Picking Scabs and Popping Zits
Mom told me not to pick at scabs and pop zits. “You’ll get scars.” The opposite is true in organizations. The things you don’t say, but should, cause scars.
7 things you want to say, but don’t:
- You’re negative.
- You talk too much. We don’t need another rendition of War and Peace.
- The meetings you run suck.
- Your stories about the good ole days are boring.
- Five minutes late is on time for you.
- The first thing you do is defend yourself.
- You don’t follow through.
The dance:
The importance of picking scabs rose to the surface in a recent coaching development session in Philadelphia. The organization I work with feels like a family. For better or worse, sometimes families don’t bring up dad’s habit of burping at the table until he does it in front of guests.
Frustrations ends with, “And you’re just like your mother.”
The leaders in the room laughed about ‘the dance’. We talk around nagging issues, performance concerns, and irritating habits. (They were being candid.)
Why pick scabs and pop zits:
Pointing out a colleagues self-defeating behaviors, blind spots, or inconsistencies – with compassion and curiosity – is like airing out a stuffy attic.
One manager in the meeting reflected. “Now that it’s out in the open, we can deal with it.”
3 necessities:
My friend Alf Goodall, VP Sales, Wealth Management at London Life, conferenced into our coaching development meeting. Alf said a culture of candor requires:
- “A strong belief in people.” Candor is cruelty if you don’t believe in the person receiving it.
- “It has to be delivered in a nonthreatening way.”
- “Organizations must be open with performance.” Candor requires a free flow of information. Secrets turn candor into manipulation.
“Candor is a compliment; it implies equality. It’s how true friends talk.” Peggy Noonan
How might leaders pick scabs and pop zits in ways that make things better?
Hi Dan
Lack of open honesty between teammates and associates produces mediocre results at best.Business models and strategies are difficult if not impossible to understand while personal commitment to a project or your companies phylosophy is difficult at best. ‘Why’? It’s just not possible to move forward and act or perform with confidence when you’re not 100% sure of team/organizational goals and strategies to meet those goals.
Successful business ventures live, or die in relation to their level of effective communication. (TO LEADERS), the Autocratic style of Leadership, “withholding information, not sharing or giving decision making authority to others, to acting in an elitist manner erodes confidence, commitment, and errodes ones level of certainty that allows employees to totally contribute.
Leaderships success hinges on the effectiveness of communication. Be clear, be precise, be availiable.
“Be the type of leader a leader a leader would want to follow!”
Cheers Dan
SGT Steve
P.S. Let’s make plans to get together Dan, LMK.😉
Thanks SGT. Great seeing you here today. You insights are so helpful. That first sentence in your comment is gold.
Your emphasis on the free flow of information emplowers people. Sure, you can’t share everything. But in many cases there is way to much secrecty and hoarding.
Well, if the headline doesn’t grab you… 🙂 What a great post, and oh so true. Candor = Communication – The age old its theme of us Leaders!
Let’s say you have a company that would like to start implementing Candor? Maybe someone in management just started getting your posts and decided to up their leadership game. (I can dream, right?) The first conversation will be difficult, since you’ve let that certain someone (with a relatively high visibility position) complain about everything under the sun, loudly, to the point its become a joke to other employees (just one example) It appears beyond just Candor now.
This is the problem with lack of Candor, small problems go on and fester, just like those zits. Mole hills become Mountains…. (btw, we are in the mid-west, so you have that whole “Midwestern Nice” problem to overcome too!)
Thanks Sandy. You’re nailing an important idea. When we don’t practice kind candor, problems escalate until we are forced to deal with them. Most of these situations don’t get better with time. They get worse.
The thought of a “midwestern nice” having candor seems just perfect to me. 🙂
Timing is everything, and this post is timely for me! This is a shift in thinking for many. When I analyze the 3 necessities that you have presented, I can’t help but think about the commitment that those imply. It is a commitment to accept discomfort, be intentional with best practices, and agree to candor as being reciprocal. I connect this to a previous post “Change your question, Change your direction” – This is truly, Change your Concerns to Candor, Change your Direction. Thank you!
Thanks Jeannie. Your thought process is really helpful. Your comment about a commitment that candor be reciprocal reminds of something the COO said to me in a meeting I had with him, after the coaches development session.
He delineated between reactive and proactive candor. Now, you add reciprocal candor.
Jeannie, That is spot on. (EXCELLENT RESPONCE)🙌
For candor to work, there has to be trust. As you say, trust that the others truly have your best interests at heart, trust that it won’t come back to bite you. As you have said before, trust is the bottom line in any relationship!
Like the title. As many have already mentioned, trust is a huge barrier to candor. When people are candid with us, we often think to ourselves, “Do you have my best interests in mind?” Unfortunately, I believe that we often believe deep down that others are trying to get at us and make themselves look better. Peeling back the layers of self-protection is important to building trust and taking our teams to the next level.