Fear and faith might feel like opposites. One holds you back. The other moves you forward. But underneath, they are the same thing. Both are a belief in something that hasn’t happened yet.
In the workplace, we encounter the unknown all the time. A new leader steps in. A team gets restructured. A long-standing process is suddenly up for debate. Maybe there is talk of layoffs or a shift in strategy. Even something as well-intentioned as a culture initiative can stir up uncertainty.
And in those moments, fear and faith start to compete for attention.
Fear tends to speak first. It tells us to be careful. To stay quiet. To protect ourselves. It says we have seen this before and it did not end well. It reminds us of past mistakes and worst-case scenarios. It encourages us to opt out. To wait and see. To let someone else go first.
Faith, on the other hand, asks something harder. It asks us to stay engaged. To trust what we cannot fully see. To keep showing up and contributing even when the outcome is unclear. It does not ignore the risks, but it believes something better is possible anyway. It asks us to make decisions not just based on what is safe, but on what is meaningful.
In my experience working with organizations, I have seen how contagious fear can be. All it takes is one unanswered question, one poorly handled change, one leader who says one thing and does another—and suddenly people start pulling back. They get quiet. They get skeptical. Meetings feel performative. Communication becomes about covering bases instead of building alignment. The culture starts to retreat into self-preservation.
But I have also seen what happens when people are invited to believe. Not in some vague hope that everything will be fine, but in the idea that their actions matter. That their voices are valued. That they are not just passengers on a ship steered by someone else, but part of what makes the organization go.
Faith in the workplace is not about wishful thinking. It is about clarity. It is about knowing what the goal is, what your role is, and how you can make a difference. When people have that kind of clarity, they stop bracing for what might go wrong and start investing in what could go right.
That is what makes culture so powerful. It shapes how people respond when they do not have all the answers. It determines whether uncertainty shuts people down or calls them to step up. And most importantly, it can be designed. Culture is not something that just happens to an organization. It is something leaders and teams build, moment by moment, through what they choose to believe and how they choose to act.
So the next time your organization is in the middle of change, or ambiguity, or just a tough season, ask yourself this: What is the belief system at play here? Are people operating from fear? Or are they acting from faith?
Because only one will move you forward.
Elsewhere in Culture
This week on CNN, I shared some new research we’ve been tracking that reveals a sharp drop in employee sentiment within the first six months of a new job. On day one, 72% of people say their manager cares about them. By month seven, that number falls to 37%. That’s not just a drop in perception—it’s a breakdown in trust. And it’s happening because the experiences employees have on the job don’t match the culture they were promised. Leaders talk about flexibility and belonging, but if that isn’t reinforced through action, people stop believing it. Culture is how people think and act. And when actions betray expectations, your culture isn’t what you say it is—it’s what your people feel every day.
We also talked about the growing divide between salaried and hourly workers. There’s a real privilege gap in how burnout is experienced. For a hybrid employee, stepping away for a moment can go unnoticed. For an hourly worker, it can mean missing your entire break just walking to and from the break room. As companies like Shopify and Google become more vocal about expecting long hours and relentless pace, it’s time to ask: are we creating cultures of performance or pressure? Transparency is important, but so is humanity. You cannot build accountability without first building trust.
There is a moment in the article that really stood out. An employee fills out an anonymous engagement survey, and then the CEO calls them in to offer a quiet exit. That is not a feedback culture. That is a fear culture. And it happens more often than leaders might think. When employees are told their voices matter but experience consequences for speaking honestly, they stop talking. The culture shifts. Meetings become cautious. Feedback gets sanitized. Silence starts to look like alignment, but it is really disengagement.
At the core of this is belief. Do people believe that leadership wants to hear the hard truth? Do they believe that sharing feedback leads to action? Or do they believe that honesty comes with risk? Fear and faith are both a belief in the unknown. The difference is how leadership responds. A culture rooted in faith is not built through surveys or slogans. It is built through consistent behavior. When leaders listen, act, and stay accountable, people believe their voices matter. Without that belief, the culture fractures. And as Gallup’s numbers show, the business impact is impossible to ignore.