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Issue #38: July 23, 2004
To our readers:
What you don't know can hurt you. Ask the leaders of organizations who've had to step down because of the actions of their subordinates. Some of those leaders probably really didn't know how their Chief Financial Officers were fine-tuning the books or how their Vice Presidents of Operations were manipulating production numbers or how some managers were discriminating against particular groups of employees. But they should have known, and they should have corrected the problems before those problems created nightmares for their organizations.
A wise man once told me, "Don't worry about making mistakes; we can correct those. But I don't like surprises." He didn't want to hear anything from anyone, inside or outside the company, that he should have heard first from his own team. Employees who kept him in the loop even when it meant sharing their own failures knew he would support them. Employees who tried to cover up errors or hide unpleasant truths didn't last long.
You must have all the pertinent bad news in order to perform the best job you can. As long as you are ignorant of an issue you can't fix it, you can't learn from it, and you can't enlighten others based upon it. If you don't know that one of your managers is sexually harassing an employee you can't make him or her stop the behavior, you can't figure out how to keep it from happening again, and you have no way of assuring your employees that sexual harassment is verboten on your watch. In fact, they see it happening and believe it's somehow acceptable to you.
On the other hand, if an employee tells you about the sexual harassment you can investigate immediately, determine whether or not it's true, and coach the harassing employee and perhaps redeem him or her. You can build the trust that comes with showing your employees you can not only handle negative news but use it to correct a bad situation.
The same applies to colleagues--let them know you want to hear their bad news when it affects your work, your department, your future; create a relationship of mutual openness and honesty with them.
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Five Tips for Getting the Bad News You Need to Succeed
1. Make it clear you expect to know even the bad news.
Let your managers, staff, employees, and colleagues know that you consider it a business tool to have all the information you need to make decisions, even if it's information about their own mistakes, lapses, and failures. Share stories with them that illustrate how you and your department have turned disasters or near-disasters into eventual successes. Make it common knowledge -- company wisdom -- that bad situations can be made golden when tackled immediately and appropriately. Barbara Corcoran, founder of The Corcoran Group, a New York real estate firm with sales of $3 billion per year, says "It's no good if people are afraid to fail or afraid to tell you they've failed. . . that atmosphere leads to a lot of skeletons stashed in closets. It's not fun when they start spilling out--and they always do." ("A Hot Property," by Bobbie Gossage, Inc. Magazine, January 2003)
2. Create an atmosphere of safety for sharing bad news by openly discussing your own mistakes.
Corcoran lets her brokers know it's safe to share their failures with her by telling them about her own. You're human and will make mistakes--your employees and colleagues know that already. What they don't know is whether or not you realize it. When you talk openly about your mistakes you make it clear you don't see a need to hide them. Your employees and colleagues won't feel a need to hide theirs from you either. When you are the target of someone else's finger-pointing, disengage your ego, consider the charge as objectively as you can, and if there is merit to it, deal with it constructively. This demonstrates profoundly your preference for the truth over saving face.
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3. Thank someone who brings you bad news you can use to do a better job.
This goes beyond "accepting" bad news without blowing up, and illustrates that you actually want to hear bad news that is significant to the work you do. Say "thank you! Now we can take steps to fix this situation."
4. Make withholding bad news the worst thing that an employee or colleague can do.
This is your "no surprises" rule. It takes mistakes, flubs, misjudgments, and other bad news out of the realm of things to be swept under the rug and puts them in the open, where you can identify and correct them.
5. Always take a practical approach to bad news.
Hold back on the yelling, arm-waving, fuming, sputtering, and heavy sighing. Zero in on how to fix the problem, redeem the failure, halt the negative behavior. Ask the questions that will get you all the information you need to move forward. Give your employee or colleague the opportunity to tell you how to correct the situation. Call a meeting when appropriate and calmly lay out the facts as you know them and ask for discussion and problem-solving. These steps will speak much louder than words in confirming for your employees that if the route to success must first travel through a a minefield of mistakes or bad judgments, that's the route you intend to take.
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