Care to Be Curious
I’ll be honest: I didn’t know who Claire Hughes Johnson was until Brent and David interviewed her, but she got David’s Spinal Tap reference so now I’m hooked. Moreover, she recently published a useful book called Scaling People (to 11?) about what she learned running large organizations at Google and Stripe.
One of the most clarifying discussions they had for me was about the interplay between transparency and trust.
I think the two go hand in hand. An organization can’t build trust without transparency, but also can’t afford to be transparent unless there’s already trust. Claire’s wrinkle is that there is such a thing as too much transparency and that that level of disclosure can actually erode trust. One example she gave in this regard was about a manager she called Eli who was oversharing with his reports in real time about potential changes in structure and compensation that hadn’t been decided yet. This not only made those people anxious, but also forced them to try to reconcile the logic behind not yet fully formed thoughts.
Another was about a program at Stripe where every email that got sent in the company was copied to an email list so anyone could read them. While this program had some benefits, it was probably also the case that it resulted in people not sending genuine emails since everyone knew that everyone else could read them!
The learning is not everyone needs to – or even should – know everything all of the time. That seems self-evident, but it’s also the case that it can seem bad not to clue people in on changes that might affect them. Where Claire lands is that you need to be transparent that you won’t always be transparent and also demonstrate empathy so people will trust you that you will clue them in when the time is right.
My personal policy on transparency and trust has long been that I will answer any question anyone asks me or if I can’t or won’t, admit that and explain why that’s the case (usually because I don’t have enough information). I also don’t write emails thinking everyone will read them, but try to make sure before I send any email that I’d be okay forwarding that email to anyone in the future. The standard here is not that everything I write in an email will be popular, but rather that I’d be able to at least explain why I thought what I did at the time and have it be defensible.
Does every email age well? Of course not. But they age a lot better without trust destroyers like cynicism and sarcasm (which should always be edited out before you hit send on anything).
Brent ended the interview by asking Claire about kindness and feedback and how an organization can have both. Her answer, I thought, was a good one. She basically said that people should be genuinely curious before beginning any dialogue or inquiry. This may also seem self-evident, but it’s also the case that people ask questions for lots of reasons other than wanting to know the answer to them and frequently ask questions (like those that start with “Don’t you think…”) they already know the answer to.
The difference — and it’s an important one and the reason Claire’s answer is a good one — is that curiosity inherently comes from a place of caring about the best right answer and when starting any conversation, there’s no better place to start from than that.
– By Tim Hanson