It takes all types (Yes men, Part 2)

 The Truth Teller

Sometimes organizations don't hire Yes Men. They create them.

Years ago, I worked for an EMS service that covered a large portion of the county. Another service covered a much smaller part. Eventually, that service took over ours.

Whenever one organization takes over another, there are going to be growing pains. People are used to doing things a certain way. Different policies, expectations, cultures, and ways of running calls and the organization. This transition had plenty of those problems.

Many of our employees weren't happy with how things were being run. The pay wasn't what people had been accustomed to, and the staffing and culture were very different from what we had before. People started leaving, and then more people left.

After several months, enough employees had walked out the door that leadership realized there was a problem. The Chief and Assistant Division Chiefs decided to hold town-hall meetings with employees. They wanted to know why people were leaving. More importantly, they asked us what they could do to fix it.

I sat there and listened for a while. People spoke up, and some had legitimate things to say, but from where I was sitting, there was also a lot of dancing around the real problems. A little smoke blowing. A little sugar coating. Nobody really wanted to ruffle feathers.

I understood why. When the Chief and several Division Chiefs are sitting in front of you, it's a lot easier to soften your answer than to tell them something they probably don't want to hear.

But I learned something long before that meeting: nothing changes if nobody is willing to say what the actual problem is. If you ask why people are leaving, and everyone spends the meeting trying not to hurt anyone's feelings, you're probably going to leave the room without knowing why people are leaving.

So eventually, I spoke up.

I told them what I thought. I told them they weren't going to get people to come work there until they fixed the problems driving people away.

And then I said the part they really didn't like.

I told them the service had a bad reputation, and not just locally. That reputation had traveled far and wide, and if they wanted to attract good employees, it wasn't going to be fixed with a recruiting campaign or a few small changes. It was going to take hard work, serious changes, and time.

You would have thought I kicked the Chief's dog.

The Chief listened to what I said and told me he appreciated what I said. The Division Chiefs definitely weren't happy. Apparently, that wasn't quite the kind of feedback everyone had envisioned when they asked for honest feedback.

But here's the thing: they asked.

I wasn't trying to insult anyone or embarrass leadership. I wasn't saying those things to cause the service to fail. Quite the opposite. I wanted it to get better.

There is an important difference between criticizing an organization because you hate it and criticizing an organization because you want it to succeed. Good employees see problems, and experienced employees usually see them even sooner. Sometimes the people working on the street can see things that aren't nearly as obvious from an office.

That's valuable information, but only if people feel like they can say it.

That's where the Yes Man problem begins. If every time an employee challenges an idea, identifies a problem, or gives an uncomfortable answer, they're treated like they're being negative or difficult, people eventually learn something: keep your mouth shut, tell leadership what they want to hear, smile, nod, and say yes.

It's safer.

And then something interesting happens. The employees who are willing to challenge things start getting labeled as difficult. The employees who agree with everything become easy to work with. When opportunities for leadership or promotion come around, guess which one can sometimes look more attractive?

The person who never causes a problem. The company person. The Yes Man.

But being easy to manage and being qualified to lead are not the same thing.

That doesn't mean the person who argues about everything should be promoted either. We've all worked with that person. Every new policy is stupid, every change is wrong, and every supervisor is an idiot.

That's not leadership. That's just complaining.

A good employee should be able to disagree professionally and, whenever possible, bring a solution with the complaint. And good leadership should be secure enough to listen.

You don't have to agree with every criticism, and you don't have to implement every suggestion. Sometimes the employee is wrong. But if you ask people for their opinion, you need to be prepared for the possibility that you won't like what they tell you.

Because when leaders only reward agreement, eventually agreement is all they'll get.

And that's dangerous.

The problems don't disappear. People just stop talking about them. Then leadership sits around a table wondering why morale is bad, why good employees keep leaving, and why nobody said anything sooner.

Someone probably did.

They just weren't saying yes.

Don't ask people to tell you the truth if what you really want is reassurance. And don't mistake the employee willing to tell you something uncomfortable for an employee who doesn't care.

Sometimes they're the one who cares enough to risk saying it.