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When telling the boss the truth can backfire
Camped in France as he and his army return from a Crusade, Richard The Lionheart asks a humble English archer to truthfully assess the success of the mission. Russell Crowe's version of the legendary Robin Hood bravely answers that there has been unnecessary bloodshed and, as reward for confronting his royal master with this honesty, he is locked up in chains. So much for telling the boss the truth. King Richard was not the first and certainly not the last person in a top job to ask for an honest opinion and expect to be lied to. Too many bosses want to be told what they want to hear. If the truth is uncomfortable they want a sanitized version.
It happens all the time in companies large and small, and while chief executives are not allowed to chain, manacle and flog their employees who tell them something they do not want to hear, deaf ears are still being turned to complaints and criticism. Some organizations will spend a fortune seeking feedback by way of focus groups, online or postal questionnaires and other methods of communication with customers. But they will not listen to what their frontline employees could and want to tell them about customer opinions. Difficult as it is to understand, burying their heads in the sand seems the preferable option to this relatively cheap method of getting tuned in to customers feelings, thoughts and aspirations. They probably know the employee is more likely to "tell it as it is" than the watered-down gobbledygook they might get from an outside organization they are paying to pass on opinion.
How perverse it seems that some bosses will rely on the information they get if it comes from those surveys, questionnaires, focus groups etc. and choose to ignore the rich source of valuable information that is readily-available - and free to access - in the heads of their own employees. Maybe they are the sort of executive who symbolically sites their...