Lately I have been a witness to a change in the workplace. The researchers call it “the intolerance of uncertainty”. We would all call it “making sure I know everything in case my boss, customer, another director or someone else important asks me”.
It plays out like this: a boss asks a colleague an unexpected question. When this person doesn’t know the answer, they feel embarrassed or exposed and vow never to let it happen again. So they start collecting more, often extraneous information. Others see them doing it and copy them. And anxiety levels drop – so the brain learns “monitoring everything keeps me safe”.
The result? All employees become dependent on knowing everything. So everyone finds themselves in more meetings because we need to be there. We’re copied on more emails, because we think we need to be. There are no limits as to what we think we need to know.
In my own small team I recently received an instant message asking for a call. The person sending the message – a fellow leader – had been contacted by another member of our team about an issue she had no clue about. In the call we had she was irritated because I hadn’t given her a heads-up about the issue.
My response was that it’s OK for us (leaders) not to know everything that is going on. We need to trust our people to inform us when the time is right. Us not knowing something is happening is not a failure – we can’t know everything. Plus, when it happens, the fix is to ask, get updated and respond accordingly. Not focus on trying to know everything.
By focusing on what we don’t know and where we could be ‘exposed’, we perpetuate the hunger for more knowledge.
Don’t get me wrong, if the sales director asks you how much you sold this quarter and you don’t know, that is just stupid! But not knowing about an operational project that may impact you and your team at some point is OK because you have to trust your colleagues that they will involve or inform you when the time is right.
If you don’t have that trust, then hungering for more information is like Sellotaping sandwiches on to your stomach when you’re hungry – it won’t solve the problem. Colleague trust is the problem in this instance. That is what needs to be fixed. Not an insatiable thirst for more information.
No comments yet