Legacy Leaders and Sharing Information

Information is the currency of productivity. Information is necessary for success. Information is powerful and liberating. Information can open doors, minds, and hearts. Failure to provide adequate information to our followers can be the most detrimental leadership act for any organization.

When followers are not given all the information they feel they need, or if followers do not trust the information provided, or if the information is not given in a form they can understand and use, followers will fill in the blanks on their own. Sometimes this is ok but many times this creates real problems. When holes are left in the provided information, and followers are required to fill in the blanks, they will, most likely, fill in those blanks using their own biases as a selection filter. Furthermore, those filters are most frequently negative filters.

Many leaders lament the fact that their people are always looking on the negative side of situations and circumstances. But this is a very natural fear response. When faced with the unknown, discomfort often gives way to fear and fear results in one of two reactions; fight or flight. Either of those responses is counter productive and not in the best interest of the organization. To keep followers in the most productive space, Legacy Leaders must provide complete, trustworthy, and comprehendible information.

It is understood that there are times and situations that arise that limit a leader’s ability to share some information. When confidentiality dictates that specific pieces of information cannot be shared, there is nothing the leader can do about it. But how the leader deals with the situation can help put followers more at ease. Legacy Leaders want followers to be as much at ease as possible, so during these times a Legacy Leader will create a system that will help followers understand the level of urgency, the intensity of the threat, and how concerned they need to be.

One Legacy Leader I’ve met used a system that gave followers a numerical value for each of these factors; urgency, threat, and concern. If the situation was serious, the leader might tell followers, “there’s information I cannot share and I want you to know the urgency level is a 10, the threat intensity is a 4, and your level of concern should be a 3.” This would alert followers that the situation was very urgent, but the threat was moderate, and their level of concern was only low-moderate. This allowed followers to create scenarios in their own minds that were relevant to the situation and not completely off the wall. The Legacy Leader knew he couldn’t stop his people from filling in the blanks but he could give them a clue as to where their concern should be placed.

Information is powerful. Some unprincipled leaders use information as a weapon. Legacy Leaders always respect their followers and use information to empower people whenever they can. When their hands are tied and they cannot share everything they’d like to share, they create systems to help their people deal with the lack of information they are facing. Legacy Leaders understand that the better the information, the more productive their people will be. The more productive everyone is, the more satisfaction they get from their work. The greater the satisfaction, the greater their future efforts will be. This creates the upward spiral of success that Legacy Cultures most often experience.