Brought to you by Jeff Thoren, DVM, ACC  

True transparency is rare. Many individuals and organizations pay lip service to values of openness and candor, but too often these are hollow promises. Claiming to be transparent is not the same as being transparent, so what is transparency and what does it really look like in practice?

For information to flow freely within an organization, people must feel free to speak openly, and leaders must welcome such openness. Leaders are susceptible to thinking they know more than they really do. Successful leaders make a point of seeking out crucial but hard-to-take facts, things they may bristle at hearing - and that subordinates too often, and understandably, play down, disguise, or ignore.

Here’s this month’s feature ...

Creating a Transparent Culture by Warren Bennis, Daniel Goleman and Patricia Ward Biederman

Leader to Leader, No. 50, Fall 2008

Highlights from the article:

• Transparency and creating a culture of candor depends on the free flow of information within an organization and between the organization and its many stakeholders. The organization's effectiveness depends on this flow of information. Its capacity to compete, solve problems, innovate, meet challenges, and achieve goals - its intelligence, if you will - varies to the degree that the information flow remains healthy.
   

• There may have been a time when an imperial leader could know everything an organization needed to be successful. But if such a time ever existed, it is long gone. Today, the information an organization needs may be located anywhere, including outside. And the leader who has a narrow view of proper channels for information often pays a high price for its orderly but insufficient flow.
   

• Despite legitimate moral and legal limits on disclosure, leaders should at least aspire to a policy of "no secrets." The first beneficiaries of such a policy are the members of the organization itself, who are in a position to act on maximum rather than restricted information.
   

• There seems to be an inexorable filtering out of bad news that often leaves those in the highest positions with potentially disastrous information gaps. The higher leaders rise, the less honest feedback they get from others about their leadership. Direct reports understandably hesitate to enumerate the boss's leadership failings. And so top leaders easily lose touch with the ways others see them and may remain poor listeners, abrasive, tuned out, or otherwise clueless about their own limitations.
   

• The wisest leaders seek broad counsel from people at every level. Those closest to the action usually know more about what's actually going on with clients or customer service than do those at the top. There's truth to the maxim, "None of us is as smart as all of us" so effective leaders find ways to elicit many points of view.
   

• Leaders have to do more than just ask for input. They have to hear it. All of us would do well to reflect on how receptive we are to the suggestions and opinions of others and alternate points of view. Leaders often believe they are wiser than all those around them. Unfortunately, the self-confidence of those that rise to the top can easily blur into a blind spot, an unwillingness to turn to others for advice.
   

• A key question everyone should ask to encourage candor: "Is it safe to bring bad news to those in leadership?" The first time “the boss” blows up or punishes someone delivering bad news, a norm is established. Everyone quickly realizes that it is folly to speak unwanted truth to power, no matter how crucial the information may be.
   

• Leaders must show that speaking up is not just safe but mandatory, and that no information of substance is out of bounds. It is not always easy for even the most confident leaders to embrace hard truths, especially when they are presented awkwardly by someone who is neither a friend nor a trusted colleague. But failing to hear critical information, whoever delivers it, may put the entire enterprise at risk.

  
For the full text article, go to ...
http://www.leadertoleader.org/knowledgecenter/journal.aspx?ArticleID=741

   
How to Surface Undiscussables

Creating a transparent culture means developing the skill to surface and respectfully talk about “undiscussables” – key issues that people are afraid of talking about openly, but that must be addressed for the team or organization to successfully move forward.

Here are the top 10 tips from The Thin Book of Naming Elephants: How to Surface Undiscussables for Greater Organizational Success for discussing these “undiscussables.”

1. Start small: Ask at the end of each meeting: What didn't we talk about today that we should have? What should we do about it? Go around the room and ask everyone to speak.

2. Check your gut: Pay attention to your gut feelings. If you feel strongly about something, chances are someone else does too. Speak up.

3. Use tentative language: Say it like this: "I'm not sure if I have this right, but I see it this way or I am concerned about..."

4. Use contrasting language: Say it like this: "What I am not saying is... What I am saying is..."

5. First, determine your intent: Why do you want to speak up? Who benefits more? You or the organization? If it's all about you, think it over again.

6. Build the business case: What is the potential impact both good and bad to the organization of the specific undiscussable? Be concrete about how it could affect the organization's goals or image.

7. Don't make it personal: People ask us, "what if the undiscussable is a person?" Define it as actions impacting the organization, not as someone's personality, style or characteristics.

8. If the undiscussable is arrogant leadership: Try to engage the arrogant person in dialogue about multiple alternatives. Arrogant people often do not realize they are being arrogant so if you can get them to talk, their curiosity may kick in.

9. Surface the assumptions you are relying on: Say: "Here's how I thought. I assumed... because of... What do you see differently?"

10. Ask the 6 what's: "What do we know? What do we not know? What will we never know? What can we agree on? What do we disagree on? What do we need to do to move forward?"

 
Next Month

Open, frequent and constructive communication is one of the keys to sustainable success. Yet most organizational communication is broken. It tends to be more one-way than interactive; more talking than listening; more advocacy and less inquiry; little room for integrating opposing points of view. We’ll explore how to address this dilemma and to create sustainable transformation through dialogue.

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