Kill the Messenger

If you as a leader don't actively cultivate a culture where people are willing to share bad news, you are operating on bad information

There’s an old expression drawn from the days when kings, generals and other major leaders receive all of their information from emissaries, and the understandable but foolish impulse to direct one’s wrath at the human bearing bad tidings.

While it’s unacceptable to literally execute the bearer of unpleasant news, we often unknowingly engage in behaviors which discourage reporting of accurate information, which ultimately hamstrings our own ability to act intelligently to choose the right response to challenging circumstances.

Nobody likes hearing bad news, and those in leadership are tasked with making complex, difficult decisions, sometimes in response to others’ mistakes.

Bad leaders who wear their tempers on their sleeves are training their subordinates, partners and clients to tap-dance around touchy subjects, either through selective omissions or outright deception to “keep the peace.” Nobody wants to incur the wrath of a decision-maker and the more fearful others are of your temper, the less-accurate information you will receive about your operations, leading to preventable catastrophes.

Effective leadership comes from accurate information from your people (who are themselves incentivized to tell you what they *think* you want to hear.)

Only those who establish a reputation as someone who you can tell bad news to, will get accurate report from their subordinates.

People who are nervous about arousing your ire will try to “solve” their undesirable situation (sometimes authored by the person in question) without the benefit of your resources and bird’s eye perspective.

It’s not enough to insincerely mumble your “commitment to transparency” - many of your own people have had their own painful experiences both with judgmental parents and short-tempered bosses and their reflexive instinct is to hide/obfuscate unpleasant news since they’ve had multiple instances of honest reporting being punished. They will see your lip-service to transparency as a trap and continue their previous patterns of hiding/selective communications that have helped them survive their parents/former employers.

As a leader, you need to actively cultivate a culture where those who take initiative to admit fault or report on unpleasant news is actively rewarded and praised if you want any hope that your people will give you crucial information you need to run a thriving operation.

One of the habits I’ve cultivated is to always start by thanking the person who relay negative information to me - let them know that I understand it was difficult to take that social risk and that while I may be disappointed by the circumstances (or their behavior), I appreciated the courage it took to let me know early so I can work with a more-accurate map of the situation I’m now tasked to fix.

This is just as true in families.

Every year millions of teenagers drink alcohol/consume drugs at parties against their parents wishes and are then faced with the dilemma of driving home impaired risking death/ imprisonment/ hurting someone else … or disappointing their parents by asking for a ride home.

This should be an easy calculation of risk-optimization, but teenagers who are trained to be fearful of their parents’ wrath choose poorly, and thousands of them end up in even worse circumstances - dead, imprisoned or destroying valuable property.

The ones who “succeeded” in driving home impaired internalize the wrong lessons - that they can habitually risk death/prison and get away with it, a lesson which will ultimately burn them even worse downstream.

Encourage and reward the flow of bad news. Your livelihood and the well-being of your people depend on your ability to make decisions with accurate reports from the ground.