Tell The Prodigal Executive The Bad News

Of course, it is human nature that people don’t want to give other people bad news. That is why there are expressions like, “Don’t shoot the messenger.” Deep down people want to be seen as likable, the nice guy or gal. Because they want to be nice, giving people negative, but necessary, feedback is the hardest thing for them to do.

The classic example is the senior executive who gave performance appraisals in the restroom. This manager would see the employee in the restroom and hand the person a folder with things they're doing well and not well.

Regardless of the reason, if you are a manager and you don't give somebody in your organization negative feedback, it borders on being unethical. You're carrying information the employee needs to know for their career survival. If that person doesn't succeed but could have if they had the information, then you as their manager have set them up for failure.

The other problem that happens in executive organizations is that the higher up you go, the less feedback you get.

In the words of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, the author of 19 books on leadership, “All other things being equal, your people skills (or lack thereof) become more pronounced the higher up you go. In fact, even when things are not equal, your people skills often make the difference in determining how high you go” (“behave Yourself,” Talent Management Magazine, July 2007).

The feedback a high level executive receives is so sanitized because of the politics it is of scant value. So many times executives, when they do finally get this level of feedback that they're potentially derailing, they're very surprised. And some of the comments are, "Well why wasn't I told this before?" And part of that is the fear of telling the boss there's a problem.