To our readers,
Welcome to our latest installment of a Lorne Rubis Q/A series. We’ve accumulated some popular leadership questions, and below are Lorne’s answers to them. We plan to release these every-other Wednesday. We’d like to encourage you to participate, see below on how to contribute!
1. Hey, I’m in a position where I need to deliver bad news to my team. What’s the best way for a leader to approach a situation like this?
“I am such a big believer in trusting in the audience with transparency and truth. People have pretty good BS antennas that they can see through most “spins.” So, be authentic, tell the truth regardless of how difficult, be compassionate and trust that people will be overall appreciative.”
2. What kind of criticism about personal leadership do you hear the most?
“The biggest complaint I hear about leaders is their perceived lack of courage and self-accountability to confront difficult issues with directness, meaningful specificity and timeliness. They too often confuse patronizing niceness with care. Subsequently the reason they would rather avoid talking about hard stuff is often to protect themselves from the emotional impact. The mental spin in their own mind is to protect others. Instead they make it worse. Leaders have to CARE about others first. That includes addressing the tough issues relative to people.”
We hope you enjoyed this Q/A session. We’d like to keep these coming, so if you have any questions, please submit them to CultureCastPodcast@gmail.com, or DM us @CultureCastPod1 on Twitter. We look forward to many more, every other Wednesday.