Silence is not golden in the realm of leadership; it's a breeding ground for misinformation and eroded trust. Together, we navigate through the potential pitfalls of keeping quiet and illuminate the benefits of creating a culture where bad news is shared quickly, allowing teams to rally and respond with agility and unity.
Dave brings a wealth of experience to the table, as we dissect the nuances of communication in the workplace. From managing the ripple effects of rumors to strategically releasing information, our chat reveals the fine line between maintaining morale and protecting sensitive business intel. We also delve into the construction of a 'trust bank'—building up reserves of good faith with consistent, authentic behavior that pays dividends in times of uncertainty. Whether it's a looming project deadline or an unexpected market shift, being straightforward and inclusive in communication is the key to keeping your team engaged, proactive, and dedicated to the mission. Join us for an episode that's not just about talking the talk, but walking the walk of transparent leadership.
Silence is not golden in the realm of leadership; it's a breeding ground for misinformation and eroded trust. Together, we navigate through the potential pitfalls of keeping quiet and illuminate the benefits of creating a culture where bad news is shared quickly, allowing teams to rally and respond with agility and unity.
Dave brings a wealth of experience to the table, as we dissect the nuances of communication in the workplace. From managing the ripple effects of rumors to strategically releasing information, our chat reveals the fine line between maintaining morale and protecting sensitive business intel. We also delve into the construction of a 'trust bank'—building up reserves of good faith with consistent, authentic behavior that pays dividends in times of uncertainty. Whether it's a looming project deadline or an unexpected market shift, being straightforward and inclusive in communication is the key to keeping your team engaged, proactive, and dedicated to the mission. Join us for an episode that's not just about talking the talk, but walking the walk of transparent leadership.
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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, with our season five special guest, dave Nurchey. We gave him the franchise tag. He's on a tryout. Maybe we'll keep him long-term, but we're rocking out this book, the Hard Thing About Hard Things with Ben Horowitz. And getting to today's point, let's see who.
Speaker 1:
We're sponsored by NQR, not Quite Right Media, so that's the producer, the parent, the host of this particular podcast, nqrmediacom. We have a whole slew of other content, a whole bunch of different podcasts, and that's where we unapologetically bring to light things that we feel kind of need to be talked about. So, getting into today's episode, we are going to be getting after being honest and transparent. Anything you don't say will eventually be found out. Some people are going to refer to this as the walls have ears. There's, I have found, in business. There's almost. There's almost nothing that you talk about in business that you can do, that you know, if you got smart people on your team, they're going to figure it out, and business owners owners, a lot of times are leaders, managers will do this too, is you know? I'm only going to tell you what you need to know. This goes back to our silos and stuff like that. It goes back to some of the other episodes that we've already done, kind of leading up to this one. If you don't say it, your employees are going to. Either they're going to either figure out the wrong thing from what you're not saying, because they're going to jump to conclusions, you know, or they're going to lose trust in you for not trusting them, and pretty much everything is going to come out in the wash eventually.
Speaker 1:
So I think what they're talking about in the book is you know, when you got problems, you need to bring up the problems. In fact, I think that they talk in the book at some point about the fact that you actually want bad news to travel faster than good news. When there's bad news, you need it to come through the ranks so fast that it gets to the person who can deal with the problem in the first place, and it makes it so that it's not a scary thing to talk about bad news Like a lot of this. What we're talking about being scared and not being gutless, and euphoria and terror and all that and the importance of hope Part of that is dealing with the shit as it happens in a very transparent way. Right, okay, we know that it's a problem. Thanks for bringing it up. Let's get to solving it now. Um, or it's a problem. We have no clue what to do with it.
Speaker 1:
But we're gonna work like hell on that for the next two weeks and figure out what we're gonna do with it, because if you don't, if you don't, they're like, especially in intense businesses and businesses where you're growing fast and stuff the teams tend to be a little bit tight. They see a lot of the stuff going on. They're going to figure it out. Man, if you're having money problems, they're going to figure it out. If you're having, you know, legal problems, they're going to figure it out. Whatever your problems at the business level is if you're having competition problems, your competition is eating your lunch. They're obviously going to figure it out. Level is if you're having competition problems, your competition is eating your lunch they're obviously going to figure it out.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think it's. Uh, you know, first point you made, the people are going to figure it out if you're acting different Right and it's. And the the people are going to figure it out first are the closest. You know that you're you're most committed employees. They're going to be able to read the room. You know that your most committed employees. They're going to be able to read the room, read how you're possibly acting different or carrying yourself, and they're going to wonder why it isn't public info right within the company, like, why is this not being talked about? And what it does is it starts creating the little pockets of rumors right with the different groups, and Now you start getting speculation, rumors building and that just eats into work. So if you just came out and said it right, hey, here's what we're facing. Let's figure out a solution, let's get our people on it. That's where the time and energy is going. If you don't do that, the time and energy is going to the gossip and the rumor mill of why, isn't this talked about?
Speaker 2:
What's going on here? Right, and now you're just cutting into being able to actually solve the problem or being productive about it.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you're better off saying, look, here's the problem, and but I still don't want everybody dealing. You know, I don't want the water cooler talk. So you know, I want you guys to understand what we're dealing with. This is kind of where we think we're going with everything. We'll get you an update on friday, you know, I mean like, and people do this, I, I've seen it, I've seen all the time people for some reason think that they have to be strong. I have to show strength and they're. Let's just face it. There are people who can't hide anything. You look, you see their face and you're like there's something going on. Yep, and they're not saying it. And and, like you said, the first thing you start to think of who are they pissed at? It must be bad. What's going to happen to us? And that's. You know.
