INBOX INSIGHTS: Fear-Based Management Failures, Economic Indicators (2025-05-21) - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

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INBOX INSIGHTS: Fear-Based Management Failures, Economic Indicators (2025-05-21)

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Leading With Fear Is Not Leadership

I posted about this on LinkedIn this week, but it is worth repeating and expanding upon.

You can read the post here

Leaders, Do Better.

If your goal is to instill fear in your team to get something done, you’re not a leader. You’re not motivating. This article outlines everything that is wrong with someone abusing their “leadership” powers.

Let’s be crystal clear: telling employees to “leave pity city” or suggesting “work-life balance is your problem” isn’t leadership. It’s bullying. Full stop.

Leaders set the tone for the entire organization. Bad leadership isn’t a new problem. In fact, it’s probably as old as humans. However, what we’re seeing is more entitlement to behave poorly. There is this misconception that technology will magically replace human employees, therefore we can treat people as badly as we want. Tech will pick up the slack.

Leaders who have this mindset are poorly misguided and hugely mistaken. You NEED the human teams to build and maintain the technology, to evolve it, to use it. If you’ve alienated your people, you no longer have a team or the tech you wanted to replace them with.

This Isn’t Leadership. It’s Intimidation.

What we’re seeing in this article is a parade of executives who are confusing authority with leadership. Jamie Dimon’s profanity-laced rants. Starbucks telling remaining employees to “step it up” after cutting 1,000 jobs. Uber changing work policies and essentially saying “deal with it.”

These aren’t leadership moments. They’re power trips.

And I’m frankly shocked that board members and investors aren’t more concerned. Because this approach is business suicide dressed up as “tough management.”

When I was a product manager, I reported to a VP who led with fear. He would openly yell and scream at me and my team, all while being completely out of touch with the actual work. Many days, I left in tears, unsure of how I was going to show up the next day. But here’s the thing: I was also a leader. I was responsible for my team. It was my job to protect them, advocate for them, and guide them. It wasn’t a great time in my career, and it has left me somewhat traumatized. But I showed up for my team and helped them through the poor management we faced. In the end, this VP was let go, and we could all let out the breath we had been collectively holding for years.

The Real Cost of Fear-Based Management

When you lead through intimidation:

You kill psychological safety, which directly impacts innovation
You create an environment where people hide problems instead of solving them
You encourage yes-people rather than critical thinkers
You set yourself up for massive turnover the moment the job market improves
You damage your employer brand for years to come

That’s not pragmatism. It’s short-sighted and destructive.

The Leadership Gap is Showing

What’s particularly troubling is that these aren’t new managers who don’t know better. These are seasoned executives who are choosing to throw tantrums rather than lead effectively through difficult times.

The “you should be grateful you have a job” approach is the leadership equivalent of “because I said so” parenting. It might get temporary compliance, but it destroys trust permanently.

What Real Leaders Do in Tough Times

Real leaders:

Are honest about challenges without being demeaning
Set clear expectations without resorting to threats
Listen to concerns even when they can’t address all of them
Create stability during uncertainty, not additional fear
Remember that today’s decisions affect tomorrow’s culture

A Wake-Up Call

If you’re a leader reading this and nodding along with these CEOs, consider this your wake-up call. The approach we’re seeing is not strength—it’s insecurity and poor emotional regulation masquerading as “tough leadership.”

If you work under this kind of leadership, do these things: document everything, build your network, and keep in mind that this market won’t last forever.

This isn’t about AI or technology. Those are the excuses being used so that “leaders” can justify their terrible management.

The companies that will thrive long-term aren’t the ones with the loudest, most intimidating CEOs. They’re the ones where leadership creates an environment where people want to bring their best every day—not because they’re afraid, but because they’re engaged, respected, and valued.

Even in tough times. Especially in tough times.

If you want to be infuriated like me, here is the link to the article.

Be honest. Are you leading with fear or empathy?

Reply to this email to tell me, or come join the conversation in our free Slack Group, Analytics for Marketers.

– Katie Robbert, CEO

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In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss troubling new trends in leadership and how you can navigate an increasingly demanding work environment.

You’ll learn to identify the difference between tough business decisions and disrespectful management tactics. You’ll discover practical strategies to document issues and set healthy boundaries with difficult leaders. You’ll understand the critical importance of building your personal brand and professional network as your career life raft. You’ll explore how to use new tools, including AI, to enhance your skills and uncover hidden job opportunities. Watch this episode to gain actionable advice and empower yourself in today’s evolving workplace!

Watch/listen to this episode of In-Ear Insights here »

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In this week’s Data Diaries, let’s pick up where we left off two weeks ago with a look at leading economic indicators.

There are two kinds of economic indicators, leading and lagging. Lagging indicators tell you what’s happened, after it happens. Leading indicators are more predictive, telling you what’s likely to happen.

Last fall, we detailed a basket of useful economic indicators, from traditional indicators like building permits, hours worked, and consumer sentiment, to non-traditional ones like the Baltic Dry Index, hiring demand, Projected Business Formations, and the Economic Policy Uncertainty index.

One of the most useful things we can do with such economic indicators is keep an eye on them, like a weather forecast, to better understand what might be happening. However, most companies and people aren’t well equipped to do this in their current infrastructure.

Today, one of the simplest ways to do this is to have generative AI write you the software necessary to do this analysis for you, automatically, building a simple AI agent. Here’s how, broadly.

Define your requirements – where the software needs to get the data from, how to store it, how often it will run, and how to compute the outcome.
Have generative AI build a requirements document from your requirements. This step is vital – a great requirements document helps you plan out all the different possibilities.
Have generative AI build a workplan. From the requirements document, a workplan helps AI think through all the steps necessary to bring your idea to life.
Have generative AI build the code from the workplan. This is where the magic happens. If you took your time and did the first 3 parts well, the likelihood that a smart model like today’s reasoning models will generate a correct result on the first try is very high.
Once you test and QA it, then you set it loose and enjoy its outputs whenever you need them.

This is how we produced our weekly So What? AI News You Should Care About newsletter. The core of the system is an AI agent that gets lots of AI news, analyzes it, and produces a report.

So, what do we see in our economic indicators? Two indicators stand out sharply. The Economic Policy Uncertainty index has hit a 40 year high:

There has never, in the history of this measure, been more economic uncertainty than today, which paralyzes investment. As much as the business world likes to talk about disruption and innovation, investment prefers certainty.

The second is the number of jobs that are below pre-pandemic levels for hiring demand:

Six months ago, two thirds of this chart was above pre-pandemic levels for hiring demand. Today, it’s an even split; hiring demand for many more sectors has softened considerably.

When companies aren’t hiring, that’s a good indicator they aren’t spending – and that means choppy waters ahead.

The lack of certainty about economic policy leads to lower hiring demand, spending pullbacks, and other follow-on consequences. What we do with this information is scenario planning. We plan for scenarios like the status quo, like a dramatic worsening of demand, and an improvement in demand.

But none of that is possible if you don’t have the data available to you for making those decisions. So fire up your generative AI tool of choice and start extracting the data for your own economic indicators.

Here’s a roundup of who’s hiring, based on positions shared in the Analytics for Marketers Slack group and other communities.

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