How to Thrive Under Fear-Based Leaders

In our fast-changing world, fear-based leaders rise quickly—tightening their grip as chaos grows. But what if you could learn to predict their behavior, neutralize their impact, and protect what matters most?

A new style of leader is in town, and it’s a blast from the past.

Across tech, business, and the social sector, fear-based leadership is suddenly all the rage.

This type of leadership started thousands of years ago, when some of the first humans to experience power dynamics decided to abuse it. It’s a “might makes right” approach — top down, hierarchical, and “my way is the highway.” Leaders like this model themselves after feudal lords, and if you’re around them, they expect you to bow down.

They deliberately manufacture chaos, because when other people are shaken by instability, it makes them easier to control — and reinforces that the leader is the lone source of truth in the ecosystem.

A lot of people are thrown by this. They see people around them being yelled at, shamed, and belittled, and feel like they’re trapped in a dark parallel universe that makes no sense.

I’m here to tell you that these leaders and their chaos are not illogical — they just follow a different type of logic. If you can understand how they think and make decisions, they become highly predictable. And the thing about predictable people is that tactics work very reliably on them.

Some things to understand how they think:

• They don’t believe in equality. You’re either being stepped on or doing the stepping.
• They feed on attention. They love getting reactions out of other people — especially negative ones.
• They need a lot of reassurance. Their egos need to stay inflated or they collapse.
• They believe everything is a game. And if you’re not winning, you’re losing.
• They’re constantly assessing. They’re judging you to understand whether you’re a useful tool, a hapless sheep, or a threat.
• They posture power to those around them. They expect both affirmation and deference.

Accordingly, here are some of the tactics that work best on them, whether they’re your investor, board member, church leader, or family member:

1. Get them to monologue. Just like an evil villain in a movie, these guys love to rant about their favorite subjects. Listen closely and understand how they prioritize and think, so that you know what levers exist to upwardly manage them.
2. Decide your red lines in the sand early. Leaders like this push the boundaries of rules and laws. Know what you are and aren’t willing to do before you’re asked to do something that compromises your values. If you’re asked to do something that violates your values, play dumb, misunderstand the instructions, or find a way to delegate to someone else. Leaders like this already think that everyone else is incapable — play into that.
3. Learn how to manage your own energy. Leaders like this are very draining to be around. Try to do something at least three times a week that makes you feel recharged — whether that’s time with your kids, baking, playing soccer, or taking a walk. You can’t pour from an empty cup.
4. Match your upward management with their emotional age. A lot of people’s emotional age doesn’t match their body age. If your leader throws a lot of tantrums, recognize their capacity is close to a toddler’s. Give them a lot of breaks, always have distractions ready, and make sure that meetings have snacks.
5. Starve the dragon. They’re like a big, territorial dragon that feeds on reactions. Don’t react, and they’ll get bored with kicking you and move on to someone else.
6. Show them you’re useful. These leaders discard people like old shoes, but they often won’t discard you if you provide them with something that they need. Think about ways you can make yourself irreplaceable.
7. Don’t tell them what matters to you. If they don’t know what you care about, they can’t manipulate you with that leverage. But if you tell them you’re excited about an initiative, or a vacation, or a new hire, they’ll take that thing away from you.
8. Let them make assumptions about you. If they see you as a threat, they’ll target you. It’s better to be underestimated and seen as one-dimensional. If they stereotype you, don’t object — play into their ideas so they don’t have a sense of your actual priorities.
9. Plan for them to negotiate in bad faith. Use game theory, and hide what you actually want within larger asks.
10. Find ways to make them look good. In hierarchical systems, if you make someone above you look good, they’ll both keep you around and pull you up the ladder with them.
11. Know what they’re good for. You can’t shop for milk at the hardware store — if you try, you’ll always be disappointed. They’re not capable of empathy, compassion, or appreciation, so don’t look for that.
12. Don’t believe their “generosity.” With them, all generous acts have secret strings.
13. Remember who you are. Environments like this can distort your surroundings, so it’s hard to remember where you came from. Remind yourself frequently what matters to you most and how you’re protecting it.
14. Don’t let them weaponize your morality. Immoral people manipulate others using moral norms because it creates predictable reactions (e.g., “How dare you take away the health insurance of my child with cancer!”). Don’t let them press your buttons.
15. Validate their emotions. Naming how someone is feeling is the number one way to de-escalate a situation.

Know that as you deal with these very difficult personalities, you’re not alone — and there is hope. They’re not monsters, they’re just very flawed humans, and if you have the skills to manage them, you can protect what you care about most.

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Kate Lowry is a CEO coach, venture capitalist, and author based in Silicon Valley. An expert in fear-based leaders, Kate developed her methodology growing up in a fear-based family, then refined her approach in the elite worlds of start-ups, private equity, management consulting, and big tech at McKinsey, Meta, and Insight Partners. She is the author of Unbreakable: How to Thrive Under Fear-Based Leaders. In her free time, you can find her writing comedy and music and cuddling her service dog, Annie.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:31 PM
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