Simplification: management techniques exist for those unable to tell the truth
The list of reliable management techniques seems to expand everyday. Like any of my generalizations thus far, no such technique is a bad idea on the surface. But when I think about management techniques, what I almost always end up concluding is that these are ways to help managers tell the truth.
Consider the following example – the top management technique from the first result of my Google search for 'best management techniques':
Dole out recognition when it's deserved.Now, this seems like a basic but critical piece of advice. Someone does something well so you should recognize it in some way. Great work, manager!
But... is this really a management technique? It looks a lot like just plain old truth-telling to me, a lot like the equivalent of laughing at a funny comment or applauding when you witness an impressive accomplishment. And don't we always compliment the cook when we first sink our teeth into a delicious meal?
Here's another example from a result from the Harvard Business Review (via Time):
Get through your to-do list.Again - a management technique? If it's your list of things 'to do', it probably makes more sense than not to do them, no? Otherwise, what's the point of making a list of things you are going to do? Truth telling isn't just limited to others, you know.
Have a look yourself, reader, for these pieces of advice. They are all over the place. I warn you, though, for rare is the piece of advice that does not reveal itself to simply be another version of 'tell the truth' when placed under close inspection.
Even some basic managerial staples like productivity measurements turn out to be very well disguised versions of this idea in action. Instead of going to an employee and saying – look, the recent performance just hasn’t been good enough – a manager might spend two hours baking a pie chart just to get the same message across. This could work – unless the employee feels the given metric doesn’t account for something important. If this happens, the likely outcome is a simultaneous pair of one-way conversations. Good luck expanding on your pie chart to explain a larger trend while the employee feels the whole conversation is based on a faulty premise.
A regular status meeting is another good example. These meetings are good opportunities to look over the work and talk about ways to progress. However, it also temps employees to hold thoughts until the meeting. How valuable is Monday’s insight on Wednesday? There is certainly logic to wait for the appropriate moment, of course, but what is accomplished by withholding a valuable insight for two days? The world works better when Monday’s truth is stated on Monday and anything that discourages this result should be viewed with suspicion.
Is it really better to bluntly tell the truth at all times? I’m sure it is. Think about it this way – does anyone ever describe the ideal manager as someone who withholds information? This reasoning helps make a distinction between two very similar types of managers – a manager who doesn’t lie and a manager who tells the truth. I think this distinction is lost on many because most people don’t have a good sense of what they mean by ‘telling the truth’. A person who tells the truth doesn’t tell lies. But just because a person doesn’t lie doesn’t mean they tell the truth (1).
I think when most people think of an honest person or describe themselves as an honest person, what they are really saying is that an honest person doesn’t tell overt, obvious, or hurtful lies. It can’t really hurt for a manager to not tell lies, of course, but I don’t think it necessarily helps, either. What the manager really needs to do is tell the truth, preferably quickly, and to do so in a clear way that helps move the team, the work, or the employee forward (2).
Footnotes / well, endnote…
0. This will apply until Amazon buys The Dark Web and offers it to prime members
Now, of my five simplifications, this one does come with a real caveat. In some environments, a manager probably cannot reasonably tell the employee the truth. I could see this being true in highly regulated environments such as a hospital or a courthouse. In fact, I know from my limited health care experience that there is actually a law that I’ll loosely refer to as ‘the minimum necessary’ standard to limit what employees can share with colleagues in certain situations. In such situations, I suppose the good management techniques I dismiss here do go a long way.
1. No, seriously, I thought this post was GOOD…
Most people are probably so conditioned by the many little lies of daily living that they don’t realize their own comfort level with small lies. These lies are often made in the best of the human spirit – to maintain harmony, to keep good things going, to protect and nurture relationships. All of these concepts are just as important to maintaining a good work life as they are to maintaining a good personal life. When we say that the email looks fine, the meal doesn’t taste too bad, or that jaywalking isn’t really against the law, what we are really saying is that we value certain things more than a bull-headed consistency with telling the truth.
2. Now, this isn’t easy…
The ability to tell the truth is the most unnatural skill a manager must learn. However, it is a vital skill necessary for completing the larger managerial objective of gathering and distributing information. The difficult part is that I think this skill must be learned on your own. The significant obstacle is rejecting ‘not lying’ as a substitute for ‘telling the truth’. Once the difference between the two is well understood and the idea is put into practice, a manager should experience a lot more success.
The best argument for this idea that I could not fit into the post was how some of the managerial techniques championed by mediocre managers seem designed to make employees feel like cogs in a machine or caricature sketches from a textbook. The resulting conversations are stilted, forced, and demoralizing. It is probably better for a manger to stumble awkwardly through a real conversation than to zip skillfully through a scripted exchange.
