Don't Ignore the Brutal Facts!

Never ignore the brutal facts surrounding your organisation.

How do you usually react when one of your team tells you that they think there’s something wrong with your business? Are you the type of leader with a tendency to react badly to criticism? Or the type who wouldn’t think twice about brushing off your staff member? If you answered yes – then quite frankly, you’re a bloody idiot.

Your employee could be right, and you should want to know about any issues that reflect badly on your company. After all, you aren’t always going to know everything. You need to face the brutal facts, instead of ignoring or brushing off the people who try and help improve your business.

The Harvard Business Review presents a good case study in which the COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? ignored the advice of his VP of Finance who was cautioning their growth, because the VP was a quiet man and seen as “meek”. As a result, the CEO and COO ignored his warnings, the company expanded too quickly and eventually ran out of cash.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins suggests that successful organisations are built on an open communication culture. I’ve shared the four key ways to confront the facts of your current reality and determine corrective action without being confrontational.

1. Lead by asking questions

It is impossible to make great decisions and change when you only push your thoughts and ideas on to others. If you want to be respected as a leader, you must encourage open and effective communication by asking probing questions at the right time. Show your team that you care about their opinion and throw questions at them that require careful thought and focus. The aim is to get honest answers that may highlight any obstacles and problems with your company.

That said, nothing positive can come from someone who is unwilling to listen to answers they do not want to hear. Remember, most of your workers will be nervous about speaking up and sharing the brutal facts with you. Regardless of your opinion, you must work collaboratively as a team and concentrate on where you need to be rather than what got you to where you are now.

2. Create an environment where honesty is valued

Being heard is very different from being confident enough to say what you think. Every person that works for you should be comfortable to share their honest thoughts – which is why you need to encourage healthy debates. I’m not talking about arguments and differences of opinions that will put your team in a bad mood.

Just because you’re a manager, it doesn’t give you licence to boss people around. Your job is to demonstrate control when confronted with the brutal facts and guide your workers in a productive environment where conclusions can be reached – and you can all move on. Nothing shows authority more than motivating your people to engage in debate and dialogue without coercion.

3. Investigate problems without pointing the finger

When things go wrong, most managers like to assign blame to protect themselves from being seen as a failure. Pointing the finger and embarrassing others is why these people will never become great leaders. No one can expect to honestly learn from blunders and avoid repeating the same mistakes when they are in denial about how they came about in the first place.

In the words of Dale Carnegie – “Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” Whatever the situation, take responsibility for mistakes, analyse failures, and learn from them to ensure success further down the road. One of the most effective ways to deal with a problem is to openly discuss with your team and decide, together, what needs to happen next.

4. Create invaluable mechanisms

The greatest thing about creating an environment that allows colleagues to communicate problems without repercussions is finding out metrics and facts that can’t be ignored. Did you know that 54% of employees feel like they don’t regularly get respect from their employers? When you invite all the members of your organisation to raise a red flag when something is about to go wrong, it makes everyone feel valued and respected – and helps you identify potential stumbling blocks.  

It’s crucial for every member of your group to feel like they are part of a team and can contribute to solutions – and never want to give up. When you know what you’re fighting, you can stand up to it and take action. Whatever the truth, you can still retain faith in your ability to succeed and have the edge over your competitors when you embrace a climate that energises people to communicate.

5. Avoid Information Overload

Even though continual business communication is vital for an open communication culture, providing employees with an overload of irrelevant information can seriously hinder productivity. Still, many employees are accustomed to receiving information that isn’t relevant to their department at all.

Research suggests that at least 62% of all emails sent to employees are irrelevant and only about 13% of the average workforce uses an intranet to interact with their teams daily. This is commonly due to the lack of localization and personalization of information.

Always remember that it will take only a couple of one-size-fits-all internal emails to have your employees start ignoring them. This is why business leaders should do a better job of making their communications more relevant and personalized for their employees.

6. Balance Out Casual and Corporate Communication

The tone you use to build an open communication culture is very crucial. However, it can be quite challenging to find the perfect balance between casual and corporate voice. Whenever you set out to determine the tone of voice you need to use in your organization, some of the most important things you need to remember are:

●      Understand the difference between employee voices and corporate branding

●      Communicate with both credibility and consistency

●      Engage both internal and leadership communication teams

7. Embrace New Communication Tools

More than half of all high-performing companies have made it a habit to invest in new tools that improve internal communications. Nowadays, most communication in modern workplaces is via digital communication channels and some are still looking for more intuitive and modern communication solutions.

In addition, 73% of organizations have now switched to mobile work and also started prioritizing mobile-first communication strategies.

8. Get Rid of the ‘Us Versus Them’ Ideology

A Salesforce study found that just under 90% of all executives believe workforce failures are caused by poor communication and a lack of collaboration. The ‘Us Versus Them’ culture inevitably leads to friction between different departments.

If employees don't keep on communicating outside of their department, business leaders should build practices that help in strengthening relationships across departments. For instance, they could usher in a culture of feedback to establish genuine responses. Or perhaps, globally spread teams could be brought together daily through video calls that celebrate successes or to gather support for a challenge at hand.

Organisations should always be looking for an opportunity to build a connection between their workforce, especially if there seems to be a lack of common interests or work goals. In most cases, group lunches, open office layouts, team retreats and outings have been known to encourage sharing and collaboration.