Why Corporate Leaders Block The Candor They Say They Want
Speaking truth to power
How often do we hear our corporate leaders hold that up as a principle they cherish? It’s what keeps us honest and informed, those at the top say. It reflects our willingness to listen and learn, a testament to our belief that our employees are our most valuable assets, the driving force for company growth. It is the natural extension of an open-door policy, where employees offer their opinions and bosses listen.
Ah, if only it were so.
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I have spent a career exposing organizational practices that block employees from being their best, and much of this has focused on what it takes for bosses and subordinates to hold the candid, straight-talking, all-cards-on-the-table exchanges that corporate leaders are always calling for but seldom get. Along these lines, let me ask you: If employees in your workplace don’t agree with their bosses, do they speak up? If they think their bosses are making major mistakes, do they say so?
In other words: do people in your office speak truth to power? (Or at least their version of the truth?)
Sadly, probably not.
Alternatively, when managers in your company hear employees disagree with them, do they ask: “What leads you to think that?” Or do they simply set that person straight?
Sadly, it is most likely the latter.
I believe that it’s time for all of this to change. It is time for top-tier corporate leaders to face the fact that they’re the ones responsible for the politics that keep truth telling out of the workplace – however much they insist they want it to be otherwise. It is time for leaders to realize that it is their job to change what needs to be changed, as psychologically wrenching as it may be for them. And it is time for leaders to see that without fundamental change, their companies are destined to be governed by fear and intimidation, to be places where truth is only sometimes spoken and then only in the shadows. In this article, I describe why that is the case and suggest how organizations and their leaders can make speaking the truth the way business is done around here.
The damage it does
The ramifications of ignoring this, of letting dishonesty (or, at best, silence) run rampant, are staring us all in the face. It seems apparent by now that there were scores of employees who saw General Motors heading to failure, who knew that Toyota was building defective cars, that recognized that BP’s cost-cutting pressures and regulation-skirting practices were a recipe for disaster. Clearly, plenty of bankers were scared to death that they were creating financial monsters that would turn around and eat their institutions, not to mention the global financial system. But too often they said nothing to those higher up who might have been in a position to do something about it.
Of course, such headline-grabbing examples are only the tip of the iceberg of silence and dishonesty. But they are vivid reminders of the outrageous non-communication, the missing give and take that haunts so many institutions day in and day out. It’s this everyday lack of candor and unexplored differences in viewpoints – on topics that never make it to the headlines – that truly does the most damage.
Silence is golden
Why is that? Why do so few employees tell their bosses what’s on their mind? Why do they so often obfuscate when talking to the one person with whom, more than any other, the company is counting on them to talk straight?
Let me offer the simplest answer: Managers make sure they don’t. A less simple answer: Management is hard, and most managers are woefully unprepared for the task.
Effective management requires nuance and subtle thinking, listening and empathy. It requires the ability to establish enduring, trusting relationships. It requires bosses to know how to build relationships with people who aren’t like them, and never will be. It requires bosses to stop filling in the blanks and, well, manage.
Many managers haven’t a clue how to do that. So instead, they typically mask their ignorance by using schemes that misapply the hierarchical structure that is necessary in any organization – somebody has to make the decisions after all – and impose it on the relationship between themselves and their subordinates.
Such an approach assumes the boss has all the answers, and it’s the boss’s job to make sure the employees understand those answers – or else. It’s about power and subordination, and it makes straight talk and candor all but impossible.
Hierarchy, remember, is designed to promote discipline and efficiency in communication. But hierarchical relationships squelch the open dialogue that is at the heart of honest and open communication.
The proof is in the review
Where’s the proof of this fear and dishonesty, you might ask. Well, the most visible evidence is sitting in front of us, much loathed and yet much ingrained in our institutions. It’s that annual ritual where bosses look for weaknesses and pretend to speak objectively for the company, and where subordinates grin and bear it and count the minutes until they can leave the room. It is the most vivid example that in companies, there is only one way of doing things: the manager’s way. And it is the job of the employee to mirror the manager, and never speak what is on his or her mind.
I am referring to the performance review.
If any managerial practice symbolizes and establishes the pattern for a lack of candor in organizations, to the management by intimidation that pervades our workplaces, it is the continued reliance on this pretentious, destructive, bankrupt practice. The performance review is the control mechanism that allows non-reflective, unthinking, flawed, anxious executives to maintain discipline and order, to claim to be available for candid discussion, and to blame all corporate shortfalls on operatives who didn’t follow the directions from management.
In fact, the pretense of evaluating performance ironically ensures that the company gets less performance than it otherwise could. It ensures that people aren’t going to talk openly about what’s going wrong. It makes it difficult – if not impossible – for the boss and subordinate to have a trusting relationship, even if the boss is a “good” boss. It makes self-protective defensiveness, rather than speaking one’s beliefs – that is, pleasing the boss, rather than getting the company what it needs – the behavior of choice for employees. And it destroys good performance by making it impossible for employees to tell management what they see management doing wrong – if only to give management an opportunity to correct what must be a false impression.
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