Article originally published in the Philadelphia Business Journal on June 24, 2019
Last week, President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign committee fired three pollsters after the results of an internal Republican poll showed that he was trailing five of the leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
If the pollsters were the source of the leaked internal results, the campaign was right to fire them. This should have been private information. However, if they were fired because the poll delivered “bad news,” a cardinal leadership rule was violated – never shoot the messenger. Shooting the messenger does not change the brutal facts of reality.
At first, Trump’s campaign committee denied that the negative polling data even existed. In a turnabout, campaign manager Brad Parscale then acknowledged that the polling data did exist, and stated, “All news about the president’s [internal] polling is completely false. The president’s new polling is extraordinary, and his numbers have never been better.”
Parscale did not present the results of any new polling to indicate that his claim is factual. He hurts his credibility by not doing so. Why would people believe him? He would have been much more credible had he originally acknowledged the results of the internal poll, and said they were from polling back in March.
I can only imagine how the mid-level and junior campaign staff feels as the narrative keeps shifting. This is certainly not how to run an organization in the private or public sector. It paralyzes decision-making and employees question the tone at the top and toxic culture of where they work.
Every effective leader knows that their actions are carefully read by the people who work for them. If by sharing the facts they feel that they might get blamed for delivering bad news, they are much less likely to do so now and in the future. This is not in the best interest of the leader or the organization. You can’t address issues unless you know what they are.
History is replete with examples of failed leaders not facing the brutal facts of reality because it was withheld from them or they failed to listen. The most effective way for a leader to shut down communication is to criticize the bearer of bad news.
In his best-selling iconic book Good to Great, management thought leader Jim Collins writes “why some companies make the leap [to outstanding sustained performance] … and some don’t.”
Collins and his team of researchers poured over reams of data to uncover 11 companies that had cumulative stock returns at least 6.9 times that of the general market over a 15-year period. Collins and his team then studied the characteristics of these companies and their CEOs, versus comparison companies that did not perform as well.
Collins identified eight principles that differentiated these high-performing companies from the comparison companies. You can find these eight principles in an article I wrote in January 2015 headlined, “Good is the enemy of great.”
One of the eight principles is “to confront the brutal facts.” Collins writes that “productive change begins when you confront the brutal facts [of reality]. Every good-to-great company embraced what we came to call ‘The Stockdale Paradox’ – you must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
Organizations that think they are great can be blinded and not see the brutal facts of their reality. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t acknowledge it. When the problem becomes glaringly apparent, it is much more difficult to fix, or perhaps becomes unfixable.
Effective CEOs don’t want surprises from their direct reports, and board members don’t want surprises from the CEO. Employees already know where the problems are and want to know that their CEO knows about them, too. If the CEO does not acknowledge the facts, the employees feel that either the CEO doesn’t know about them, or the problems are so bad the CEO is afraid to tell them.
Leaders lose credibility when problems are not acknowledged and addressed. Recognizing the brutal facts of reality and then acting on them is a key characteristic of high-performance leaders and their organizations.
In the words of renowned Brazilian novelist, Paulo Coelho, “If you want to be successful, you must respect one rule: Never lie to yourself.” So, as a leader, recognize the brutal facts and get to work fixing the issue. That’s what your employees and your board will want you to do.
Stan Silverman is founder and CEO of Silverman Leadership. He is a speaker, advisor and nationally syndicated columnist on leadership, entrepreneurship and corporate governance. Silverman earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and an MBA degree from Drexel University. He is also an alumnus of the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School. He can be reached at Stan@SilvermanLeadership.com. Follow Silverman on LinkedIn here and on Twitter, @StanSilverman.
