Can Leaders Ever Be Too Transparent?
Transparency is often boasted as a defining quality of successful business leaders. Oftentimes it helps team members feel valued and comfortable enough to share their own opinions. Keeping information from being distracting or detrimental to the workplace requires evaluating the situation to determine when leaders should be transparent. Here, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council share when it's time to draw a line on being open with positive and negative news. YEC members share their expert insights. Photos courtesy of the individual members  1. Consider If All Employees Need The Information  As leaders and employers, we have to protect our employees, shielding them from unnecessary worries. If overall I find that the transparency about this information positively affects the employees, I would have the tendency to share it. Otherwise, I would find ways to crystallize it to make tangible bites that are meaningful and helpful without causing disruption and unnecessary stress. Again, it is the leader's role to protect their employees and make sure they operate in an environment that sets them up for success. - Fabi Hubschmid, Markaaz  2. Examine The Intent Behind Transparency  Transparency has its benefits, and there are a thousand and one blogs, podcasts and videos that sing its praise. It's the fad of the business leadership industry, and this makes sense because it works. But like any other tool, it can be misused. It's on you as a good leader to know when to use transparency for optimal performance and stop using it when it brings diminishing returns. Oversharing can come with consequences. A good way to avoid them is to look at intent and then let measured results give you insights on how to iterate and improve. - Samuel Thimothy, OneIMS - Integrated Marketing Solutions  3. Make Sure Your Information Is Factual  Ask yourself about the intention and the people involved, and have a check and balance for subjectivity. If your main intention is beneficial to more people, especially if the intention is to correct and not cover a mistake, then you're good. If the transparency will only involve people who are needed in this situation, then that's OK. If it's subjective, decide whether the information is actually necessary and driven with love rather than fear. The way you share the information should be seasoned with love, sincerity and truth. - Daisy Jing, Banish  4. Evaluate The Impact Of The Information  There definitely needs to be a line drawn when sharing information with your employees. For example, some personal or even professional information about leaders and team members does not need to be exposed to others. You need to think about the impact that your information has on the people in your business. You can hold off on sharing certain information and choose to wait for time to go by until matters get sorted. Then, you can finally talk to your team with complete transparency. - Blair Williams, MemberPress  5. Don't Share Information Not Essential To Their Job  Transparency is essential to your success as a business owner  there's no doubt about it. For me, I withhold information if it could directly impact the security of our websites or customer data. I believe that employees should have all of the tools, information and resources they need to do their job. But there's some information that's not essential to their job and creates a security risk. - Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights  6. Protect Employee Confidentiality  There are certain things you cant share, such as issues around employee confidentiality when someone may share something in confidence that you should never share with the team. I read recently about Netflixs experiment where they made everybodys salaries transparent and it backfired a little. The result was that the team focused too much on money, claiming they could almost see a number above everybodys head showing what they were making and leading to an uncomfortable situation. Also, you have to consider that some issues have a lot of context surrounding them and that it would take too long to dive deep into that context so that everyone could understand why a decision was made. If its an issue that doesnt add a lot of value, it may be better not to get into it at all. - Cody Candee, Bounce  7. Avoid Information Overload  If transparency has an evil twin, its name is information overload. You want to keep employees in the loop, but if you give them all the details about every single development, you'll bog them down with information they don't need. Give people the highlights of the important events that affect the course of the business, for good or bad. Only go into deeper detail when the information would help the employee perform better in their role in some concrete way. Here's an example: Say you're working on a new partnership. The whole company should know it's in the pipeline. Probably not. The only people who need to know that are the people who can help you overcome the setback. Let everyone else focus on their work. - Miles Jennings, Recruiter.com  8. Handle Negative Information Privately  I'd be careful with sharing anything that's demoralizing. Morale and high spirits are essential for keeping a team motivated and hard-working. If, in the interest of transparency, you overshare and start deflating your team's morale, then that'll cost you in the long run because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you overshare and it kills your team's motivation, then that will only reinforce the negative conditions that got you to overshare in the first place. So, be selective. Unless specifically asked or prompted, be transparent regarding positive aspects of business and handle the negative privately. - Tyler Gallagher, Regal Assets