Transparency is the new “it” factor in a world where information is available at the click of a button. A CEO looking to move his or her company forward would do well to embrace this trend.
Indeed, management training thrives when CEOs exercise transparency and open communication. In Grovo’s Good Manager, Bad Manager white paper, 87 percent of managers surveyed said they wished they’d had more training before they took on their roles.
A possible reason: A manager’s uncertainty and lack of training can cause major issues at a company’s lower levels. Gallup’s State of the American Manager report in 2015 found that 50 percent of the 7,272 professionals surveyed said they had quit a job to “get away from their boss” at some point in their career. This means a lot of managers are failing to motivate their staff or make them feel comfortable.
Zappos’s CEO Tony Hsieh is a good role model; Hsieh makes the most out of transparency at his company. In fact, his company’s Family Core Values include “build open and honest relationships with communication.” Zappos is known for giving employees a chance to be heard at all levels.
The company is also heralded for having thoughtful public interactions between employees and management. Back in 2008, the company had to lay off nearly 8 percent of its staff. To help its employees through that event, Zappos started a feed on Twitter to allow each employee to react and share his or her thoughts publicly. This way, employees were heard by CEOs, management, the media, the Twitter community and other interested parties.
“We believe that transparency is important and have continued to encourage our employees to Twitter,” Hsieh said at the time. “We also publicized on our blog the email sent to employees within minutes of it’s being sent internally.”
Now, more than ever before, CEOs can be as open as they choose to be with their employees. These leaders also need to communicate their desired level of transparency with their managers. They need to focus on training managers to themselves become true leaders in the office.
The question is, how do they do that?
Self-appraisals contribute to transparency.
Managers are more successful when they have a holistic view of their management style in the workplace; this is why CEOs should be assigning self-appraisals on a regular basis.
As part of that task, managers must talk about their successes and what they’ve learned from them. They need to explain challenges that stuck out to them. You should…