Jul 15 08
Telling the Plain, Unvarnished Truth at Work: Part 2
By Art Bell
(Second of three parts. Part one is here.)
The Nice Boss Made Me Do It
On the flipside, some employees act and speak disingenuously because they don’t want to disappoint a boss who has been kind, understanding, and solicitous of their professional welfare. A hotel manager in Florida tells such a story: “The hotel chain is privately owned by a gentleman in his early 80s. When I say ‘gentleman,’ I’m choosing exactly the right word. He has been practically like a father to me, and to the rest of the managers in his hotels. He wants to be proud of us and regularly sends a bottle of champagne to my office when he hears about something good that has happened at the hotel. But he’s such a gentle, sweet guy that a lot of managers—including myself at times–don’t get around to telling him less than good news.
“For example, I’ve got a mess right now in my hotel because I fired a minority employee. She’s claiming that race was a factor in the firing. I know I ought to tell the hotel owner about the situation, but I don’t want to disappoint the old guy or have him feel that I have let him down in some way. This is just one example. At his other hotels, there are plenty of cases of negative occurrences that any owner would want and need to know about. But because he has been so kind and trusting toward his managers, we’ve developed kind of a ‘don’t ask/don’t tell’ policy toward him. It’s almost as if we’re trying to protect him against anything that would disturb him—but not because we’re afraid of him. Much the opposite. We love the guy and just don’t want to let him down. In the meantime, though, a number of serious problems are piling up at all the hotels—things an owner should be involved in. One of these days the dam is going to break and all the bad news will come flooding out. Sometimes I think it would be better if he wasn’t so nice all the time so we managers could feel OK about sharing bad news as well as good news.”
The phenomenon of the deaf, dumb, and blind manager who shuts down employee candor through kindness and courtesy is less common, but just as serious, as the ranting boss who manages through scare tactics. The underlying psychology in the case of the too-nice boss is not unlike the adoring parent who gives plenty of love—but on the unwritten but strict condition that the child does not appear to abuse that love in some way. As a result, children (and workers) play “good boy” and “good girl” around the affectionate parent/boss. They are as apt to be less than candid as often as those employees who are scared stiff by angry bosses. In fact, the employee of a “loving” boss also experiences a powerful form of fear—the fear of losing the boss’s regard and affection. Somewhere in their relationship the message was never sent or received that “the boss’s good feelings toward you aren’t going to evaporate just because you candidly share bad news, an unpopular idea, or a problem of some kind.”
Final part (Peers that Threaten Candor) to follow.
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From Winning with Trust in Business, by Arthur H. Bell and Richard Cohn (Pelican, 2008).
Copyright © 2008 Art Bell
