by Marcia Zidle, Featured Contributor
“I’ve told my staff not to hold back on me but I’m not sure I’m getting through to them. They think they’re doing me a favor when they don’t tell me about a problem hoping it might go away. As a result, I’ve had to deal with a crisis that could have been avoided if I had known about earlier. ”
This was said to me recently by an executive coaching client Michelle who was frustrated and wanted guidance on how to communicate her expectations to her staff.
Keep Communication Flowing
Simply telling your staff that you want to hear the bad news along with the good is seldom enough. They have to be reassured that they won’t be the victim of “kill the messenger”. Unless your behavior tells them that you can listen to and handle negative information with calmness and fairness, they’re less likely to tell you about it. With this in mind, here’s how you might go about encouraging the delivery of news – whether it’s good, bad or ugly!
1. Manage by walking around.
Make it easy for employees to see you and tell you what’s going on. Don’t wait for staff meetings. Go to their office, have coffee with them, walk with them to the cafeteria, etc. Perhaps it’s not so much that your supervisors don’t think you can handle such information as it is their conviction that you’re too busy on other matters. So, if you don’t want this filter to operate, then make sure you’re around and available.
2. Ask the right questions.
You’ll probably not find out what’s wrong by asking the common question, “How are things going?” Most likely you’ll get is an optimistic and non-informative answer. Ask, instead, a question that deals with specifics: For example:
“How’s the new assistant working out?” or, “Are the new modifications as helpful as you thought they’d be?” Questions like these convey the idea that you’re familiar enough with the situation and want to get the full picture.
3. Avoid the solution only trap.
You’ve made it very clear to your supervisors that you expect them to present problems accompanied by a clear cut course of action. Perhaps you did this to avoid the danger of people delegating their work upward to you. You don’t want to take on their “monkeys”. But, there are times when your experience and grasp of the “big picture” should be acted upon. So make sure your words or attitude don’t too quickly indicate that you feel this is their problem not yours. Be open to them coming to you when there’s not one best solution.
4. Reward the bearer.
It’s not easy to expresses enthusiasm when you’re being given a piece of bad news, but it’s possible. The next time it happens instead of wincing and acting as if the sky has just fallen in or saying “why didn’t you tell me this sooner”, you might try: “I’m glad you came to me with this now….this could have been much worse if you’d waited.” If the supervisor thinks you are appreciative because he did the right thing, then you can expect more of the same in the future
After reflecting on these four strategies, Michelle realized that she does manage by walking around and knows each supervisor’s responsibilities to ask the right questions.
But, she also recognized she may have pushed too much for them to always come with a solution. If they didn’t have a good one, then they may have procrastinated coming to her until it blew up into a major crisis. Also, when busy, she may have showed annoyance rather than openness and appreciation for their problems. She then went on to make changes in how she interacted with her supervisors to let them know that she welcomed them to come to her with the good – the bad -and even the ugly.
Smart Moves Tip:
Basically a manager’s chance of getting negative information depends on the kind of relationship they have developed with their people. A hostile or remote relationship promotes the withholding of information even though it may ultimately be to the employee’s disadvantage. But, one that is encouraging gives the employee the confidence to come to the boss with whatever they think is important.
Readers, what has been your experience either giving bad news to your boss or getting bad news from your people? I’d enjoy hearing from you.
Great advice, questionable approach. I’m just delivering bad news.
Clearly all of your advice can work, but how do you reach all the management team and how would the CEO know whether they got the message. He/she wouldn’t. People don’t work for the company, they work for their boss. So the redelivery of bad news is always limited by the individuals trust in THEIR manager. Even the officers are affected with this regarding their peers. I have many examples of officers wanting to criticize a peer, but know that that would be risky in their culture. In one case an officer asked me to generate an anonymous suggestion affecting a pet project of the CFO’s. When I heard what it was I couldn’t believe he couldn’t bring that up at the Office of the Chair meeting. It was an instant $4 million saving. He replied that he could bring it up and it would cause the cancelation of her pet project. But, he said, if it took her 5 years, she would get even with him.
So if you want to receive negative news, you have to ask for it and let the employees respond anonymously to a third party working for the CEO. No culture, politics or silo interference. And you have to ask the right question. We do it with a video from the CEO asking the employees to tell him/her anonmyously the stupidest things the company is doing. Results: in ten weeks one client cut $300 million from SG&A, $200 million from already approved capital, $45 million from inventory and reduced announced layoffs by 60%. Also a few “corporate bullies” were sent home, always a great outcome. We had a difficult time shutting off the valve. Employees could’t believe the things the CEO was approving, neither could the officers. This client’s results are not an aberration, every client who has implemented this approach had similar results as a percentage of their spend.
Asking for negative input without removing the risk is a waste of time, employees’ perception of the risk will always rule their actions.