Back in 2016, we wrote about Margaret Heffernan’s famous line about office culture: “Conflict is frequent when candor is safe.”
In other words, a team can have more of those difficult-yet-productive conversations when they know it’s OK to tell people what they’re actually thinking.
E.g. “I know that it’s OK to tell you that your horrible and potentially disastrous idea is exactly that- horrible and potentially disastrous – because I know you a) won’t take it personally, b) Know that I’m doing it for the right reasons and c) will take it under consideration.” This is exactly what we want and need when we’re trying to solve difficult problems together.
HOWEVER, though it’s lovely to imagine a business culture where everybody is 100% candid and safe, most of us live in the real world, where things aren’t always so straightforward.
That’s why we appreciated this recent WSJ article, “How Candid Can You Really Be With Your Boss?”
It’s got some good tips , the main takeaway being that as groovy as we may think our bosses are (or even, as groovy as they *actually* are), they are still the boss and not everything goes. Not all feedback is welcomed regardless of how true it might be. It’s a real balancing act and not an easy one to pull off.
So what is the right balance? That, sadly, isn’t up to us or the WSJ columnist.
It’s actually up to the individual culture of the company, which at the end of the day, is leadership’s job to design. As we said last October, the job of the CEO isn’t to do the actual work, but to create an environment where great work can actually be done.
This is a “culture-first” mindset, as opposed to a “product-first” or “object-first” mindset. Companies, after all, are collections of people- the offices, finances, equipment, machines, services, I.P. and products are ultimately just extensions.
And the best collections of people are those who can actually communicate with each other without fear of repercussion. So even if you might have to be circumspect about what you say to your bosses these days, the best leaders know that fostering a candid culture is in fact a secret weapon for business success.
