You will hear me say this often, “Effective leaders say what they believe, while giving others the freedom to disagree.”
Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, has built the world’s largest hedge fund with this approach. Central to the corporate culture is brutal honesty. He believes that if employees can’t be honest, especially with their supervisors, it weakens the organization.
As noted here, Dalio once received an email from an employee, Jim Haskel, that demonstrates this point. It read:
Ray – you deserve a “D-” for your performance today in the meeting … you did not prepare at all because there is no way you could have and been that disorganized. In the future, I/we would ask you to take some time and prepare and maybe even I should come up and start talking to you to get you warmed up or something but we can’t let this happen again. If you in any way think my view is wrong, please ask the others or we can talk about it.
How many of us would really appreciate this kind of candor?
Sometimes we don’t really want honest feedback. Other times even when we ask for it, we don’t get it because people are afraid to give it.
So how do can you encourage your team to be honest with you and one another? Here are four guidelines that I find helpful.
Ask
Even if you ask for honesty you may not get it. However, if you don’t ask you’re almost certain not to get it.
Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, knows how to get results. She took the Google AdWords platform from a team of four persons to over 4000 before she was recruited by Mark Zuckerberg to run Facebook. In her eight years at Facebook, Sandberg has grown revenue 65x, and has taken the company from unprofitable to highly profitable.
Sandberg often shares a story that emphasizes why you need to constantly ask for honest feedback, even if you believe your culture encourages it.
Sandberg hates power points. At one point she banned them from any meeting she attended. Sometime later she was at a global conference of Facebook sales employees, where she was scheduled to do a Q&A. Prior to going onstage, she talked to the HR person who was organizing the event. She asked what kinds of questions she might anticipate. She was told that everybody was talking about not being able to use PowerPoint presentations with their clients. Sandberg was stunned.
Even though she hated power points, Sandberg knew that they were essential for Facebook sales people to use them with clients. She had never intended to ban them companywide. She realized at that moment that if she didn’t ask people to be honest with her, she wouldn’t get it.
Sandberg told her team, “Next time you hear a bad idea — like not doing proper client presentations — speak up. Even if you think it is what I have asked for, tell me I am wrong!”
Focus on your mission
The point of encouraging honesty is to further the mission of the organization. You want to make the best possible decisions, and to do that you need every perspective possible. This kind of focus is energizing. People in any organization want to make a difference. This is especially true in congregations and nonprofits.
By encouraging honesty for the sake of the mission you communicate that you care more about the success of the organization then about being right. People not only respect that, they are motivated by that.
More importantly, if people know that they have been heard they are more likely to support a decision with which they disagree. If they know that everybody has had a chance to make their case for what is best for the organization, but their idea is not chosen, they are still likely to support the decision.
A great example of this is the cranberry cooperative Ocean Spray. At one point in their history they were considering an offer to be purchased by PepsiCo. There was passionate debate on both sides of the issue. In the end the vote was 52% against, 48% for. The co-op would stay independent.
Once the decision was made there were no hard feelings. Everyone rallied behind the decision to be successful as an independent organization. This is what happens when people can be honest for the sake of the mission.
Don’t take it personally and admit when you’re wrong.
This goes along with the previous idea that you put the mission of your organization first. But it also speaks to the idea of self-differentiation. If you know who you are and what you believe, it makes you less likely to be get wrapped up in being right. You can still be passionate about your ideas and your leadership, but you don’t take it personally.
If you ask for honesty, but get defensive or angry when people give it to you, they are going to stop doing it. Likewise if you make decisions that end up being wrong, and you don’t admit it, they are going to wonder why they should be honest in the first place.
Distinguish between process and content.
Understanding emotional process can give you clues as to when you should engage with honest feedback and when you should take it with a grain of salt. The question to ask is whether a person is taking responsibility for their own feelings or whether they’re blaming or defining others.
For example if somebody says “I hear what you say, but I don’t think I can agree…“ Then it’s pretty clear that they are defining themselves and taking responsibility for their own position. On the other hand, if somebody says, “We are never going to get anywhere unless they fix their problems,” be careful. The “they” in this sentence could be somebody within or outside the organization. Regardless, this is blaming others rather than figuring out how one can take responsibility for his or her own actions or the actions of the organization.
Even worse is when somebody tries to define you by blaming you or threatening you. “You’re leading us down the wrong path!” or, “If you do this you’re going to be sorry!” are sure signs that the issue is not you but the person who is speaking. In this case they are likely operating out of their own anxiety and not thinking of what is best for the organization. They may couch it in those terms, but be very careful engaging with this kind of content.
Understanding emotional process is independent of content. In the examples I gave the issue could have been anything. The idea is to get a sense for who is healthy and is defining themselves, yet staying connected emotionally to the rest the team, and who is burdened with anxiety and is just lashing out in all directions.
Honesty and trust go hand in hand. It’s impossible to have honesty without trust. As a leader, your role is to cultivate both. If you do, your organization will make better decisions and will adapt more rapidly to changing conditions. That’s a goal worth striving for.
