Clear, kind leadership – performance management

Insight article by Becky Viccars, Associate Leadership Development Practitioner

I’ve heard it said many times that you can identify your core values by noticing your reactions. For me, no truer can be said than my connection to the value – truth!

I know I’ve had a disproportionate response to finding out the truth on more than one occasion, and I’ve been more than a little abrupt when friends have explained to me that they’re withholding the truth from someone to “protect them”.

Or, in work, when a manager tells me they can’t tell their employee the truth about their performance because, “it’ll crush them”!

When we don’t give transparent clear feedback, who are we protecting?

Having led and managed teams for over 20 years and been managed for longer, I can say that from my experience, the leaders that told me the truth were the ones with whom I felt seen, safe, able to develop and what’s more, I respected them. They were honest about what I wasn’t doing well and so I believed them when they told me what I was doing well.

In order to build a well-functioning team the foundation layer is trust, and trust is built on truth. It’s built on a willingness to be vulnerable, an environment where it’s safe to admit mistakes, personal integrity and accountability are high, and there is clear transparent communication.

Without this foundation of trust the subsequent levels, identified by Patrick Lencioni* in his 5 Dysfunctions of a Team model, are literally on rocky ground. Any attempts at the next layer, constructive conflict, is at best performative and at worst becomes toxic. The need to have clear truthful conversations is imperative for creating a high-functioning team.

On a personal level, I believe that somewhere deep down most of us generally know when we’re not hitting the mark, in our work, our communication, our relationships, whatever it is, we know something’s off. We can’t always 100% put our finger on what it is we’re getting wrong, but we know we are.

When we don’t know what it is, our primal brain’s negative bias and our need for certainty leads us to fill in the gaps and to draw a conclusion, and its rarely a positive one!

Let me explain the neuroscience bit: our primal brain, the bit that’s there to protect us, keep us safe, is in the background constantly scanning for danger.

According to David Rock*, as a result of this, we need approximately 3 times as many positive inputs to constructive, or let’s call them what they are, negative ones, to maintain a balanced view, that’s how hard the primal brain is working to keep us safe. Rock’s work has also shed light on five things that have the potential to send us into fight, flight, freeze, fawn or flock, but that equally have the potential to keep us fully engaged.

One of those five things is certainty.

Our brain craves certainty to feel safe, and without it it’ll create its own certainty. That, combined with the negativity bias, and we tend to create a certainty that’s more in the direction of worst-case scenario than it is good… even if you consider yourself to be naturally of a positive, optimistic disposition.

So clear honest feedback is essential, not just for building a high functioning team, but it’s also the kind option. In the words of Brene Brown* “clear is kind”.

But there’s a potential hitch. Transparent clear communication is often associated with autocratic or authoritarian leadership styles and as such, being clear and honest is about being brutal, tough and often uncaring. When in truth, if we don’t care and demonstrate that we care when we’re giving feedback, then it could activate a survival response.

The key, and the more courageous option, is to care and give transparent, clear feedback. To care enough for someone to know the truth, believe that they can change and grow, be open to hear them, and then support their development.

I’ll finish up with a few questions:

• Do you care enough about your people to give them transparent clear feedback?
• Do your people have the tools and courage to have transparent clear conversations with their teams about performance?
• How much time is wasted in your organisation by letting things build, tiptoeing around the truth and eventually draining valuable resources and energy on people “issues” instead of getting the job done?

*Article references:

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni; Quiet Leadership – Dr David Rock; Dare to Lead – Brené Brown