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talent
retention
team
building
newsletter
During our team building work with client
organizations, we've compiled a collection of barriers that
we see creating enormous stress for individuals, blocking
performance in teams, and robbing organizations of
productivity. Each issue, one of
these barriers will be addressed in our
newsletter. We'll include some
suggestions for breakthrough thinking to give you ideas
for how you might begin
busting through these barriers.
Free Team Building Newsletter
Barrier #1:
Management withholds
information.
Breakthrough
#1:
Management
is telling you all that current circumstances allow
for.
I could get
my job done if they would tell me what I need to
know!
They only
tell us about half of what they know because they don't trust
us!
What are
they hiding?
We're not babies. Why don't
managers tell it like it is?
Think about a time when you made a personal decision (we have
all done this) and didn't tell everyone right away. How
about the last relationship that didn't work out? How
about a problem with your child's teachers or school? A
problem with your banker? Your landlord? How about
the last time you decided to pursue a career change? Why
didn't you tell the people involved the minute you started
thinking about it? Particularly those that were going to
be seriously affected? Probably your answers have to do
with your needing time to think things through, to gather
information, and to make good solid action
plans.
Yes, management does sometimes withhold
information. Often, just like with our personal
decisions, it’s because they haven’t collected enough data from
the marketplace to make a firm decision. With technology
enabling information to literally move around the world in
seconds, organizations are more conscientious today about how
and what information is released. Admittedly, that
sometimes does seem like deliberate withholding of
information.
More often than not, senior management has a big picture and a
sense of direction, but perhaps they haven’t yet worked out all
the bugs and details. Your manager may be as much in the dark
as you. So, don’t take the silence
personally.
It isn’t that you aren’t trusted or that someone wants to
withhold information from you. On occasion, management
has to safeguard new plans so they don't leak out and harm the
organization. They may want to share the information with
you, but for the benefit of everyone involved, they simply
can’t.
In an economy in which knowledge is now a commodity, it only
makes sense that some information has to be held back for
carefully timed release. It would be all too easy for a
competitor to beat your organization to the marketplace if
proprietary information got out.
This does not absolve you of finding out all you can by
appropriately asking your management to level with you - as
much as they can. Let management know that you are sensitive to
the needs of protecting vital trade secrets and potentially
explosive information. But within these parameters, ask
them to let you know as soon as they
can.
Don't simply adopt the attitude of "they’ll tell me when they
are ready." There’s no harm in asking … but don’t feel
rebuffed if you don’t get an immediate answer.
Remember:
Speak
Up!
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