Exposing the Reality in Business

I never cease to be amazed at our penchant for self-deception–especially when it clouds our view of reality in regards to our leadership. A leader I once worked for often told me. “Don’t ever believe your own press–good or bad. When you accomplish a few things a crowd may gather & start patting you on the back. If we’re not careful you can soon lose focus and start believing that you are indispensable or entitled to special favors–don’t ever believe it! It’s never really about you; it’s usually about them.

Leaders today, if they are to be truly trustworthy, should be both honest and accountable. The successful leader often is able to surround with persons who learn to help accomplish his/her mission and insulate the leader from distractions. Sometimes the leader loses touch with reality or for various reasons may begin to lose his/her way. He needs those around him to help him stay on course and not lose his bearings. He desperately needs someone to give him honest and accurate feedback in regards to his actions and their impact upon his team and those he would try to lead. The problem is that few people save perhaps those who have a negative motive, would be honest or courageous enough to overcome the discomfort and even danger that could be needed to confront the leader…especially if the leader was in their direct chain of command. In some organizations to tell the leader the truth could be misunderstood.  Unfortunately, the higher a leader raises in an organization the more he is in need of someone to ‘speak the truth in respect’ and the less likely someone will give him honest and immediate feedback regarding his words and his actions. This kind of open two-way communication is desperately needed in order to ensure the leader gets honest feedback and does not yield to the temptation to become careless with the truth.

So who will be the leaders accountability team? How can we, if the need arises’ tell the emperor he has no clothes.  How should a leader recognize this pitfall and break the yoke of insulation surrounding him or her?

The stock price was falling; the business environment was turbulent. Analysts were critical. Yesterday's rising star had become today's football. If you've ever worked in a company going through a rocky time, you will know that the first thing to vanish is trust. The workforce no longer believes that management knows what it is doing, that the business plan still makes sense, that their investment of time will be rewarded. And as trust disintegrates, the company becomes dysfunctional and failure accelerates.

If you are a manger under these circumstances, what should you do?

Doug McCallum led eBay's European business in 2008 after the stock price fell from a high of $56 to around $10, analysts claimed the company had lost its ability to innovate and CEO Meg Whitman had stepped down. Earlier this month speaking to a leadership forum sponsored by Purple Beach, McCallum talked about how the management team got through the crisis.

It wasn't, he said, rocket science, but simple things worked. What he and his team did was this:

-- Weekly videoconference with every employee across the business. It was important that they had to come together physically for this event. Just being in the same room helped to build a sense of solidarity.

-- Reiterating the plan and progress. That this was often repetitive was fine: it signaled that things weren't changing, which also implied they weren't getting worse.

-- Unscripted Q&A. This was the most important thing the leadership team. By being willing to take and address unscripted questions while everyone was watching, the leaders signaled that they were open; that they were hiding nothing and that they were confident enough to be challenged. Devoid of script, props, rules, they stood exposed before their employees and rebuilt their trust.

I was struck that what McCallum said was pretty obvious and straightforward -- but needed to be said. That it was not rocket science, of course, why it worked.

I wonder how many leaders dare emulate their example?

All too often leadership becomes insulated to what is most important.  They become trapped in a bubble, surrounded by a few that manage what they “should know” and what filter the input of what is actually going on.  Being informed is critical.  You are in control of the information you consume.  When you pass that onto others, you eventually lose!

It is true, the larger the organization the more difficult it is to be honestly informed.  You must be subjected to focus with a critical eye.  To solve any problem, or stand up to any challenge, honest information is critical to making the next decision.

The question to you, how honestly informed are you?  And; How honest are you in your information?