Build Trust - Be proactive; stab in the front
Have you ever sat in a meeting and just cringed while a colleague has gone off the deep end? Witnessed a presentation where the content was just incorrect? Once a colleague of mine serving in the role of product manager set up a meeting and invited the entire company of around 100 people. These meetings were not uncommon at the startup I was involved with, but what was uncommon was that during the presentation, he promised to retire a service that was a key tenant of our product offering by the end of the quarter. Shortly after the meeting, I gathered a small core group of our product leaders to discuss this misinformation. Now, during the companywide meeting I gave my product manager as much backing as I possibly could, but in the follow-up meeting, we had a long, direct chat. His proposal was the equivalent of beheading someone to attach their brain to a better body; an attractive idea, but completely unfeasible. For all subsequent meetings with the entire company, we first reached a consensus about what he would present with our core product team.
This was how we agreed to stab each other in the front, not the back; not under cover of darkness; not running to our respective bosses to ask for the other one’s head on a plate. We established simple ground rules that said when I see you do something stupid in public, I will not call you out on it immediately. But rather, I will try to end the conversation quickly and meet with you in private to work through the issue. This has worked well for me almost everywhere I have worked. I had an arrangement with my director of IT that in public I would back him to the hilt, if we could hash it out, no holds barred, in private. In such a private session, our CIO happened to walk in as we were tearing strips off of each other. He was shocked, and questioned me, because he just heard me agree with my boss. Realizing that not everyone has the right to go toe to toe with their boss, I explained the setup. Complete agreement in public, within reason, in exchange for total honesty and candid discussion behind closed doors. So would you rather be stabbed in the back or in the front? Would you sooner your colleagues and customers approached you directly and privately with issues, or blindsided you through back channels? You have to setup the trust to make this happen. You have to ask where you are weak, and what you need to work on, and establish the best way to approach you to ensure you are receptive to the feedback. I have shared scars from former colleagues, now friends, from full frontal assault on their ideas and intelligence, when we disagreed. We laugh about it now, but at the time it was not pretty, so establish channels for people to be able to challenge you in a non-confrontational way.
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