Can You Handle the Truth?

Can You Handle the Truth?

by Mike Prokopeak

Managers have gotten into some bad habits. In the name of getting along, they've coated information in whitewash and obscured the hard facts. Instead of being open, honest and transparent, they encourage anonymous feedback and hide behind 360 assessments.

Susan Scott, author of Fierce Leadership, argues that many of today's management best practices are actually holding us back. Many leaders fail to recognize that their practices face substantial internal barriers to success.

"Our practices include not only what we do, but what we believe, because it's our belief that drives our behavior that produces results," Scott said. "It's very difficult for them to behave differently and to sustain that behavior if what they believe underneath doesn't support it."

To overcome these barriers, Scott said managers need to develop "squid eye" - the ability to spot signals that foretell potential problems. She co-opted the term from divers who scour the sea floor in search of squid. Beginning divers have difficulty spotting squid because of their camouflage, but after they learn to see them - develop "squid eye" - the signs are all around.

"I want people ... to be able to spot the 'tells' that indicate we're headed in a good direction or a bad direction," Scott said.

The ability to spot these corporate "tells" will allow companies to adjust their practices in order to operate more effectively individually and in teams and drive performance. Scott identified six "worst" best practices that are key tells that a company is headed in the wrong direction, including hiring for smarts, legislated optimism and anonymous 360-degree feedback.

Scott said the way 360s are used anonymously in most organizations fails to provide meaningful feedback that improves individual and organizational results. Anonymous feedback indicates a belief that it's risky to disclose what you are thinking or feeling or that people can't handle delivering or receiving the truth face to face. It may be an indicator of a deeper cultural problem.

"When an organization gives the message quite overtly that we are unable to give one another feedback candidly face to face ... then you have to ask where else in the company does anonymity live," Scott said. "Where else in the organization are people withholding what they think and feel, and what price are we paying for that?"

On an individual level, anonymous feedback lacks context and meaning. The person receiving the feedback often struggles to understand what to do with the results because he or she has no idea where the feedback is coming from. More importantly, Scott said people lose the opportunity to build meaningful relationships.

"The language of anonymous feedback is colorless and soul-killing, and I just don't see any life or intimacy or humanity [in it] that could truly enrich a relationship," Scott said.

That failure to establish and enrich relationships is what costs organizations in the long run. The inability to have a candid conversation about performance leads to a tendency for relationships to flatline and fail, Scott said.

"A key premise of fierce conversations is that our careers and our companies and our relationships succeed or fail gradually, then suddenly, one conversation at a time, and secondly, the conversation is the relationship," she said.

Rather than anonymous 360-degree feedback, Scott suggested that companies practice face-to-face feedback, 365 days a year.

"Unfortunately, we don't care enough to do the hard things that also happen to be the right things because we are not connected with people at a deep level," Scott said. "If you want to become a great leader - or a great human being, a great parent - you must gain the capacity to connect with your colleagues, with your customers, with your community at a deep level, or lower your aim."

Scott said that those relationships - our emotional capital - are our most valuable currency. Executive suites are littered with the corpses of brilliant people who flamed out because they failed to recognize the importance of human connectivity.

"We might be technically proficient and very smart and very well-intentioned and bomb if we don't know how to connect with our colleagues and our customers at a deep level, if we don't know how to have the conversations that need to take place," Scott said.

Those authentic conversations tackle reality, provoke learning, resolve tough challenges and enrich, rather than devalue, relationships, but Scott said pulling the plug immediately on anonymous feedback could be disastrous. While it's not hard to do, having a conversation that tackles these challenges requires preparation.

"You just need to be shown how to do it and then practice doing it on real issues," Scott said.

The ultimate goal is to create a transparent, authentic performance-driven culture.

"Leaders need to examine their practices and look at the results their practices are producing," Scott said. "Where they love the results, then obviously their practices are working. Where they're not getting the results they want, perhaps ... it's time to clear the windshield."

[About the Author: Mike Prokopeak is the editorial director for Chief Learning Officer magazine.]