Is your team able to share bad news without you losing your cool? What is your process for dealing with bad news? Is it the same for every situation?
I wish I could say I was consistent with what I am writing about. I do believe you need to be open and ready to deal with bad news, because if you are not, your team members will hide it from you and then the situation may get worse. You need to be available fully for when something bad happens so that your experience and leadership can be applied to also solve the problem.
The other issue is information filtering. It happens all of the time. Your team will brief you, but not tell you everything or smooth it for you so they get the reaction they want without upsetting you or forcing you to dig deeper. This may be due to how you handle bad news or how you don’t solve a problem well. Reward transparency and continue to embrace team members who are candid. It will lift the culture to telling the truth.
Here is what I believe are the steps and conditions you need to create to have an environment where your team members can bring you either bad news or don’t filter out sensitive information:
- Do what you say you will do. Your actions are key. If you tell your team that your door is always open and they can bring a problem, then you had better fulfill that statement. They will never come back and you will be answering to some authority or situation you didn’t want to.
- Create a culture of truth. I have seen higher ranked individuals lie on training reports in the spirit of “taking care of the boss.” This is when someone covers up a lie so that a more senior person, who would be held responsible is able to continue their career and receive their promotion on time, which also means that the person who lied can get his promotion. This is unsatisfactory. This action teaches junior leaders that it is ok to lie when a bad situation occurs or an issue becomes known that may look bad to the organization. You as the leader must address this to your staff as never to happen. If an issue is discovered to be untrue, report it to the proper person, and take corrective action for the future.
- Focus on how to solve the problem, not affix blame. You should always hold people accountable, but get your facts right from the beginning and solve the problem first. Teach your team, don’t patronize or demean them. I was in the Army so a sense of urgency was necessary when lives of our fellow soldiers were at risk. We could not get too worried about our feelings being hurt when lives mattered. However, I also served in the Army during two different periods of peace, not just during wartime. Blame affixing was quite normal during peace time operations too. I call these lost opportunities to teach and correct the situation for the next time, when the risk of the loss of life was less.
Your expectations and your actions are important to convey to your team that bad news should be shared and information filtering should never happen. Teach your team members and mentor them to anticipate and solve problems, but that you are always available to deal with a situation that warrants your attention. I do believe that the appropriate level in your structure should be able to deal with that problem.
Again, I wish I was the perfect example of following my own advice. Over the years in the Army, I did not always take bad news well. I’m sure information was filtered a few times to me and I did it as well. We all want to survive that briefing that may not go well.
If everything seems to be running smooth, it isn’t. They are not telling you everything. Operations rarely go right. If it did, we don’t need leaders like you.
“The price of being close to the President is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don’t tell him the truth. Others won’t do it.”
-Donald Rumsfeld
Is your team filtering information when they are briefing you? Are they not telling you everything, because of how you react?
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Copyright-Stephen McLain 2016