Playing It Straight

One game that people play in the workplace is called “I Have a Secret,” in which they know something’s going on, they let other people know that they know, but they never say what “it” is. It’s a power game played by weak-minded people who can’t get ahead on the strength of their abilities, so they try to make themselves seem more important by suggesting they’re “on the inside.” It’s a stupid thing to do when employees do it, and it’s ridiculous and totally unprofessional when bosses do it. So don’t.

You need to be straight up and honest with your employees. Transparency is the name of the game in effective employer-employee relations. After all, you expect honesty from your employees, so you need to give it to them, too.

You want your employees concentrating on creating, not on worrying about what they don’t know. As soon as they learn you’re keeping a secret from them, they’ll wonder what else you haven’t told them, and then they won’t be focusing so much on work anymore. Don’t give your employees a reason to mistrust you, it just gets in the way of them doing what they should be doing.

Creative industries often take a group approach to work. One thing you don’t want is some members of the group knowing everything that’s going on while others are in the dark. People end up spending more time discussing all these secrets than they do working, and that doesn’t help anyone. It can also bring discontent in your teams as those that aren’t up on what’s going on start to resent or distrust those who seem to be in the know. Don’t create problems that you don’t need just by hiding things.

Very often we don’t like to talk to employees about problems they’re having with their work. In order to avoid conflict we take the easy way out, sit back, and hope they change their performance. But if people don’t know they’re doing something wrong, they’ll just keep doing it that way. Bite the bullet, get over the anxiety, and realize that by providing honest, constructive feedback you’re liable to get better work out of your employees. Open, constructive feedback leads to better work.

Sometimes problems arise that you think might make you or the company look bad. In that case, you have a couple choices. One is to hide the problem, try to fix it by yourself and hope things get better. Another option is to tell your employees about it and use their creative minds and fresh outlook to maybe help solve the problem. You’ve got creative talent working for you – use it to deal with internal issues as well as with the product you’re producing.

It’s tempting to hide stuff from your employees. You might think you’re avoiding hassles by keeping things from them, but in the long run, you’re likely hurting yourself. Sometimes there may be company information that you need to keep quiet, but very often it won’t hurt to be transparent about what’s going on. Before you decide to keep something secret, ask yourself “Am I doing this because it would be bad for the company to let them know, or am I doing this because it might make me embarrassed or anxious?” If it’s the latter, then suck it up and tell them.