Learned Helplessnesslearned help·less·ness | noun | /ˈlərnd ˈhelpləsnəs/

Learned helplessness is when people stop trying because they’ve been made to feel like nothing they do can change their situation.

At Modus Institute, we have a real problem with the term “learned helplessness.” Yes, learned helplessness is very real, but it is framed as “learned.” “Learned” suggests there’s an element of willingness involved, like people choose to give up. Like “quiet quitting” or “sitting this one out” or “checking out mentally.”

But when you’re trapped in toxic workplaces, command-and-control hierarchies, or environments where every attempt to act gets shut down, helplessness isn’t learned…it’s imposed.

And so what we’re really seeing is imposed isolation. People retreat because it’s their only rational response. For the individual, retreat is necessary for self-preservation. But the moment one person retreats, others follow. Soon the whole team grows distrustful and quiet. And momentum dies.

This isn’t learned helplessness. This is imposed isolation.

And isolation kills organizations from within.

The Fear Factory

Right now, we’re living through a painful and obvious period of manufactured isolation. Turn on the news, open social media, check your inbox, talk to a relative, stand in line at the store…and we hear division, fear, worry, concern.

All designed to make us feel small, threatened, and powerless. Fear rhetoric has become truth, or at least it’s become that which makes you doubt truth. To doubt your coworkers. To doubt the future.

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In this mire of doubt, groups we work with who are trying to build something meaningful, students learning to collaborate, clients attempting organizational change…all are having trouble with the most basic professional behaviors. Scheduling meetings becomes an ordeal. Building systems requires dozens of meetings (that are hard to schedule). The storming and forming stages of team development stretch on for months because the level of trust in society is at an all-time low. The communication breakdowns of the group, with people looking for accountability, become blame storms.

Storming becomes hurricane strength. Forming becomes a dreaded thanksgiving dinner. Norming becomes a bi-partisan bill. And performing simply slips away.

When everything feels like a threat, when every decision carries the weight of potentially catastrophic consequences, when leaders default to command-and-control because “somebody has to make the tough calls,” people do what makes sense: they stop taking initiative.

Doomscrolling Is Passive by Design

Doomscrolling isn’t an accident. It’s the natural result of systems designed to keep you consuming rather than creating. You scroll through endless feeds of problems you can’t solve, crises you can’t affect, disasters you can’t prevent. The algorithm rewards passivity. There are forces that win through lack of initiative. The longer you stay paralyzed by the feed, the more valuable you become.

This isn’t learned helplessness. This is strategic disempowerment.

The overwhelming narrative of command-and-control in popular media, political rhetoric, to the workplace… charlatans promise or even pronounce certainty in uncertain times, divide and conquer, and train people to wait for someone else to solve their problems.

Let’s Not Be Passive

Fear peddlers don’t want you to know that we already have the power. We don’t need to be incentivized. We don’t need empowerment. We need to take our work, our communications, and our world view back.

Hope is a weak sounding word, but it drives business. Hope is what we have at the base of every business plan. Hope that we are right, that our plans can come to fruition. Hope that we can build a better future. Hope is real truth. Focus and completion are real truths. Working together we can get things done, focus, and not fear our neighbors, our colleagues, or the world at large.

The Antidote to Isolation

When we do a right environment exercise or value stream mapping exercise, we are working together, as a team to build actionable clarity. When people understand their work flow, when they can see their work, understand how it connects to something larger, and have the information they need to act with confidence, they stop being passive consumers of other people’s crises and become active creators of solutions.

Visual management is actionable hope made visible. Whether it’s a simple Kanban board, an Obeya room, or just sticky notes on a wall, visual boards show us that we can have faith in our work and in each other. We can see what we’re doing, we can see what’s working, we can see what needs to change, and we can act together on what we see.

With visual management we are not isolated. We are a team.

Beyond Belligerence

Focus and completion are drowned out by belligerence, but they don’t have to be.

Every team that successfully moves from isolation to collaboration does it the same way:

* They learn about each other, they value their teammates.

* They understand what people bring to the table.

* They figure out what needs to be done.

* They make their work visible.

* They create space for real conversation (not just performative meetings),

* They build systems that underwrite professional action instead of political maneuvering.

These aren’t “soft skills”. Soft skills are creating a hero to solve your problems for you. This is literally taking responsibility for your life and work and getting things done.

This is hard economics. Watch the video for an insane number of stats about this. Workplace toxicity costs American employers $917 billion annually. That’s not the cost of people “being difficult.” This is not a “culture issue”. This is the cost of real behaviors modeled and promoted creating systems that make it impossible for people to act professionally.

We can complain about them or we can fix them.

When we worked with teams during COVID, something interesting happened. The crisis stripped away a lot of the unnecessary bureaucracy and forced people to focus on what actually mattered. Teams that had been paralyzed by procedure suddenly found ways to make decisions quickly. Not because the crisis made them better people, but because the crisis made the cost of inaction visible and immediate.

We’ve seen that people can and will work together and enjoy the experience.

This is the work we do at Modus Institute helping teams move from toxic isolation to collaborative professionalism. If your team is stuck in learned helplessness cycles, there are tools and practices that can help.

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