Once upon a time, I put together a brilliant plan for change. It was simple. It was easy. It moved people on my remote team from working in isolation to working cooperatively. I wrote it up, sent it out to everyone on the team, and called a virtual meeting. And I felt pretty darn good about myself. I was like Superman. My ideas came faster than speeding bullets. My charisma was more powerful than a locomotive. I could leap tall buildings in a single document.
I started the meeting with some chitchat to break the ice, then launched into my brilliant plan for change. Crickets.
Superman is powerless against crickets.
“Talk to me,” I said.
One person spoke up tentatively, “I can do that if you really think we need to.”
Another person said, “I can tell you worked really hard on this plan.”
The team was being too nice. They knew I liked my plan. They knew it made me feel like a superhero. And they wanted to make me happy, I guess. So I pushed forward like a single-track locomotive and outlined the problems we were trying to solve. Production turnaround time was too tight. They were working in isolation. We didn’t have enough redundancies in place.
One person said, “I kind of like how we are doing it now.”
Another person said, “I don’t think we can solve those problems without changing anything.”
My Superman self disintegrated into a thin slice of humble pie. Which was fine, actually, because I really like pie.
In the end, we changed very little. My big plan simply gave us the impetus to meet in real time and share some best practices. My managerial impulse to meddle in my people’s stuff wasn’t good leadership. Thankfully, my team was kind enough and honest enough that we could move past my strategery to something simpler.
Which got me thinking about the two main variables of our conversation–honesty and humility. As I presented an idea that didn’t work, my team was placed in the awkward position of telling the boss that his idea was dumb. (I know I’m overstating things a bit, but the safest form of humor is self-defecation. And also typos.) When my team was honest with me, we could get back on track. It might have been safer for them to be dishonest, but that wouldn’t get us anywhere.
They also had to choose their method of communicating the bad news about my dumb plan. If they were gracious and honest, then everything might work out. Sometimes, we are merely nice instead of truly gracious. And our social niceties become a kind of dishonesty. Dishonest grace might make me feel good about my idea, but only because I never realize that my team thinks it is dumb.
This is the stuff that keeps me awake at night.
On one such sleepless night recently, I imagined a little chart graphing the relationship between honesty and humility in team dynamics into four possible scenarios.
In case it doesn’t make sense on its own, let me break down the possible communication outcomes predicted by my brilliant chart.
- Despair. Honesty without grace leads to despair. We all know the ugly truth when we hear it. Some people deliver the truth without any awareness of their own faults, without any humility. What they say is factual, but it lacks grace. Strangely, I’ve encountered this most often when modern Christian “prophets” tell me God has a message for me. I’ve yet to experience such biting advice as being from God.
- Revolution. Dishonesty without grace leads to Viva Revolution. People will tolerate dishonesty as long as it doesn’t cause trouble. But try screaming and yelling at people with your idiotic ideas and see how long they put up with it. That kind of community leads people to rebel, and rightly so.
- Complacency. When we try to be so nice that our message is obscured by niceties, the result is complacency. Everyone is nice all the time, so there is nothing at stake. Why push yourself harder? Why try to grow if you don’t have to? These sorts of teams may not be so complacent that they fail, but they will definitely not rise above mediocrity.
- Growth. Honesty with grace leads to growth. Grace isn’t cheap, and it isn’t easy. It doesn’t hide the real problems that need to be addressed, but it does make the medicine go down easier. Like Mary Poppins and her spoonful of sugar. Or the chocolate coating at Miracle Max’s.
(Naturally the chart assumes people are competent. Honest incompetence is no going to help anyone grow out of mediocrity either.)
In the end, my highly competent team was both honest and gracious with me. Our meeting ended somewhat earlier than planned because we had fewer changes to make. Instead, we shared some best practices, gave some virtual high fives, and listed a few minor tweaks that would improve the user experience on our site.
I didn’t get to be Superman, but Superman was never much of a team player.
