Santa, the Naughty List, and Why Fear Never Sustains Change

Big Girl Panties Diaries – Holiday Edition

If Santa actually kept a Naughty List, my sister and I should’ve been on it every single year.

We were elite-level present snoopers. The kind who could carefully unwrap a gift, admire it, rewrap it, and slide it back under the tree like nothing happened.

We searched closets. Basements. Suitcases.

Eventually, we graduated to finding the receipts — because at some point my parents gave up hiding presents in the house altogether.

We weren’t bad kids. We were curious. Impatient. A little too motivated by the unknown.

And apparently, those traits never really go away.

When we were kids, December came with a very clear performance management system.

Be good. Follow the rules. Don’t talk back. Because Santa is watching… and the list is real.

Somewhere along the way, many leaders decided this was also a solid way to lead change.

Spoiler alert: it’s not.

I wrote recently about how fear-based holiday logic shows up in unexpected places — even children’s stories — in How the Grinch Nearly Stole Change Management. Santa’s Naughty List runs on the same logic: comply, behave, don’t ask questions… or else.

I see it every holiday season, especially in organizations pushing “one last initiative” before year-end. The tone gets sharper. The patience gets thinner. The consequences get louder.

Do this or else. Adopt this now. Fall in line before January.

That’s not leadership. That’s Santa-with-a-spreadsheet energy.

🎅 The Santa Leadership Archetypes

Every fear-based change effort has a Santa attached to it.

You’ve met them.

• Surveillance Santa – tracking logins, clicks, attendance, and activity instead of progress

• Coal Santa – leading with consequences, not context

• Last-Minute Santa – dropping urgency on December 20 and calling it strategy

• Silent Santa – expecting magic while never explaining how the sleigh actually works

If you recognized yourself in one of these… congratulations. Awareness is the first gift.

Fear-based change looks efficient on paper. People comply. Boxes get checked. Dashboards turn green. For a minute.

But here’s the part leaders don’t like to talk about: fear never creates belief. It creates performance theater.

People nod. They smile in meetings. They do just enough to stay off the Naughty List.

And the moment the pressure lifts? So does the behavior.

Because humans don’t believe in things they’re afraid of. They survive them.

🧠 Fear vs. Belief (Read This Slowly)

Fear-based change sounds like:

• “We don’t have time for questions.”

• “This is coming from the top.”

• “Just make it work.”

Belief-based change sounds like:

• “Here’s why this matters.”

• “Here’s what will change for you.”

• “Here’s where you have a say.”

That difference matters more than most leaders realize.

Trust — which I’ve written about as the real currency of transformation in Trust Is the New Currency — doesn’t disappear all at once. It erodes quietly. Especially when fear becomes the motivator.

And once trust is gone, no amount of holiday cheer brings it back.

I’ve also learned this the hard way: you can’t spreadsheet your way into belief.

Surveillance Santa loves dashboards and compliance metrics, but as I explored in Upgrade Your People Stack (Before You Touch the Tech), belief lives in the human layer — not the system layer. You can measure adoption all day long and still miss the moment when people stop caring.

And yes — I’ve been on both sides of this.

I’ve enforced urgency I didn’t fully believe in because the pressure above me was louder than the questions below me. And I’ve complied with change I didn’t trust just to stay off the list.

Neither created belief. Both created exhaustion.

Looking back, my sister and I didn’t need surveillance or threats — we needed context. The Naughty List didn’t stop the behavior; it just made us sneakier.

What often gets labeled as “naughty behavior” is simply human resistance — confusion, fear, fatigue, uncertainty. Something I’ve unpacked before in Resistance Is Normal. When leaders punish that instead of understanding it, belief never has a chance.

December is not the month for fear-based leadership.

It’s the month for clarity. For honesty. For deciding what truly matters now — and what can wait until January.

So, if you’re leading change right now, ask yourself this:

Are people adopting because they understand and believe? Or because they’re afraid of what happens if they don’t?

One of those sustains change. The other just gets you through the holidays.

BGPD Rule:

Fear may get behavior. It never gets belief.

And belief — not blind compliance — is what actually carries change into the new year.