> As if they were on purely my own
Is this actually the expectation at the places you work?
Is this actually the expectation at the places you work?
"Hello gents, we have our new orders, we're going to go over the top tomorrow at 8am and try and take the village one mile down the road, however, I think this is a horrible idea and you're all probably going to die."
Even if you really believe this is the case, it's a bad idea to tell your men as it means the plan (which is going to happen anyway) is even LESS likely to succeed. That is, if you can make your men believe the plan is genius and they're going to destroy the enemy easily, it may give them more confidence and leave more of them alive at the end of it.
By explaining your reasoning in every situation you can will build trust, so that on the rare occasion that you need them to act without sharing, they will trust you enough to do so. For example, when in an execution environment where response time matters.
And in practice, this is how good commanders I've worked with have operated. And this is explicitly a principle of the US Army, by understanding the objective and it's purpose units are able to continue acting to fulfill their objectives even if they are cut off.
The upside of explaining whenever you can let them build a mental model to know how you would likely handle an unexpected situation, allowing them to act in your absence.
It is unusual to have a team emotionally mature enough to handle actual transparency. You only have to read HN to know people live with extreme cognitive dissonance between wanting their high salaries and hating the business practices that enable them.
My experience has always been that certain employees get marked as "adults in the room" and are given real transparency in 1:1s.
But understanding the purpose and why of a decision/plan is only a small piece of full transparency. And is always achievable. This is the minimal amount I consider functional. Less than this is dysfunctional.
The reset is extremely rare for teams (I’ve only had this on a team once and it was magical), but happens regularly individually 1-1.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechgl...
Much easier to see through that bullshit and be cynical.
I have absolubtely had managers that did an excellent job of making us feel like we were in it together. In fact I'd say its one of the key skills of being a manager at all?
Can you imagine a manager saying, "I don't agree with these decisions, but you need to do A, B, C." This might be being frank and open with your reports, but at the same time you reduce their motivation. And if top management learns about this, they won't be happy.
So yes, there is such unspoken pressure to at least not to distance oneself from the things you ask others to do, whether they come from you or from your boss.
Wrapping it in pink wrapping paper fools no one but kills personal credibility, which is the most important asset a manager has.
Top management often does not give a shit if people are happy about the thing (who is happy about layoffs?), just that it gets done satisfactorily. So yeah, sometimes I tell my team “this sucks but just get it done and then we can get back to the interesting work.”
Some of my best managers, on well-regarded teams, have done exactly that. Those managers are doing me a favour by flagging that it's a waste of my time, emotional energy, and political capital to argue with decisions that neither they nor I can affect, and that it will be better if we just get on with it.