In Leadership, Clarity Trumps Everything
ON TRANSPARENCY IN THE WORKPLACE
I said, “Your words aren’t clear
You’d better spit out your gum”
Bob Dylan
I taught college composition for decades and long preached that clarity trumps everything—grammar, mechanics, style, everything. If you strive first to be understood, you need to spit out your gum and embrace clarity. Once you do that, all the other elements of communication tend to fall in line in support of the goal of making yourself understood.
This concept is particularly important to grasp when attempting to communicate in the workplace, which can be a dicey affair on the best day. Therefore, it behooves the good boss to spit out the gum and to communicate as clearly as possible. And what could be clearer than transparency?
Unless your work environment demands security clearances or requires knowledge of super-secret recipes, transparency in leadership is a vital tool for building a healthy workplace. But you may be thinking, transparency sure can be mighty hard. After all, if you aren’t transparent enough, all folks see are the flecks of dirt, the smudges, and the thin film of filth that coats the surface. If you are too transparent, why then you are liable to have a bird fly right into you. What is a boss to do?
The simple fact of the matter is that every leadership action has consequences, and those consequences are felt by employees and clients even when the original action had been concealed. In other words, sooner or later, in one way or another, transparent or not, the truth will usually out. Better to be in front of it rather than constantly trailing behind.
ON BEING TRANSPARENT, NOT INVISIBLE
As counterintuitive as it may seem, transparency is the art of visibility. Transparency has to do with candor and openness, and a transparent leader will habitually seek to keep employees up-to-date and aware of circumstances and how they inform decision making. Truly transparent leaders do not distinguish between good and bad news, major or minor facts, or anything in between when sharing information. As with writing or any form of communication, the goal is to be apparent, easy to read, visible.
A transparent boss leads with forthright candor on the assumption that most professionals would prefer the freedom of knowing even bad news over blissful ignorance. Furthermore, an informed employee is an empowered employee, and the price of that empowerment is accountability, which is an easy bargain. In my experience with overseeing transparent and accountable workplaces, true professionals really do want to deliver more while being held to higher standards.
Transparent leaders stand out for their straight-forward honesty, not wanting to conceal either news or themselves from colleagues and employees. Practicing such transparency reduces the element of surprise and its disruptive potential. It also signals to employees that they are valued and trusted enough to share in news. Finally, it helps to motivate employees because an informed employee will have a better sense of workplace goals and will be able to enjoy more autonomy.
TWO CAVEATS
The transparent leader will face some challenges, the first being the most obvious. True transparency will make you more susceptible to criticism and attacks—it’s the cost of honesty. Some boors imagine that vulnerability in a leader is a sign of weakness, that to be vulnerable is to be meek and ineffectual, but the opposite is true. To purposely render oneself vulnerable requires courage, mettle, and resilience and and will increase inner strength. By contrast, in my experience leaders who practice opacity often act as though they have a license to bully even as they cower behind bureaucratic hierarchies and sycophantic underlings. Certainly, willful opacity is the last refuge of cowards.
Another, far thornier challenge is that the transparent leader can never be transparent enough. In other words, no matter how open and candid you attempt to be, no matter how forthrightly you hold yourself, there will always be something you hold back. Perhaps Perhaps you withhold something that is not fit for general consumption, such as a sensitive personnel action. More often though, it is just something you overlooked or just plain forgot because you thought it trivial or figured it was already known. Worse still, the more transparent you attempt to be, the likelier someone will call you out for a matter you did not reveal. That said, I find that within a culture of forthright candor, explaining that certain information is sensitive or simply acknowledging an honest oversight will mollify most detractors, at least the reasonable ones, and the unreasonable ones will likely remain miserable no matter what you do.
On the other hand, if you claim to be transparent but purposely withhold non-sensitive information or cover up oversights, your employees will simply mistrust you. You would be better off choosing opacity over outright deception although the distinction tends to blur over time.
Leaders who default to forthright candor and openness will likely find their workplaces less aggrieved and more productive, particularly if they also seek to develop a culture of yes. In addition, they will earn political capital and increase their mettle and will find themselves better able to face challenges alongside their employees rather than in opposition to them.
So, spit out your gum and communicate clearly and openly by embracing a philosophy of forthright candor and maximum transparency along with developing a culture of “yes.” Empowering your people in this way will free you from the burden of constant guardedness and transform your workplace for the better.