How to Lead in Changing Times: Share the Truth

In this series, professionals explain how to lead in times of turmoil or growth. Read the posts, then write your own (use #HowILead in the body of your post).

A few years ago, we had a big client who decided to put its agency business up for bid. We officially “lost,” and it looked like we might take a big hit.

Rumor spread fast, and you could feel the wind get sucked right out of our office. Overnight, the volume dropped by about 20 decibels. Everyone seemed on edge. For once, no one even cared whether our softball team lost and by how much (our team is beloved, but winning is not its strong suit).

You might think that it would have been a good idea for us to say nothing until we knew more. A lot of companies do that. They believe that if employees are worried about their jobs, they’ll spend most of their time looking for a new one rather than working at the old one.

I couldn’t disagree more. Uncertainty is always much worse than bad news. Just because you don’t say anything doesn’t mean people aren’t going to think it. And they’ll always imagine the situation to be much worse than it actually is. In the case of our client, everyone working on the account was worried they’d lose their jobs. That simply wasn’t going to happen, and they needed to know that.

That’s why it’s best to be as fast and transparent as you can be with unwelcome news. Don’t delay and don’t put a bright face on a bad situation. Share the truth as soon as you can.

You should be thorough too. It’s not enough to say, “Hey we lost a $10M client” if no one knows what that means. You have to drill down and figure out its actual effect in real terms. In our case, we lost a lot of business on paper, sure. But when we looked through the details, it turned out to be a relatively minor hit. Most of our work with the client wasn’t covered by the pitch, and we had other clients coming in the door. While we didn’t like losing, it wasn’t the end of the world.  So we went to everyone with an honest assessment and showed why it was true.

Even if the news hadn’t been good, we would have done the same. You owe it to your people to let them know as quickly as possible if something bad might happen to them. You don’t want to tell someone to learn their job is in trouble by handing them a pink slip. That’s just not cool.

So whenever you’re going through a rough patch or a period of rapid change, share the truth. It’s really the only thing you can do, and your people will definitely appreciate it.

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