About Leadership and Turnover - Fear vs Love in Machiavelli - Why love finally wins...

Along with Tom Peters and Sun Tzu, Machiavelli is probably one of the most cited authors at leadership-over-beer sessions.

Here are in a nutshell the teachings of Machiavelli's Fear vs Love taken from The Prince analyzed form the business perspective of leadership and keeping employees united and loyal and consequently engaged and productive.

The goal of this discussion is to show that love is better than fear to keep your employees united and loyal. And by united and loyal I understand to control your turnover and to make them refrain from leaving your company.

I argue that:

A. These teachings (fear works, etc) do not apply in our 21st century western corporate world and all those who use them have an outdated view, unless you use them to prove a point like we do now. :)).

B. Employees' hate and indifference or disengagement towards the employer increases turnover while love is the only one out of the 3 that keeps en employee in his job.

C. Machiavelli is right to present a dichotomy between fear and love and now the corporate world has the conditions that make it better for managers to be loved by employees than feared.


Machiavelli's Teachings (see end of article for the references)

The goal of a great leader who wants to stay in power the longest is to keep the subjects united and loyal... And by subjects we understand workers :)

The ideal of any ruler to keep his subjects united and loyal is to be loved and not feared - but this is not possible - see below.

According to Machiavelli, a ruler can do anything as long as he avoids being hated.

Here are his tactics:

1. Establish yourself on fear - because you can control it

2. Try to be loved - but remember that you cannot control love

3. Don't touch your subjects' property and women - because this brings hate

4. Killing someone's relative is better (because he forgets faster) than taking one's property

5. Humans are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous


Machiavelli’s teachings from a 21st century perspective

1. You can control fear - true in general in any governing model fear still works BUT false in a corporate environment where employees have the choice of leaving - only in US 77 million baby-boomers are to be replaced by only 44 million gen-X -

2. You cannot control love - true in general since love is a 2-way emergent property BUT false in a corporate reality.

You can influence love, since an employee comes to work for you he's already open to love so all you have to do is to sustain that relationship.

3. Touching one's property brings hate - true - either hate or a headbut and a lawsuit

4. Killing and stuff - does not apply (at least not in the western society)

5. Humans are ungrateful, wicked, etc.- false - this might have been true 5 centuries ago but the values of the western society have evolved and we can safely say that most humans nowadays do not share these characteristics. So many centuries of ungratefulness taught the western world to appreciate a helpful hand :)

In any case if an employer does not trust his employees he might as well let them go; paranoia smells stronger than bull***...


Why Hate does not work and Love woks

Since we've seen that we can control love and that people are not wicked and they cannot be managed by fear suddenly we realize that with love we can reach more easily our managerial ideal : "to be loved and not feared" and having our subjects united and loyal...

Take that old-school-middle-manager-wannabe-super-VP who screams at everybody and does status meetings twice a day!

It goes without mentioning that the present workforce has so many employment options that fear, paranoia and hate will push employees to quit an employer.

Conclusion: Hate does not work. Love woks.


Why indifference or disengagement does not work

Does indifference or disengagement work?

You may ask, since we know that hate is a reason to leave, why does it have to be necessarily love that makes workers stay? Why not the sole absence of hate, or pure indifference?

Because disengaged workers have a negative performance impact (about 32% in operating income decline according to a ISR research 2006 study).

And people are not dumb nor insensitive (hope you don't have them in your company at least) ... they know when they underperform and low professional efficacy is one of the three burnout dimensions (along with cynicism and emotional exhaustion).

Also although not perfectly related, it has been shown that employee engagement has an inverse relationship with burnout (see works by organizational and clinical psychologists such as Schaufeli and Demerouti).

Since indifference and disengagement may induce loss of performance and increase burnout they subsequently have an impact in turnover increase .

Conclusion: Disengagement does not work


Fear bad, Love good, Bad managers bad, Machiavelli good

Now, in Machiavellian terms instead of:
an employer can do anything as long as he avoids being hated,
we can conclude that:
an employer can get away with anything as long as he makes sure he is being loved.

And his workers will stay engaged, united, loyal, productive, etc.

So yes, we have seen that love works and that Machiavellian fear in leadership does not really make sense anymore. Unless you use it like we did and turn it partially upside down.

Fear vs Love? Love kicks ass! So get your story straight or your feelings...

Fear, killing and wickedness are no longer standards and whoever uses this as a reference to make a leadership or management point does not know his political studies.

So please stop using references that don't apply anymore. Don't get me started on Sun Tzu...

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And yes, yes, I'll explain how this magical 'love for the employer' works and keeps workers happy, loyal and engaged...

Too good to be true? Stay tuned... I'll give you numbers, stats, references, diagrams, theories, practical examples, nice photos, funny catch phrases, etc you name it... or maybe you might need to come to one of my presentations... not sure... have to ask my boss... but back to Machiavelli...

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Here are some quotes from a 1908 translation of W. K. Marriott see Chapter XVII.

"every prince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel"

"a prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty;"

"whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with."

"Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you."

"And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which,owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails."

"because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women."

"but above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony."

"Nevertheless he ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and too much distrust render him intolerable."

"men loving according to their own will and fearing according to that of the prince, a wise prince should establish himself on that which is in his own control and not in that of others; he must endeavour only to avoid hatred"

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Octavian Mihai