Does Brutal Honesty Help?

Author: Dave Crisp

20 Nov

It may not be wise to always be brutally honest with others. In most cases it helps to try to find the silver lining as well as what needs to change, but I believe it is best to be completely clear when dealing with problems you’re struggling with if you can face doing it yourself.

On CLO Magazine’s blog, the question came up, “why aren’t there more people willing to step up to front line leadership?” One commenter observed, we don’t train enough. True, but I wrote this:

“I agree that we rarely teach practical leadership skills when we promote people or prepare them for promotion. We throw them in and let them sink or swim… and then some time later we try to teach them. In fact the skills have to be learned on the job with a coach (the boss, if the boss has leadership skills, which 80% don’t according to many surveys).

“However I think a growing factor today is that we expect the leaders to make sure the work is done even if they have to do it themselves – no excuses – do it or you’re out, so taking on leadership is taking on an unbelievable workload… still with no training on how to get others cooperating in getting it done. Sound like a good deal? Here, you be leader, you do all the work, we won’t show you how to successfully delegate… and then maybe we’ll fire you… in many states ‘at will’ with no recourse or severance… and you’ll be totally humiliated in the process most likely. Wow. I’ll take that risk. I’m exaggerating… slightly, but there are lots of organizations who do this to at least some of their promoted managers. Any wonder it scares people off?

“We desperately need to remedy this, but it seems to be one leader at a time and it starts with taking a brutally honest look at what those we promote are expected to do.”

This certainly doesn’t apply to every situation or organization, but not only is little training provided to actual managers, very few believe in trying to help potential leaders learn the skills BEFORE they are promoted. Often I see leaders who are being offered training or coaching where it is ‘too little, too late.’ They’ve already alienated their teams or at least fallen into patterns that aren’t highly productive and now have a hard time changing. It only really became clear answering this question and realizing that I was trying to be bluntly honest. If nothing else I think it illustrates the benefits of asking ourselves these questions via blogs and other means. Self-examination certainly reveals what we need to fix. I’m sure I’ve been as guilty as many when I didn’t provide training BEFORE it was needed.

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