Fear-based leadership is on the rise, impacting an estimated 60-70% of organizations today. Understanding how these leaders operate—and learning strategic ways to protect your power and well-being—can help you move from just surviving to truly thriving, even in challenging workplaces.

Kate Lowry is a CEO coach, venture capitalist, and author based in Silicon Valley. Her expertise on fear-based leaders comes from growing up in a hierarchical family and working in startups, private equity, management consulting, and big tech companies like McKinsey, Meta, and Insight Partners. She is the author of Unbreakable: How to Thrive Under Fear-Based Leaders. In her free time, she enjoys writing comedy and music, and cuddling her service dog, Annie.

In this episode, Kate shares the science behind how power can corrupt and diminish empathy in leaders. She explains why fear-based leaders often feel deeply insecure and use control and manipulation as their main tools.

What you will learn from this episode:

  • Understand the neurological science proving that absolute power corrupts absolutely and how positions of authority affect empathy centers in the brain.
  • Learn to identify fear-based leaders through their characteristic behaviors and how they make you feel.
  • Discover tactical strategies for navigating, surviving, and ultimately thriving under difficult leadership while maintaining your power and well-being.

“If you understand how they think and how they make choices, you can almost always predict what they’re going to do.”

– Kate Lowry

Valuable Free Resource: 

  • Pre-order Unbreakable: How to Thrive Under Fear-Based Leaders – Available now on Kindle, print edition releasing October 28, 2025

Topics Covered:

02:35 – Fear-based leaders as bullies: understanding their deep insecurity and how they motivate through fear

05:06 – Fear-based leadership in families: Kate’s personal experience growing up in a household modeled after a dictatorship and how it prepared her for corporate environments

10:24 – Myths about fear-based leaders: debunking the illusion of their power and understanding the concept of fealty and orbit

12:38 – Coping with fear-based leaders: protecting your energy, maintaining multiple identities, and the “gray rock” strategy

16:24 – Fear-based leadership in workplaces: the rising trend from 3 in 10 to 7 in 10 managers and why you’re not alone

Key Takeaways:

“Fear-based leaders are really deeply insecure, and they try to motivate with fear.” – Kate Lowry

“You should never share what you actually care about. Even the smallest details about your life, your hopes, your dreams, all of that will be used against you if you actually share it.” – Kate Lowry

“If fear-based leaders see you as a non-entity, if they think that you’re just a sheep amongst the herd, you actually have a lot of freedom to do what you want.” – Kate Lowry

“If you feel like you’re going from bad workplace to bad workplace, it’s not just you. A lot of people are dealing with this. It’s just a very different set of rules. And once you learn the rules, you can protect yourself.” – Kate Lowry

Ways to Connect with Kate Lowry:

Ways to Connect with Sarah E. Brown:

 

Full Episode Transcript:

(AI helped us put this together, so if you see any weird grammar or missed words—just know we nailed it during the actual chat.)

Kate Lowry

Another thing is that it’s really helpful to be underestimated. If fear-based leaders see you as a non-entity, if they think that, you know, you’re just a sheep amongst the herd, you actually have a lot of freedom to do what you want.

Sarah E. Brown 

Hello everyone. Welcome to the KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women, where we talk about challenges senior female leaders face in being happy and successful at work. I’m your host, Dr. Sarah E. Brown. 

My guest today is Kate Lowry. She 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 personal, hierarchical family. then refined her approach in the elite worlds of startups, 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, which we’re going to be talking about today. In her free time, you can find her writing comedy and music and cuddling her service dog, Annie. Welcome, Kate. 

Kate Lowry

Thank you so much for having me, Sarah. 

Sarah E. Brown

This is going to be a very good conversation. So there’s something in your marketing material that I want to just start right off the bat with. Tell me about the science that proves that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Kate Lowry

Yes, so this is super interesting. Basically, neurological studies have shown that the more power you have, the more the centers in your brain that control empathy are corroded. So it’s not imaginable. If you see someone in a BMW driving down the road and it seems like they don’t care about the other drivers, it’s probably true.

Sarah E. Brown 

Wow. So your book is How to Thrive Under Fear-Based Leaders. Would it be OK to call them bullies?

