Be Open to Bad News

The idea of "shooting the messenger" was first expressed by Shakespeare, or so says Wikipedia. But in a nutshell, the leader who lashes out at the poor subordinate who got tagged to report bad news is wasting time, and wasting messengers. Don't be that leader.

Many leaders say they want open communication in their workplace, but very often what they really want is open "top-down" communication. That's important; a leader needs to communicate a vision for the organization, provide clearly defined tasks, and offer constructive feedback even when it isn't all happiness and sunshine. But "down-top" communication is equally important, just for different reasons. Your Creatives need to know they can come to you with bad news. If they don't, and you never learn about problems, you won't be in a position to fix them until it's too late.

When your employees come to you with problems, especially if it seems to be their fault, your first instinct might be to blame someone. Try to restrain that urge; focus instead on fixing the immediate problem, and then the actual cause. In fact, you should look at having your employees fix it rather than taking on every problem yourself. If you try to handle everything, that just encourages your employees to dump everything on you.

This isn't to say you shouldn't look into who's responsible for causing a mess. You need to, in order to help avoid future problems. Also, you might find a pattern of mistakes or neglect, which might mean that person has got to go. But looking for who's responsible should be one part of solving problems, not an end unto itself. Your first priority is to deal with whatever's wrong.

Now, once you appear open to receiving bad news and hearing about what's wrong, then you need to brace yourself to actually hear it. Creatives often tend to be very opinionated (shocking, I know!) and won't hold back. You're liable to get some very spirited discussions. Be clear about wanting them to feel comfortable coming to you with problems but also wanting them to do so professionally. Still, you need to have thick skin, and be able to respond logically and rationally rather than purely on emotion. While openness is essential, letting it devolve into arguing is going to create strained relations in the workplace, and you don't need that.

Make sure your Creatives know they can bring you bad news and get the problem addressed. Don't have an attitude that encourages them to keep problems to themselves, or you'll have people updating their resumes and calling recruiters because they know what's going on while you don't. Keeping "who's dating who" a secret is no big deal, but keeping "we're about to go bankrupt" a secret is.