What Delivers Results: Fear or Trust?
May 12, 2025
Written by Pierre-Laurent (PILO) Verdon
In one of our recent leadership training sessions with the Paradox team, we received an outstanding question from a participant: What will make a team deliver results fast? What if instilling fear in a team works better than trust?!
As part of the pre-work, there was a short video clip from Amy Edmondson about psychological safety. In a nutshell, the video reported the results of a study performed by Google about the single biggest factor that makes a team perform—and the conclusion was psychological safety. With that in mind, we assumed research was on our side and did not need to explain psychological safety any further… until we had this brilliant question: What if fear was actually bringing results faster?
This was a brilliant reframe. What I love about this question is that it does not assume anything… and even better, it challenges the point directly (“radical candor”!) with a genuine desire to understand: What is psychological safety? Does it really work?
About 20 years ago, I was assisting a scout leader at a camp in the mountains. I was about 20 years old and had been a Scout myself for about 12 years. We were a team of five leaders supporting him and leading a troop of about 45 boys (12–17 years old). We were finishing a highly intensive 3-day game involving lots of running and fighting, with limited supplies of food and water. The last part of the game was happening in the woods at night with a flag game opposing two forts on each side of the forest. To end the game and announce the results, we gathered the troop on a field away from the pine forest. We were facing each other in a large square—not as tight as usual—feeling exhausted and drained. We were all there but one… indeed, our troop leader was missing.
Someone said, “Oh, I just saw him; he’s coming.” So, we waited… and waited some more… until I thought this was way too long. I went back his way with a flashlight and, using my — for once useful — strong voice to call him out. I could not hear any voice back… silence… a heavy, dark night. Then I heard a far and faint voice screaming, “Help! Help!” My heart pace picked up… this was happening… the emergency you train for but hope you will never have to face.
I started running towards the voice. Got closer only to discover our leader had fallen into a crack in the middle of the leaves… it was hard to see and imagine an adult could fall in there. As I got closer, I realized he had fallen badly and deep into the heart of the earth. He sounded like he was about 12 to 15 meters lower than me. I immediately called for help, specifying only troop leaders and patrol leaders needed to come. My teammates heard and asked the Patrol Seconds to keep an eye on the troop and reassure the younger ones.
In the blink of an eye, the leaders found me. I told them about the situation in one short sentence, clearly stated the objective (“We get him out ASAP”), and I mentioned one thing: undo the forts to get the ropes—do it quickly. Then, I maintained contact with our troop leader… gathering information from him and making sure he knew help was coming. He was literally climbing back a wall in the dark inside the mountain.
What I remember precisely is the silence from our leadership team in action. Everybody was working and getting things done. Everyone knew precisely what they had to do.
Communication was scarce but extremely efficient. We had never rescued anyone from a mountain before, yet we seemed to know what needed to be done. The team freed the rope, and someone suggested installing it in a way that would give us leverage to lift our friend’s heavy body. We listened and did just that. We started to pull him out, constantly communicating with him to extract him from the tight space as quickly yet as gently as possible. Finally, after lots of careful pulling and communication, we saw his face emerge, bloodied but alive. We were so relieved to see him. Someone dashed off to reassure the troop.
To me, this is the ultimate illustration of psychological safety! We had lost our leader and needed to perform a rescue — something we had never done before — with the outcome either being fatality or survival. Psychological safety was strongly present in our silence… a deep trust in each other that we could succeed despite limited knowledge and experience; trust in our skills and ability to work together through a scary situation none of us had ever faced.
On the opposite end, I once worked in the corporate world in a team constantly led by fear. First, the objectives were unachievable: everyone knew it, but nobody talked about it. Then, we were told repeatedly that the pressure we received came from higher up and needed to be passed down to our teams. We were obsessed with results — “know your numbers.” The monthly review was a ceremony where we all knew someone would be "shot down" (highly criticized) in front of everyone else. This created unhealthy internal competition. The primary purpose was to survive — i.e., keep your job. Every individual in the team felt isolated. There was no sense of team spirit, only a few fragile coalitions. There was no togetherness, community, or care.
It was supposed to be about results, yet our focus was on survival. In that environment, creativity, purpose, and meaning at work were almost non-existent. Although we appeared extremely busy, we achieved very little individually and nothing collectively.
So, what is psychological safety? This definition sums it up well: “Psychological safety is being able to show and employ one's self without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career” (Kahn, 1990, p. 708). Reading this carefully, you can see how the corporate example starkly contrasts with the scouting one.
My biggest insight from these two stories is to observe where fear resides. In the scouting example, the danger was outside the team. Although it was a terrifying situation where life was truly at stake, there was no fear within the team. We acted with courage and trust in one another. Nobody was alone at that moment… notice how everyone was cared for at all levels in the troop. We were collectively focused on saving someone.
In the second example, the overall objective was to grow the business, yet everyone was constantly scared for their own survival (losing their job). Fear was inside the team, like a wolf prowling within the sheepfold. Fear inhibited our ability to innovate, be creative, share perspectives, and collaborate. Each person was individually focused on self-preservation.
So, when you think about the teams you’re part of today, ask yourself:
- Where is fear? Is it outside the team? Is it inside the team? Is it in you?
- What about the team’s environments you create? What energy do you think your climate enables?
- What resources do you think your team members are able to access? How does that actually really deliver long term sustainable results vs short term hustling?
