Candor. It's the most important thing.

Early in my career, the general manager of the company I worked for shared with me General Colin Powell’s 18 Lessons in Leadership. While there’s great value in each of General Powell’s 18 lessons, there’s one in particular that has really stuck with me for all these years.

"Lesson #2 - The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership."  

As I’ve grown as a manager over the past 20 years (yes, it is a continual growth process), I’ve been fairly successful at establishing a team culture of candor... much like what General Powell suggests in Lesson #2. But what does that really look like, and why is it important... and why is it so hard to accomplish?

It’s more than simply venting - At a very basic level, your people---and especially your middle managers---need somewhere to air their issues. One of the many great scenes in the film Saving Private Ryan was when Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) explains that complaints go up the chain of command, not down. Make sure your managers know that you’re willing to listen--otherwise they'll find somewhere else to share their concerns, which may result in those gripes going to their peers, or worse, directly down to the people they manage. This can be disruptive and could undermine trust within your organization.

As a manager, you need to create a safe space where your team can speak freely, even if it is just to vent for a while.

However, while venting sessions might be cathartic, our job as leaders is to help our managers by providing a productive outlet for their concerns. This means showing them a willingness to coach and conduct some problem solving together, and then work with them on a more productive path to a solution.

You’re not as plugged-in as you think you are - As managers and senior management, we tend to hear less of the real "water cooler talk" than we used to hear. Our perspective on internal politics, morale, and the overall employee vibe is often anecdotal and fairly filtered.

When it comes to the day-to-day business activities, our middle managers and team members are much closer to the real action than we are---which means they typically have a closer view on the breakdowns and the opportunities (within our own team or cross-departmentally).

If you’ve hired A-Players, then they already have a bead on many of the breakdowns and opportunities you’re not seeing. As leaders, it's in our own best interest---and more importantly, it's in the best interest of the company---to ensure that our managers have an avenue to affect positive change by listening to their feedback and clearing a path for those ideas to be implemented.

Someone has got to keep you in line - This is the trickiest one… but the most valuable. You need your A-players to tell you when you’re off the mark or out of line. Ironically, the higher one ascends as a leader in any organization, the fewer the number of people willing to point out your blind spots and flaws... yet the number of people affected by your actions and decisions continues to increase.

Too often, these blind spots only become apparent when a team member resigns or when the CEO or president identifies a problem you should have addressed. Either way, by the time this issue appears on your radar, the problem has probably already become bigger than it should be... or it might simply be too late. Therefore, if your team is going to help prevent you from stumbling, you will need more feedback from them, not less. While it’s not always easy to hear, it is always incredibly valuable.

So, why is this so hard?

First of all, I’m not going to claim that I’ve perfected the candid communication culture. It’s really hard and often I fail at this. However, what I can tell you is that I’ve seen tremendous benefit from communicating in this fashion… but it’s a constant work in progress. Here are a couple of techniques that might help:

Tell me what I don’t want to hear… precisely when I don’t want to hear it - You can’t pick when you want receive candid feedback. So, be ready for it… invite it... and embrace it.

The most important candid feedback comes at the times you don’t want to hear it... which also happens to be the time at which you probably need it most.

You need to be particularly receptive to feedback from your team members at the times when it’s most difficult to hear it. Don’t shut down or be dismissive… that will only discourage candid feedback in the future. (This is precisely what General Powell referred to as "a failure of leadership.") The more your team is willing to give you difficult feedback at a difficult time, the more likely it is that you can help each other be successful.

Don’t go fishing for positive feedback - If your team is feeling good, they’ll tell you. If your team is uneasy, unhappy or concerned, they'll tell you. In an environment of candor, you'll get the right feedback at the right time.

Don’t solicit the feedback you’re hoping to hear. Doing so will only make your team more hesitant to tell it like it is.

I've made this mistake. If you go fishing for positive feedback, you're basically asking your team to help you look past your own blind spots. Instead, ask them to provide their feedback on the situation (be sure not to "lead the witness"), and if you're not hearing the positive reactions you expected, then there's probably a reason. Ask some probing questions to find out what you need to do better as their manager.

Reassure them there will be no retribution - If you’ve built a trusting relationship, this should be less of a problem, but I’m often surprised how often team members (initially) are afraid of being perceived as a malcontent or concerned that they’re going to offend me personally. This is particularly important when dealing with the reports of your direct reports. Remind them that you appreciate and value their candor, and that their feedback is in the best interest of the team and the company... and acknowledge that you've taken their advice to heart.

Take action… make their risk worth it - It takes a tremendous amount of courage to provide candid feedback and speak up... especially when providing that candid feedback to senior management. The last thing you want is for your team members to muster up the courage to tell you like it is... and then become apathetic and disengaged because they believe that they are not being heard, that they cannot affect change, or that simply no one else cares or values their perspective. Be sure to find some small, demonstrable wins with the feedback you received, or at the very least, circle back to those team members to explain how and why you might use their suggestions and feedback.

These will be some of your best relationships

As difficult as it can be to establish a culture of candor, the resulting relationships with those who communicate with candor will be among the strongest, most valuable relationships on your team. As I look back across my career, those candid relationships have taken the most work, but have also been the ones with the most effective and rewarding dynamic of leadership and mentoring. Establishing those candid relationships not only helped me cultivate stronger managers, but it also strengthened me as a leader in the process.

Collin Earnst is Vice President of Marketing and Strategy at Lexia, the K-12 literacy division of Rosetta Stone. For nearly 20 years, he has managed teams large and small at start-ups and multi-billion-dollar companies, and has benefited from a series of remarkable managers, mentors and team members.