Kate Lowry

Yes, they are bullies. They’re deeply, deeply insecure, and they try to motivate with fear.

Sarah E. Brown 

Are there any bullies that, is there any bullying or just meanness that is not fear-based from your perspective?

Kate Lowry

From my perspective, generally, no. The reason I call them fear-based leaders is because inside they’re really afraid. They’re afraid. Am I enough? Will people like me? You know, will I ever meet the expectations of my parents? Things like that. And because they’re driven with fear, they try to motivate everyone around them with fear as well.

Sarah E. Brown

Ok. Do you believe that the problem is getting better or worse? Do we have more fear-based leaders or fewer?

Kate Lowry

Definitely worse. When I started my career, about 3 in 10 managers I encountered were fear-based, and now it’s closer to 7 in 10.

Sarah E. Brown 

Wow. Why is that?

Kate Lowry

Well, we’re in a new gloves-off era of permissible asshole-type behavior. People are seeing this type of behavior in movies and TV shows. They’re seeing it in their role models, in business, in government. And now people feel like they don’t have to pretend to care. And that’s leading to a big wave of bad behavior.

Sarah E. Brown 

So the reason that we didn’t see as much of it is because people were pretending, not really authentically?

Kate Lowry

That’s right. You know, 10 years ago, CEOs felt like they had to pretend to care about their employees. They had to try to make them feel loved, make them feel like they were part of a company. And now, you know, in Silicon Valley, at least, we’re seeing people say, get in line or get out. You know, I don’t care if you live or die. Pledge fealty to me or none of this matters.

Sarah E. Brown 

Well, just out of curiosity, how do you spot one of these leaders?

Kate Lowry

You can usually tell by how someone makes you feel. If you feel really on edge, if you feel like you have to tiptoe on eggshells around someone, if you feel kind of like an assault on your senses, that’s a really good sign you’re around a fear-based leader. There’s also a lot of characteristic behaviors. You know, are they shaming people around them? 

Are they using threats to get their way? Is it a very ‘my way or the highway’ approach? Is it very top down? I don’t want to hear your ideas. Only what I say matters. You think rigid, controlling, hierarchical. Those are the types of signs that you’re around a fear-based leader.

Sarah E. Brown 

So you said a little bit and then I read in your introduction that you got interested in this because of your family of origin. Yes, that’s right. So what was it about your family of origin that represented this?

Kate Lowry

Yeah, so both of my parents are fear-based leaders. My dad actually deliberately modeled our household after a dictatorship. And so it was a very, I am the king, you are the peasant type of place. You know, I control everything about you, who you see, what you can wear, what you can do, what you can say. 

And what that essentially meant was between both of my parents, you know, being these kind of cruel types of people, is that I had decades of time to run experiments on them about how to resist. And that ended up serving me remarkably well, you know, at McKinsey and Silicon Valley, because whereas most of my peers had never dealt with capricious, difficult, you know, high-ego people, you know, I came in with two decades of experience.

Sarah E. Brown 

OK, so you claim these leaders are predictable. Give me an example.

Kate Lowry

They’re absolutely predictable because they’re really deeply unoriginal and uncreative. If you understand how they think and how they make choices, you can almost always predict what they’re going to do. For example, fear-based leaders love to use information to control people. 

So if you give someone a tidbit of information, like, oh, I can’t wait to go to my kid’s Little League game, you can bet they’re going to say, guess what? I’m making you work late. You can’t go to that kid’s Little League game. Pretty much everything they do is dictated by how they can achieve maximum control, maximum manipulation over the people below them. And if you understand the levers that control their behavior, you can run circles around them.

Sarah E. Brown 

Okay, so going back to sharing a little bit of information, is one of the tips is don’t share information?

Kate Lowry

That’s right. You should never share what you actually care about. You know, you can share pretend things that you care about, but even the smallest details about your life, what you’re excited about, your hopes, your dreams, all of that will be used against you if you actually share it. Wow. Okay, give me another example. Another thing is that it’s really helpful to be underestimated. If fear-based leaders see you as a non-entity, if they think that, you know, you’re just a sheep amongst the herd, you actually have a lot of freedom to do what you want. 

