I received a very interesting review today of this article:
I Have Terrible News: Value of Communication in Honesty
by Jack Zenger
The review I read came from Jim Bruce of MOR and Associates. But here is my take on this article.
I like to think of myself as a compassionate leader, so I tend to avoid hurting the feelings of others. This means I sometimes have difficulty delivering an important message, when I know the recipient is going to feel terrible about it.
In this article, Jack Zenger points out the value of being brave enough to deliver the difficult message. I am going to work hard on this. It will be important to balance compassion and honesty.
Certainly there are many messages that don't need to be delivered at all. What would be the point in deliberately setting out to hurt someone's feelings if there were to be no benefit in the end? But if you see that someone's behavior is hurting their ability to do the job well, is it really doing them a favor to stay silent?
At our MOR training last week, we learned that "feedback is a gift." We learned to say "thank you" when someone offers feedback, even if it difficult to hear. Let's all practice this.
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