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An example of honesty in action
Yesterday I talked a little about honesty, and I promised an example that would help illustrate why committing yourself to honest interactions is such a key ingredient in leadership development. Let’s make this a little more concrete: what kind of honesty are we talking about?
Take the simple, but very common, example of the annual performance review. This ritual is easy if you have a staff made entirely of “USDA Grade A” employees. Since no one actually has such a magical staff, the performance review is never easy in practice, and for new supervisors it can be downright miserable. How do you tell Michelle that her performance isn’t up to your or the company’s expectations?
Here’s the situation: Michelle has a chronic problem with missing deadlines, and it has delayed two major projects this year. You’ve only been her manager for a year, and before that you were her co-worker for three years. She’s older than you, with more experience at the company. And besides, she’s not going to take this well, and you don’t want to hurt her feelings.
You have two choices when planning how to address what’s going on with Michelle:
1. Avoid the situation
2. Deal with the issue head on
Your first choice: duck and run
Your first choice is to focus on the things she did well, give her a slightly above average review, and mumble something about perhaps being on time a little more often with deadlines. She walks away (probably) happy, gets a small raise, and spends the next year not doing anything differently.
But because you aren’t satisfied with her performance, you begin to give the harder assignments to other team members. She notices this, and is beginning to feel left out. Because you haven’t told her anything is wrong with her performance, she concludes that this is personal: “You just don’t like me anymore.” She becomes disgruntled, discontent, and shares her feelings with the rest of her teammates, undermining your effectiveness as their leader.
Ultimately she may leave the group—this is actually the best possible way such a situation can go, because if she stays she’ll become increasingly unhappy, and have an increasingly negative effect on your team. Either she’ll quit, or you’ll find a way to make her someone else’s problem. Either way, you’ve got a broken team and a former friend.
Even worse in the big picture is that your friend still has no idea that there ever was a performance problem, and so she is likely to continue performing poorly at her new job, and the cycle will repeat. Problems grow when they aren’t addressed directly, and they grow best when they are actively ignored. In this case, a small performance problem with a personal dimension has blossomed into a problem for the company (late projects), a problem for your team, a problem for the new team receiving Michelle, and an ongoing problem for Michelle, as she will likely repeat all this over again.
The right choice: face the issue with an honest assessment
Your second choice is to be up front at the beginning. Tell Michelle, very specifically, in which areas she needs to improve. Give her examples of times that she succeeded and also of times when she didn’t meet expectations. Tell her why her non-performance was a problem. Was the project late? Did it go over budget? Was the report not well received? Did you lose the contract?
Specifically, make sure you cover the following three items:
1. Be honest about impact so that she can understand why her performance is really a problem.
2. Be clear about your expectations for her.
3. Work with her to develop a scenario in which she can work on the things she needs to improve.
I never cease to be amazed at how well these situations generally end. I personally find them very challenging. I hate to see people upset. But, it simply isn’t fair to ask the rest of the team to deal with the consequences of a decision by me to avoid an uncomfortable situation.
Difficulties abound
I use this example because I find it the most personally challenging illustration of why honesty is so important, but there are many other reasons.
When your boss or friend or wife or classmate asks you for feedback, make it honest. In the case of your boss, you may have to be careful about phrasing if you disagree with her or his pet project, and you want to be clear that you will follow directions (as long as they are legal, ethical, and moral) and do everything you can to make the boss’s choice a success.
All of this said, however, when your opinion is requested, you don’t serve anyone by saying you agree if you don’t. If the decision works out, the boss may appreciate your candor and your ability to work hard in support of a choice even when you don’t agree with it. All involved will also be looking for evidence that you learned from your mistake, so figure out why you were wrong and make an adjustment! If the decision doesn’t work out, the boss will likely turn to you again and perhaps assign more weight to your opinions in the future. Be respectful of the boss’s position and mindful of possible hurt feelings and resentment of a challenge to authority, but be honest.
As Robert Frost phrased it, “take the road less traveled.” Be honest. |
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