Another thing that can be helpful is that these guys don’t negotiate in good faith. So let’s say you want a budget for your team. What you actually want to do is push two other initiatives that you don’t want funded, or you don’t really want, and use them as sacrifice initiatives so that the fearless base leader feels like they’re killing two things you really want, and you just go home with the third, which is the actual thing you wanted to get.

Sarah E. Brown 

Well, just out of curiosity, are there more male peer-based leaders than female peer-based leaders? Or, well, what is the proportion?

Kate Lowry

Yeah, you know, I have definitely seen both. I would say it’s more common with men in particular because society allows men to get away with worse behavior. But there are definitely women, especially in industries that have sharp elbows like private equity or, you know, some of these other spaces that are not quite so friendly.

Sarah E. Brown 

So why did you want to write a book about this? 

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Hi, this is Sarah Brown again, the host of the KTS Success Factor podcast for women. I hope you are enjoying this episode and gaining some tips and inspiration on how you can be happier, more successful, and experience less stress at work. 

If you would like to learn more about how you can take control of your career and do it your way, visit sarahebrown.com. There you will be able to download a free chapter from my book, Let Your Personality Be Your Career Guide. It contains information and exercises on how you can identify your unique interests, strengths, and needs, and translate that into career goals that are just right for you. 

Now back to this informative episode.

Kate Lowry

Well, I noticed this really interesting phenomenon as this wave was sweeping across society. My coaching clients started to spin out. These were, you know, very accomplished people from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton who were coming to me feeling paralyzed, overwhelmed. unsure. And it was at that point I realized that I was totally fine and they were really not fine, which I had a toolkit that they didn’t have. 

And so I kind of put pen to paper and wrote as fast as I could to give people a tactical guide of not only how to survive, but really thrive under really adverse, difficult leadership. Because most people believe what fear-based leaders tell them. You know, the leader says, you’re powerless, you’re nothing without me. when really, you are really powerful. And if you can wake up your agency, you can really control the board.

Sarah E. Brown 

Okay. So that’s one of the myths about fear-based leaders. What are other myths about fear-based leaders that need to be busted?

Kate Lowry

Well, fear-based leaders puff themselves up. They love to posture. They say, I’m big, I’m scary, fall in line, cower in front of me. Really, they are really weak. They are really scared themselves. And it’s just like gorillas pounding their chests. If you see a gorilla pounding their chest, you know, as a human, most humans with the right tools could take a gorilla. You just need to know what toolkit you have to bring. Another myth with fear-based leaders, I think, is that it is around fealty. 

So fear-based leaders believe that they own people. It sounds really outdated, but they believe that once you’re in their orbit, once you work for them once, they own you forever. And so I think a lot of people don’t understand that once you’re in their orbit, you have to figure out how to achieve escape velocity. Or else they might demand retribution forever if they feel like you have offended them or things like that. And so there are a lot of things that are just ways they think that are different than other people that you have to understand if you want to navigate their spaces.

Sarah E. Brown 

OK, so how do you get out of their orbit?

Kate Lowry

Yeah. So you make them think that it’s their idea. So, for example, I was working for a CEO. He was a very bad CEO. You caught him embezzling from the company. You know, he was doing a lot of illegal things. But I made him think that he was such a good CEO that he didn’t need a chief of staff. And so, you know, he should just lay me off because he was so talented. He didn’t need one like the other Silicon Valley execs. 

So I got him to lay me off with severance when I wanted to exit anyway. And, you know, he set me off in the world effectively with his blessing because I got him to bow me out. And if people think that, you know, you are still kneeling before the king, but off doing your own thing in the world, they’ll pretty much leave you alone.

Sarah E. Brown 

Wow. So how can I anticipate and respond to a fear-based leader in ways that preserve my empowerment? So you’ve given me a bunch of tips, but is there a mindset that I need to adopt as well?

Kate Lowry

Yes, absolutely. So fear-based leaders, you could think of them a bit as like energy vampires. You know, they make you feel very drained. People can feel very hopeless around them. So it’s extra, extra important to protect your energy. And that means knowing what fills your cup, whether it’s time with your kids, time gardening, time volunteering, whatever it is that brings you energy, you need to do that. The other thing is making sure that your entire identity is not the identity you have around the fear-based leader. 

