Don't Let Them Drink The Sand
“People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.” -Lewis Rothschild, as played by Michael J. Fox, The American President
The analogy above seems pretty obvious at first glance. People want real leadership and if they don’t get it, they will follow anyone who seems to have a plan. While I agree with that, there is something a bit deeper in this quote that has always spoken to me.
I’ll explain that in a minute but first a little context. At this point in the film, an opponent of the president is being very outspoken and derogatory. The president refuses to sink to his opponent’s level and chooses to stay silent. During this time, his approval rating is plummeting as the American people seem to be turning on him. The issue here that jumps out at me is lack of information. In this case, water can be compared to the truth, while lies, assumptions and rumors can be associated with the sand.
As a leader you’re going to be privy to a lot of information, a portion of which you will not be allowed to share with your team. The further you move up the leadership chain, the larger that portion will likely become. The CEO and other top executives will know things that no one else does and that’s how most corporations function.
There can be very good reasons to not share certain information with your teams as a leader. Maybe it’s something that can’t be legally discussed or maybe it’s a personnel issue. Those things should absolutely be protected from others.
But I think many times the information that corporate leaders aren’t sharing has nothing to do with those things mentioned above. Instead, it’s information that is simply deemed “not shareable” with the average non-leader employee. In my past, I’ve heard all sorts of reasons from “they just won’t understand” to "they’ll panic if they take this out of context" or my personal favorite, “they don’t need to understand the why, they just need accomplish the what.” These examples come from several different companies in different industries. This problem is widespread.
But to be fair, will the employees panic if they take it out of context? Will they just not understand? If they don’t understand, they surely might panic. But I’d argue that’s not a reason to keep information to yourself. Instead, it’s a reason to work on your communication and help people understand the issues at hand.
This goes for tough topics as well. If your company or team is struggling and you decide not to tell your employees about it yourself, then you might as well bring in a big dump truck of sand and ask them to drink up… I know that might sound harsh but the truth is, people are naturally curious and generally, smart. That’s why you hired them! They will notice inconsistencies, they will start to talk about them, things will be taken out of context, and suddenly you’ll have rumors of your company’s imminent demise when the issue wasn’t really that big of a deal to begin with.
So leaders, how do we fix this? We can’t share everything. But I do think we can be better about what we share and how we share it. The next time you find yourself with some information and your first instinct is to keep it from your team, instead, do this:
Try to come up with two good reasons not to share the information and for the record, “it’s too hard to explain” and “they just won’t get it” are not valid reasons. It’s really that simple.
Now other than the obvious benefit of free flowing information killing the rumor mill, let me give you one more “what’s in it for you” reason for sharing information. In fact, I’ll give you two.
First, you’ll find that your team will trust you more when they believe you are being transparent. When they truly understand why you are making the decisions you are making, even if they don’t agree with them, they are more likely to have your back.
Second — and this is the real gold nugget I’ve found out of this whole thing — when you are open with your teams about problems, they sometimes have better ideas than you do on how to fix them. Maybe you have a new project coming down the line and you’re afraid it’s too early to tell the teams about it. But maybe they’ll have some insights that will set the project up for success. The point is, you won’t know if you don’t talk to them about it.
I’ll end with a word of caution. If you make the change for better transparency, sometimes you will end up giving out bad information. Sometimes you will announce something and be flat out wrong. That’s okay. As long as most of the time you get it right, your team will trust you. And if you’re a successful leader already, then I bet you do get it right most of the time. Don’t let the fear of failure or embarrassment keep you from communicating. In fact, don’t let that keep you from doing anything… but that’s a whole different blog post!
-Jason