need individuals who can think clearly, speak honestly, and act decisively under pressure.
When fear governs your organisation, you appear to have cooperation while facing delayed problems, overloaded leaders, silent burnout, and unexpected costly surprises that no one saw coming (because nobody felt safe enough to voice them).
If your organisation is full of “good employees,” ask yourself one question:
What does it cost someone here to disagree, admit uncertainty, or raise a concern early?
That answer reveals whether you’re operating based on performance or fear.
Ready to build teams that tell you the truth when it matters most?
Psychological Safety Foundations is a 90-minute workshop that gives your team the practical skills to perform under pressure without the fear that kills honest communication.
This isn’t soft skills training. It’s a training to build teams where people can think clearly, speak up early, and take responsibility when the stakes are high.
Your team will learn to recognise when fear is quietly breaking down performance, communicate clearly when pressure hits, and give feedback that strengthens working relationships instead of damaging them.
Available in-person or virtual for teams at all levels.
Contact Ann to bring Psychological Safety Foundations to your organisation:
📞 078 458 5338 | ann@flagacademy.co.za