Encouraging team members and colleagues to offer more candid views about how they see matters is a leadership challenge in many organizations.
Cultures and leaders that unknowingly inhibit open and frank conversations are common, and the ways to fix the problem of highly guarded communication from those with lower status in an organization often requires enormous effort and time.
Simply asking for more candidness is a smart idea but doesn’t usually create much change.
Good leaders go further. They reward candidness by publicly thanking those who find the courage to speak their minds. Leaders then do their best to act on the honest ideas and viewpoints offered during such frank discussions. All of this is a slow burn that requires nearly every leader to embrace the approach for it to make an impact.
To truly promote more candidness, leaders must set the example.
Candid communication in an organization or team starts at the top. Leaders who want to foster more open and honest communication throughout the team must lead in one important way. They must adopt the practice of making decision processes and outcomes highly transparent and visible to everyone.
This includes sharing rationales, alternative arguments, and financial data that contributed to the decision. The best leaders even go as far as sharing meeting notes and other information to give the full context for how decisions came to fruition.
When transparency surrounding decision-making is followed by inquiry, a new openness emerges. Team members who get to ask questions about the decision and its process engage more openly and honestly.
The end result is more candidness from team members on other issues. By modeling this openness and asking others to engage with their questions and views, leaders display their own vulnerability and willingness to be challenged. By not reacting defensively, they set the norm that candidness is appreciated and expected.
Without decision transparency, more candidness by team members throughout the organization is exceedingly hard to inculcate. Team members find the courage to be frank when the questions they ask about any major decision are listened to and answered without negativity.
They follow this example and share more of their honest views on other everyday issues and problems. The more transparency offered by leaders regarding major decisions, the more candidness will follow on other issues. Good leaders remember that any decision that affects a team member is considered a major decision to them.
Leaders who want more transparency must give it to others first. Such honesty in discussions about decisions makes leaders vulnerable in the eyes of the team.
It is this vulnerability that promotes everyday candidness from those below. Leaders can never demand more candidness. Just as with trust and respect, they must earn it.
