Neuroscience indicates that threat, stress, and inappropriate treatment restrict innovation, compromise health, and affect outcomes; providing keys for organizations to promote sustained change.”
In organizations, fear is often minimized as if it were just another emotion, although neuroscience reveals that it is a biological reaction: it activates the alert system, modifies brain chemistry and alters our way of thinking, feeling, acting and relating.
When a person perceives a threat—an unpredictable boss, mistreatment between collaborators, a humiliating comment, economic uncertainty, the possibility of losing one’s job—the sympathetic nervous system is activated, a branch of the autonomic nervous system responsible for responding to danger. The amygdala, an area of the brain that detects danger, activates an automatic protocol (the body’s defense mode): cortisol increases, heart rate increases and the body prepares to survive. In this state, the prefrontal cortex, where clarity, the ability to make decisions, expansive thinking and problem solving reside, is partially “offline.” Therefore, in work cultures where fear dominates, people do not contribute ideas or innovate: not because they do not know, but because their brain is in defense mode. Their energy goes into protecting, not creating.
This state of sustained alert has consequences. People make more mistakes, sleep worse, get irritated easily, mistrust each other, and become emotionally disconnected from work. Chronic fear wears down bonds and extinguishes motivation. It is no coincidence that organizations with the highest turnover are often those that generate the greatest emotional tension. People don’t quit work: they quit the excitement they feel every day at that job.
The other way exists and is also biological. When the environment is safe, respectful and clear, the parasympathetic system, responsible for restoring calm, is activated. In this state, the brain releases neurotransmitters associated with trust, connection and recovery, which promotes collaboration, openness and collective creativity: cortisol lowers and the prefrontal cortex is reignited. People think better, collaborate more and are encouraged to propose.
How do we go from fear mode to trust mode?
Companies can move forward by creating clear frameworks, enabling responsible dialogues, and building cultures that transform error into valuable information for improvement. Leaders need to regulate their own emotional state: tone, gaze, non-verbal language and the way they correct can activate threat or activate trust.
And everyone can train pauses, conscious breathing, and the ability to name what they feel before reacting.
In a fast-paced world, choosing calm is not passivity: it is leadership. Transformation begins when each person assumes responsibility for regulating their own emotional state to spread confidence instead of fear.
Roxana G. Ponzo, CPN & Professional Master Coach
More than 20 years accompanying companies and work teams
Contact details
Linkedin: Roxana PONZO
Instagram: Roxana Ponzo Coach andtraintc.gr
Wapp: +54 9 11 6290 7692
email: [email protected]
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