I’d like to come back on my post “Do we need to communicate on the brutal facts?‘ posted on January 14th. Today I read an interesting analysis on this topic based on the current situation the new US president  Obama is faced with. What follows is part of a blogpost by Michael Watkins on Harvard Business.

“One of the core challenges of turnaround leadership is how much to share the bad news. On one hand, you want people to understand the depth of the challenges and the need for dramatic action. If you share too little information, you risk creating a vicious cycle in which people cling to overly optimistic views, and so do too little too late. Then, as hopes repeatedly get dashed, the credibility of the leader can be rapidly and irretrievably damaged.
On the other hand, confidence is itself in a variable in the turnaround equation. If you tell people the full truth as you believe it to be, you risk generating a panic or an equally dangerous dynamic of denial. Either way, it can lead people to take actions that can easily reinforce the downward cycle. In business, for example, perceptions that the ship is going down unsurprisingly tend to trigger the departure of the best people.
So in many ways you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Welcome to the situation current facing our new President.”

This of course, is a far more serious situation then the one I described in my post. Yet I could conclude, based on the parallel, that it’s best to share the full truth on rather “operational” challenges.  It will stimulate change and create some kind of a burning platform that will fuel motivation and team spirit leading to focused actions.