People lack competence, and even lack experience. Each person inside the enterprise in encouraged to look after their own interests. You need to protect your back, cover all the bases, and trust no one. Finally, our communications become focused around faults and blame. Those who escape being fired or downsized live in fear that 'their number will come up'.
Dialogue is rare, and instrumental.
Yet there is another way, and some leaders and some companies manage to remind us. In that same visit to Kuala Lumpur I learnt about a company that had bent over backward to keep all its staff, despite a massive drop in activity and income as major projects were put on ice. Its chief executive is a 'servant leader', and, not coincidentally, a Christian. In fact, the concept of servant leadership turns our language and behaviour on its head. The idea of servant leadership comes from the work of Robert Greenleaf whose essay the topic is seen by many as the seminal text in the field.