If you are a sales manager and your only identity is, you know, I am a sales manager, and then the fear-based leader crushes that identity, it can feel like your world is collapsing. But if you also say, No, I’m a mother, I’m a daughter, you know, I’m a church volunteer, I’m a cook, I write, I’m a gardener. And you have seven or eight different sources of identity. When one gets taken away or someone tries to make you feel like your identity is under threat, you have a much more stable footing.

Sarah E. Brown 

But you don’t tell the fear-based leader about those things because they’ll try and undermine it. Is that it? Exactly. Wow. So you pretty much have to have a split personality to deal with one of these.

Kate Lowry

Yeah, you know, I think of it as a game face, right? Your face doesn’t give anything away. In my book, I talk about how around fear-based leaders, the best thing to do is essentially be a gray rock. You know, you are inert. If they try to kick you, if they try to yell at you, you know, figuratively, you don’t respond. 

And what happens with people who feed on attention is they get pretty bored, right? If they kick you and you don’t respond, they eventually decide to go kick something else. And so, you know, when I’m around people who are fear-based leaders, I have a poker face. They can’t tell what I’m thinking. They can’t tell what I’m deciding. And if they decide to kick me, I have no response.

Sarah E. Brown 

Okay. All right. So do you talk about emotional maturity at all in your book? Yes, I definitely do. Are you talking about it as the lack of in the fear-based leader and the increase of it in somebody who’s dealing with that? I put words in your mouth.

Kate Lowry

I’m actually talking about how to clock a fear-based leader’s emotional age. So there are indicative traits. If you see someone having constant tantrums, you know, all caps, I’m bored, I want to go play with things, their emotional age is probably a two-year-old. And that means that your strategies for dealing with them are going to distract them. I’m going to give them the things they like, you know, I’m going to make sure that they have time for naps, times for playtime. And that actually works on some CEOs. 

There are other CEOs or leaders you’re dealing with who might have the emotional maturity of an eight-year-old. They tend to be very obsessed with, I want to have the biggest, bestest company ever. You know, like, I am really interested in these little sections of things, maybe technological things. I want to focus on that, yada, yada, yada. And so, you can tailor your strategies to mollify them based on what their emotional age is. OK.

Sarah E. Brown 

All right. So if I summarize what she’s said so far, your book is really about how you can type the fear-based leader and some strategies for dealing with it. But the gist of it is you’ve got to turn it into a game.

Kate Lowry

They see everything as a game. And so if you don’t know that you’re playing it, you’re going to get steamrolled.

Sarah E. Brown 

Okay. Got it. Got it. Okay. So what should I have asked you that I didn’t that will help the women listening to this identify, understand, and deal with fear-based leaders in the workplace?

Kate Lowry

The most important thing that we didn’t talk about that they need to understand is that they are not alone. We are seeing right now, based on my client base, the companies I’ve been in, it seems like 60 to 70 percent of companies have serious fear-based leader problems. And so if you feel like you’re going from a bad workplace to a bad workplace, it’s not just you. 

And if you’re dealing with someone who makes you doubt your own competence, who makes you feel alone and like you don’t know what you’re doing and like there’s no hope, know that there is hope and you’re not alone. And a lot of people are dealing with this. It’s just a very different set of rules. And once you learn the rules, you can protect yourself. Very interesting.

Sarah E. Brown 

Very interesting. OK, well, tell people when the book will be available.

Kate Lowry

Yes. So it’s available for Kindle pre-orders now on Amazon. The print edition will be out on October 28th, 2025. Definitely hope that you grab a copy. It’s meant to feel like I’m your friend sitting across the table from you, giving you the lowdown on how to deal with crappy people.

Sarah E. Brown 

Well, Kate, it’s a really intriguing message, and thank you so much for sharing it with my audience today. 

Thanks for listening to the KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women. If you like what you are hearing, please go to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave a review. And if you would like more information on how we can help women in your organization to thrive, then go to www.sarahebrown.com. You can sign up for our newsletter, read show notes and learn more about our podcast guests, read my blog, browse through the books, or contact us for a chat. Goodbye for now.

Sarah E. Brown
Sarah E. Brown