The Metiss Group's Blog

If you’ve ever experienced flight delays while traveling, you know how frustrating it is when the airline withholds or sugar-coats bad news.  We’d all like to know our flight is delayed or cancelled when the airline knows about it.  But airlines, concerned they might disappoint their customers, often conceal or soften the bad news.  As travelers, even though it’s unpleasant, we’d much prefer to know what’s happening and want the airline to be honest with us.

This is how direct reports feel when leaders aren’t completely forthright with them.  Leaders need to be completely honest when delivering feedback and conducting performance reviews.  Like airline customers, employees want to know when there are issues impacting the company sooner rather than later.  Though it may feel uncomfortable, employees have much more respect for the leader who is forthright and direct.

Empower yourself to be honest and prompt when delivering tough messages and you and your direct reports will be more successful.

This entry was posted on October 14, 2012 at 9:58 am and is filed under Leadership, Performance Acceleration. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.