Candor

Recently I attended a meeting with one of our teams. This particular team had recently experienced a series of significant failures. The team was frustrated, and you could sense that many members of the team had feelings that they wanted to get off their chest. During the two hour meeting, the failures were analyzed, and team members took accountability for their roles in these failures. The team members spoke candidly about their performance, and the performance of their fellow team members.

Candor is defined as the quality of being honest and straightforward in attitude and speech. It sounds so simple, but in fact most teams and organizations rarely bring candor to the table. Fortunately, this team had learned that no one benefits when truthfulness and integrity are covered up. No one grows when weaknesses and failures are tolerated. Many teams pronounce that “they want their team members to provide honest feedback”, or that “this is a safe place to express concerns”, but these words rarely bring candor.

A company is simply a collection of people who create customer value together. Employees, from the janitor to the CEO, need to trust each other to grow and fulfill the role they have been invited to play. Having complete faith in each other is vital and candor is an important element in achieving this.

Let's analyze our performance, and the performance of our teams. Team managers should be creating an environment where all team members feel safe to be candid about their performance, the performance of their team members, and the performance of their manager.

Once a team or organization becomes candid, communication accelerates and performance dramatically improves. This always happens.

I've love to know your thoughts. tony@repowell.net

Tony

www.repowell.net