Honesty Over Transparency
A lesson learned after ~20,000 management hours
At the beginning of every management role I have, whether it be at the same company I’ve been working at for years, just with a different team, or at with an entirely new organization, I’ll schedule 1:1’s with everyone on the team. And, when I say everyone, I mean everyone, not just my direct reports, but their directs as well. This can often be upwards of ~40 people.
I do this for a few reasons, but the primary reason is to build trust and credibility with the individuals on the team.
In these 1:1’s the agenda is simple and sent ahead of time so as not to catch anyone off gaurd. I ask three questions:
- What’s going well?
- What needs improvement?
- What do you expect of me?
These questions have yielded incredible insights and have helped me really hit the ground running when it comes to setting strategy — I’ll dig into the various reasons why that might be in later posts.
But, there’s one answer that’s given to me after I ask question number 3. It’s a nearly unanimous response, delivered with the same “Well, this goes without saying” tone.
“I expect transparency.”
For the first few years of my career, I didn’t really question this philosophy as it’s seemingly innocuous. I mean, who doesn’t want transparency!? If I show our team what I’m working on at all times, they will have no choice but to trust me… right?
But, as I tried to lean more and more into transparency, the less comfortable my team felt. It was almost as if they said they wanted transparency, but when they got it, they weren’t sure what to do with it. It eroded their trust in me because they felt I didn’t know anything.
On top of that, I began to question my own ability. I lost trust in myself.
Not great.
For those of you who have worked your way up the management ladder, you might have noticed a real cognitive dissonance when you get to a point where planning is occurring but no decisions have been made; you discover that most situations are much more complicated than they initially seem.
It’s almost as if the more you have access to, the more information you discover you don’t really know.
The Dunning-Krueger Effect rears it’s ugly head…
To combat this perception with my teams, I’ve stopped promising transparency and, instead, have promised honesty. I explain that there will be times where I won’t have the full answer/story and wouldn’t feel comfortable giving any information as things might be fluid and changing rapidly; if I were to share the details I had and they changed, the team might feel legit whiplash.
At first the individuals on the team are a bit caught off guard. But, often without any additional discussion, they’re quickly reminded of the multiple times that previous managers over promised, under delivered, and/or created change fatigue.
There’s immediate buy-in.
Over time it becomes surprisingly cathartic for the team. It also becomes incredibly freeing for me as their manager.
Transparency is a wide spectrum that has you constantly wondering if you’re oversharing. Honesty, on the other hand, is binary. At the end of any interaction with the team, I lean on the simple question:
“Am I being honest?”
The job is so full of ambiguity already. We should look to find any way possible to make things more straight forward.
Ultimately, honesty begins to lead to authenticity. And, authenticity leads to predictability and credibility. This makes all your compliments and constructive criticism much more impactful.
What I’ve discoverd is that honesty develops the trust that we assume transparency will create.
Honestly. :)