While some team members protect and hide information because they fear negative repercussions, more ambitious colleagues often do so to manage their image and reputation.
They hide the ball to project the positive image they want to burnish in their leader’s mind.
Anything that makes them look bad is buried, brushed over, or hidden, which means the leader receives an inaccurate or incomplete view of what is really going on.
Not raising important issues or problems for the purposes of self-promotion is a more common flaw than many leaders realize.
This behavior is often unintentionally rewarded, as leaders who prefer good news make a fuss over the good news they hear. The more leaders celebrate good news, the more ambitious team members will come to believe it is a great idea to keep bad news to themselves.
Team members also hide the ball to maintain their autonomy. Once negative information registers, the leader is likely to get involved — asking tough questions and directing action.
Ambitious team members loathe the idea of losing that latitude, so they keep problems to themselves and hope no one notices.
Leaders who rely too heavily on one-on-one updates to learn what is happening are more susceptible to being fooled — and easier for ambitious people to manage for their own ends.
The better practice is to create shared visibility through dashboards, team check-ins, and open debate. This makes it much harder for any single individual to filter or control information.
Once a leader recognizes a pattern of hiding negative information, they must confront the behavior. If they fail to act, they accept operating blindly with only half of the information they need to lead and make quality decisions.
Good leaders set the expectation that all important information is to be shared and that transparency is critical to team success.
They confront those who selectively share information by showing them exactly where and when this is happening. They connect the undisclosed information to its consequences — how it erodes trust and leaves teammates to perform poorly in the absence of the full picture they need.
The truth is that if someone looks good by hiding problems, the system is rewarding the wrong thing.
Instead of reflexively celebrating good news, the best leaders are quick to praise people for raising problems early and giving the team a full, honest picture.
Good leaders know trust and performance die in the dark. They demand visibility and shared truth. They are quick to confront any attempt to hide the ball.
