“Transparency” is a term that is tossed around a lot as a positive thing. I’ve heard many leaders talk about how they believe in transparency and it is core to their values. At a high level, this makes sense. Transparency can provide valuable information to drive better decision making, and also can contribute to a shared vision which positively impacts morale. But how do you do this in practice?

I’ve actually met a lot of leaders who purposely withhold information from their team. (Sometimes the answer is an obvious confidentiality reason.) But there are other times when I’ve asked why, the answer is, “Well, they don’t need to know that.” They think its a distraction. Or it is bad news and they don’t want to impact morale (or more likely don’t want to be the one to deliver said bad news). Or, even worse, they think that information will drive the effort in a direction they don’t want it to go (which if you think about it makes no sense…wouldn’t you want the effort to be successful, which means it has to take into account all variables?)*

Over the years, I’ve asked the people I’ve this question directly several times; do they want to be told everything, even if it’s bad news or unpleasant? And the answer has always been a resounding yes. People want to know what all is going on, ESPECIALLY if it impacts them, even if it’s bad news. As Colin Powell has said:

Bad news isn’t wine. It doesn’t improve with age.

Colin Powell

As a leader, this takes two specific skills. One is simply courage; it can be very, very difficult to deliver bad news, but this is absolutely a skill you must learn and practice. There is plenty of good advice out there on how to deliver bad news so I won’t repeat it here, but some good sources are the book How to Wind Friends and Influence People, or even the movie Moneyball. The other is knowing how exactly to be transparent. You obviously can’t give everyone a team a play-by-play on every meeting you were in, or CC them on every single email. But you do need to decide what information you know about, or what decisions were made, that impacts them, and then provide some sort of succinct summary. And most importantly, be available to answer any follow-up questions!

I am a huge believer in transparency, but I recognize that it can be difficult in practice. People have their own work priorities and simply sending a firehose of information to them does not help them with their work. But as their leader, you do need to make sure key information is not withheld, and that your team knows that you are honest and transparent with them.

*No, I’m not being naive, you need to read between the lines here.