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candor Tagged Articles



5 Caveats to the "Open Door" Policy
Most organizations have an "Open Door" policy to protect employees from bully supervisors. The idea is to make it safe to bring a problem to a higher level of management. The method can be helpful, but I have found it to be fraught with problems. This paper describes five of the most significant problems with the "Open Door" Policy and suggests a simple antidote.

Reinforce Candor to Build Trust: Transparency
Trust is the key ingredient missing in most organizations, particularly in these draconian times. The ability to build trust is most impacted by a leader’s habit of reinforcing candor – which means making people glad when they bring up inconsistencies in the leader’s actions. Most leaders punish people for surfacing difficult issues. In the process they extinguish trust and transparency, which further cripples worker motivation. Learn how to change your behaviors to allow consistent trust building interfaces with people.

Reinforce Candor or Speak Truth to Power?
My Trust model highlights Reinforcing Candor as the most powerful tool to build trust in organizations. Some people might think this is the same as Speaking Truth to Power, but it is really very different.

Three Little Words
There are three little words that have a lot to do with building trust in an organization. At first you will think these three words actually lead to the destruction of trust, but in the hands of a great leader, these words can become the most compelling force for growing trust. The words are: I am right.

Leadership Assessment #21 – Build a SAFE Environment
There are hundreds of assessments for leaders. The content and quality of these assessments vary greatly. You can spend a lot of time and money taking surveys to tell you the quality of your leadership. There are a few leading indicators that can be used to give a pretty good picture of the overall quality of your leadership. These are not good for diagnosing problems or specifying corrective action, but they can tell you where you stand quickly. Here is one of my favorite measures. It is the ability to build a safe environment.
Building Trust: The Ratchet Effect
I believe that building Trust works like winding up a ratchet. Trust is built by a series of actions or ratchet “clicks” that occur over time. But, like the ratchet used to pull in the sail on a large sailboat, when the pawl holding the ratchet from rotating backward becomes dislodged, the spool can spin back to zero quickly. If a leader has made a thousand deposits in the “Trust Account” with people, they can be wiped out by a single mega withdrawal that happens in a heartbeat. This article gives some more information on this analogy and suggests a method for inserting the pawl back in the teeth once a withdrawal has happened so the bulk of historical trust assets are retained.

Blind Spots
In my classes and consulting work on leadership, I often discuss the concept of a blind spot where the worst leaders are often blissfully unaware of their problems. My own observation in numerous organizations is that this is abundantly true. Hr Managers and subordinates are often frustrated at not being able to communicate how leaders undermine the very cause they wish to pursue due to this blindness. Daniel Goleman, who invented Emotional Intelligence, observed that leaders who are most deficient in EI are the ones who have the biggest blind spot. They simply cannot see themselves as others do, so they are deceived into thinking incorrect thoughts about how they are coming across. How can you remove the blind spot of a leader who has low Emotional Intelligence? My own ideas on this topic are contained in this article.

Honesty is Still the Best Policy
Warren Buffet Business Principle # 12 deals with candor in reporting about the important things in appraising business value. Read the actual Principle in the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report. Below is a discussion of the ideas inherent in the principle of being forthright and candid about giving facts about how your business is doing. Every business can apply this principle in reporting to shareholders. Candor is not always easy but it wins out in the end.

The First Law of Building Trust
All leaders want to build higher trust in their organization, but few are able to accomplish it consistently. I believe the ability to reinforce candor is a powerful skill that can help leaders improve trust, even in these draconian times. Reinforcing candor is the ability to make people feel glad when they bring up an inconsistency or error. Most leaders cannot do this. For some additional thoughts on this topic, you can call up the attached article.
Make Change Stick with the Dial Up/Dial Down Game
At my company we have an exercise we call "Dial Up/Dial Down." We use it to push each other to constantly develop our strengths and improve on our weaknesses. We introduce it to clients too. You can use in your own office, in your family, with a buddy, or in any kind of group that cares about each other's success. You can do it alone, of course, but it's not nearly as effective when there's no one to hold you accountable.
Negativity is Like a Cancer
Negativity is evident in many workplaces, and it really saps the energy of an organization. I believe negativity is like a disease that will spread if not managed well. The analogy is developed in this article along with several antidotes to negativity.

