If you want to develop a culture of candor, start with your own behaviour and then work outwards – and keep these recommendations in mind:
Tell the truth:
We all have an impulse to tell people what they want to hear. Wise executives tell everyone the same unvarnished story. Once you develop a reputation for straight talk, people will return the favour.
Encourage people to speak truth to power:
It’s extraordinarily difficult for people lower in a hierarchy to tell higher-ups unpalatable truths – but that’s what the higher-ups need to know, because often their employees have access to information about problems that they don’t. Create conditions for people to be courageous.
Reward contrarians:
Your company won’t innovate successfully if you don’t learn to recognise, the challenge, your own assumptions. Find colleagues who can help you do that. Promote the best of them. Thank them all.
Practice having unpleasant conversations:
The best leaders learn how to deliver bad news kindly so that people don’t get unncecessarily hurt. That is not easy – so find a safe place to practice.
Diversify your sources of information:
Everyone’s biased. Make sure you communicate regularly to different groups of employees, customers, competitors, so that your own understanding is nuanced and multifaceted.
Admit your mistakes:
This gives everyone around you perimission to do the same.
Build organisational support for transparency:
Start with protection for whistle-blowers, but don’t stop there. Hire people because they created a culture of candor elsewhere (not because they can outcompete their peers).
Set information free:
Most organisations default to keeping information confidential when it might be strategic or private. Default, instead, to sharing information – unless there’s a clear reason not to.
- James O’Toole (Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Denver) and Warren Bennis (University Professor at the University of Southern California)
Tags: Communication