Speaker 1:
I talked about the trust bank. I think back in the ideal team player, or maybe it was surrounded by idiots, one of those two books, maybe both of them. But you got a trust bank. And when you act the way that you normally act and that you should act, you get trust points because it's showing that you're being authentic. And when you start to act very different, let's say in a negative way, because of the energy and the vibe you're giving off. That's a debit from the trust bank, and especially with your most closest people a trust bank, and especially with your most closest people like you, I and Bill Hamilton, our CFO, we work very closely together.
Speaker 1:
If, some reason, I start shutting down and stop talking to you about certain things, you guys at all at some point got to be start to think about what's going on with this guy. You know what's, what's, what aren't they. Isn't he telling us? And why does he not have faith in us? Does he not trust us? Or something like that? No, you, you've got to be straightforward, and anything that's not public is going to be assumed to be bad. Right, it's just going to be assumed.
Speaker 1:
If you, what are you hiding from me? And we assume that if you're hiding it from me, it must be bad, and so and that gets you to sometimes, okay, the flip side of this is that there are some things that you need to hide because you know, let's say, that it's a new program or a new product launch or something like that, something that's going to be really good, but you don't want to chatter yet because it's supposed to be, you know, held in privacy because of competition or something, right? Or just because you want to build up some hype and get everybody excited about it, but it's in a good way, right? And so I guess the thing that I would say there is is you don't have to run your mouth on everything.
Speaker 1:
If something is good but you're trying to keep it secret, but you're doing all these extra things that nobody understands why you're doing these extra things, you need to come out and say we got something coming. It's going to be very exciting. This is when you're going to find out about it and, trust me, it's going to we're. This is a good thing, whatever it is, however you want to frame it, but you, you gotta you. Whatever it is, however, you want to frame it, but you, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta do a teaser like a movie teaser yeah, right, like we have this awesome new thing that we're going to be launching.
Speaker 1:
That's all you're going to get, information wise, but it's going to be very, very exciting. It's a good thing, because if you're doing a bunch of stuff in the background that doesn't have anything to do with anything, you're asking people to do things and build things and stuff like that, they're going to start going like this guy's either lost it or you're a distraction. You get that a lot. You're a distraction. Why are you distracting me? Because I'm trying to build something that in three months we're going to need and I need to start it now. Well, if you don't understand that I'm trying to build something to you, you're just like what's actually going on here? And so transparency.
Speaker 1:
I guess this quote or this point from Ben is primarily focused on the bad news, but I think it also talks about the good news. Like, like, don't hold your card so close to your vest, right, like you can, you can maybe say what cards you have without giving out all the information, so you could say look, you know, I got a queen, a king and queen, a king and an ace, but don't necessarily tell them. They're all hearts, you know, and there's some things that you can't share. Like you know, possibly within your organization you can't share people's compensation or HR issues.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Well, that's completely different. And if that's the only thing that you ever don't share, you know that along the lines of bad information, then that fills your trust bank because you know.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, having confidentiality, yes, around things that you should have actually builds trust, right, yes, it's a good effect. And I think, with the positive, like you know, take away, take away, like the negative, right, or the things that you should be transparent so you can help, you know, find a solution when you flip that over. And the positive holding the cards somewhat close to you, right, like giving a little bit, giving the teaser, like you said. That's more of a strategic move, right, for a reason, like, like you said, maybe you want to build that up, you want to some excitement, you want to get you know everything kind of that's like a rollout plan, right? Okay, we're going to communicate this right, right, that's.
Speaker 2:
That's good project management, more so than anything, but it fosters the communication, is what you're talking about exactly yeah, so that's, that's a strategic play where you're like okay, this is how we're going to roll this out, you know, week by week or month by month. You can't, you can't hide behind strategy when it's a negative thing, right, there's, there's really no strategy to keeping things you know negative or you know issues, uh, from from your people. Right, because that's where. That's where you were talking about the honest and transparent.
Speaker 1:
Well, let's be honest. I mean most offices you can hear through the walls, or somebody knows somebody who talked to somebody, and you know you either control the rumor mill or the rumor mill controls you, and so the best thing that you could possibly do is make sure that you put things in perspective for people. There's a problem, yes, it's a big problem, but in general, if we deal with the problem, there's not going to be any layoffs, right? Okay, my personal fear is now diluted, right, I'm not as afraid of this problem. So how can I help you solve the problem? Right? And if you have those employees that we talked about in the last episode, those humble, hungry, smart ones who have passion and commitment, they should be the first ones to the table saying I'm glad you told me about the problem, this is what I can do to help you.
Speaker 1:
And we've actually seen that sometimes I'll complain about a problem and somebody on our team will jump on the solution. I'm like whoa, slow down man. Like like they're already on like iteration five of fixing the problem and I'm like I didn't mean it like that, right? So when you have transparency, one of the things that you start to see happen is you see people, as soon as they see that there's a problem, they're like how can I fix this thing, man? And I want to own fixing this because I believe in where we're going and I'm going to get that out of your way, yeah.