Apr 22

Nothing is More Important than the Truth

Today I met with a client in a mid-size technology company in Illinois.She has had a terrific career. A dozen years there, numerous high profile successes. She’s a gifted marketing professional with expertise in product design and business-to-business promotion. She has a unique combination of skills that have made her sought after for several new product projects over the years.

Two weeks ago she was demoted.

How is that possible? Simple; her primary weakness caught up with her; she is bad at developing collaborative relationships.

Now, I know a lot of executives and coffee-shop-arm-chair-management-consultants who would all too easily say well shame on her. She should have known what skills she was weak in and should have worked to fix those problems. It’s her fault. I agree with the self-awareness part. Let us all be supremely self-aware all the time. Utopia is a nice idea. But, her managers (several of them over the years own a big part of her problem.)

Before we blame an individual for underperformance we should look at the systems and processes the company uses to support, lead and develop them. My rule with clients is when investigating causes of problems, look at process contributions first and individual skill and attitude contributions second. This forces leaders to look at the collective picture before indicting an individual. (So few of managers or leaders would start a problem or failure debrief with an examination of their own, personal contribution to their employee’s problem, which is a terrific place to begin. So, focusing on process is a good way of keeping leaders from a-little-too-quickly blaming their direct report for 100% of the failure before understanding the broader array of contributing variables.)

What have I learned from examining my client’s situation? I discovered that for years this woman has been promoted and compensated highly because she produced good marketing program results. While her performance reviews touch on some leadership and relationship-building problems over the years, none of them (repeat NONE of them) makes it clear those problems were seen as potentially fatal flaws in her performance. In fact, in the latest performance review, she received an above average rating and a concommitent raise. But, suddenly she was demoted because, as she has come to learn (if too late) she lacks critical skills in coalition and team building.

I am intensely curious how a leader can avoid dealing directly with a direct report’s skill deficiency, compensate them as if there is no deficiency and then demote that person because of the deficiency. I’m even more curious how several leaders over several years could not deal directly with my client’s relationship-building skill problem. Obviously, anyone with a business degree or loving heart would say this situation should never happen. Why did it?

Because the company has a culture of politeness. They over-value politeness and undervalue truth-telling. The over-value niceness and under-value leadership courage in dealing with critical skill deficiencies. In this case, a career was slowly debilitated by lack of honesty.

I’ll cut this short and make the obvious point: leaders have an obligation to tell the truth. If as a leader you find yourself being more truthful in discussions than you are willing to put in writing, you need get some help with managerial courage. It’s not easy to tell someone they are falling short of the mark, or that they lack skills that are becoming increasingly necessary. But, leaders should not be allowed to say one think in the annual review and do another when it comes to promotion or demotion.

My client paid a dear price for a long-term trail of politeness. She also is responsible for not recognizing the signals others were giving off that she was causing problems in how she related with people. I am not saying her managers are solely responsible for her demotion or her long-term lack of relational skills. She is sizably responsible. But, she is not solely responsible.

Nothing is more generous to an employee than telling the whole truth about how you see their performance. Nothing is better for helping that employee learn and develop. Nothing does more for the long-term strength of a company than basing all leader-direct report conversations on what is real. Politeness is great - but when it morphs into a systemic process of skirting the tough issues - companies - and individual employees pay a high price.

My client will be fine. She is determined to improve and do the hard work to get out of the penalty box. It may take her a couple years. But, she is determined - and I believe, well capable of learning…now that she knows the truth.

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