Anti-Stupid Pill for Leaders
Sometimes leaders make decisions that have consequences at cross purposes to what they are really trying to achieve. They need an "anti-stupid" pill to prevent them from making these mistakes. This articles shares just the right medicine to prevent costly blunders.
Drive Out Fear
It is hard to grow trust in an environment of fear. People need to feel a sense of safety before they will take the risk of trusting others. Unfortunately most organizations generate a toxic atmosphere of habitual fear.

Other candor Related Articles

The Door to My Office is Always Open! ...or is it?
We're all challenged to make better and faster decisions. How do you do this? One way is can expand your sphere of information and thereby minimize the amount of guesswork involved. This month I've called on Bob Newhart and Tom Peters to help examine some traditional approaches for getting to the real story and why they often fail to produce the candor needed to assure that your critical decisions are sound. How effective are your channels for building business insight? You're invited to invest 90 seconds and learn five ways to improve your personal information gathering skills. And I share a new smarter, solution that likely trumps anything you've already tried.
Reinforce Candor to Build Trust: Transparency
Trust is the key ingredient missing in most organizations, particularly in these draconian times. The ability to build trust is most impacted by a leader’s habit of reinforcing candor – which means making people glad when they bring up inconsistencies in the leader’s actions. Most leaders punish people for surfacing difficult issues. In the process they extinguish trust and transparency, which further cripples worker motivation. Learn how to change your behaviors to allow consistent trust building interfaces with people.

Reinforce Candor or Speak Truth to Power?
My Trust model highlights Reinforcing Candor as the most powerful tool to build trust in organizations. Some people might think this is the same as Speaking Truth to Power, but it is really very different.

Honesty is Still the Best Policy
Warren Buffet Business Principle # 12 deals with candor in reporting about the important things in appraising business value. Read the actual Principle in the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report. Below is a discussion of the ideas inherent in the principle of being forthright and candid about giving facts about how your business is doing. Every business can apply this principle in reporting to shareholders. Candor is not always easy but it wins out in the end.

The First Law of Building Trust
All leaders want to build higher trust in their organization, but few are able to accomplish it consistently. I believe the ability to reinforce candor is a powerful skill that can help leaders improve trust, even in these draconian times. Reinforcing candor is the ability to make people feel glad when they bring up an inconsistency or error. Most leaders cannot do this. For some additional thoughts on this topic, you can call up the attached article.
Andre Agassi Had the Wrong Big Goal
Critics are calling Andre Agassi's autobiography, entitled Open: An Autobiography, the best sports biography ever written given Agassi's candor. He has always hated tennis, lied about his drug use, wore a wig when he had long hair, etc. A major turning point in his career was when he realized he was pursuing the wrong long-term goal (BHAG) for himself …
The Law of Candor – Admit a Negative and the Prospect Will Give You a Positive
It goes against corporate and human nature to admit a problem, suggests Mike Farrell with aspenIbiz. Read this short post as it illustrates that the most effective ways to get into a prospect’s mind is to be candid and first admit a negative, then twist it into a positive in order to be successful in the world that includes the Law of Candor.

Is candor the new competitive edge?
I have been working and meeting people in Dubai in the past two weeks. I enjoyed the people from many diverse places of birth immensely, particularly their candor - “the quality of being open and honest.” Is candor the new competitive edge? My answer is candor is definitely a key component of competitive advantage. Like you, I suspect, I am sick and tired of spin, BS, and double talk. I embrace candor with vigour and enthusiasm. My approach is reciprocated. The rewards are massive.
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