Intentional. Transparent. Inclusive. Accountable.
Sing it with me.
I know I said I was working on making these shorter. Well, this one…isn’t. Anyway, given everything that’s going on, I’ve been ruminating lately on the value of a foundational philosophy, a guiding ethos. I realized that, at least as far as work is concerned, I had already articulated one. Figured I would explore it a little.
I have written that four words could describe the contours of the management and leadership ethos to which I aspire: intentional, transparent, inclusive, and accountable.
I even had a shirt printed up.
True story — a random person stopped me in the grocery store to ask about the shirt. The conversation went like this:
Random Grocery Store Person: “What’s all that? A coaching thing?”
Me: “Actually more of a management thing. Kind of my philosophy of managing creative teams. I write about it.”
RGSP: “Huh. Intentional, transparent, inclusive, accountable. Yeah, I like that. That’s really good.”
Me: “Thanks!”
RGSP: “I’ve failed at all four of those, just today.”
Me too, Random Grocery Store Person. Me too.
In fact, in some ways it’s a list of things I’m specifically bad at — but which I am always trying to improve. I seem to get better results the closer I get to this made-up ideal, so the pursuit seems worthwhile.
And perhaps there’s some value in expanding on the pithy (precious? affected? contrived?) sentiment a bit. While the words have plain meanings — and those meanings are what I intend — they are also rich with connotation and context. And risk?
An accomplished essayist, smart about their craft, would weave an intricate narrative coalescing at the last moment into an inevitable bon mot.
Because I’m not such a good essayist, I’m going to bullet-point it.
Let me know what you think. (Transparent! Accountable!)
Intentional. Transparent. Inclusive. Accountable.
Intentionality is not rocket science, but wow can it be hard to implement…and to be honest about.
Do things on purpose.
I’ve mused before on how important I think this principle is, and how weirdly long it took me to truly understand it.
Ultimately, here’s the thing about being intentional: it forces us to stand behind our decisions. It’s both forward-looking (choosing how we will behave), and retroactive (we chose to behave that way). It builds trust.
You can’t say “I’m acting with intention” and then later say “it was someone else’s fault.” Well, of course, you can do that. But if you do, you suck.
Anyway, if we are intentional, and are transparent about being intentional, then we are out in front of the thing, whatever it is. And as leaders, that’s where we should be — extremely vulnerable though that position may be.
Note that this is in no way meant to devalue smart opportunism. It’s crucial to be light on your feet, able to spot key opportunities and act on them, and willing to abandon sunk-cost quagmires. Opportunism isn’t the opposite of intentionality. They are intimately bound.
Intentional. Transparent. Inclusive. Accountable.
So then, we might as well tell folks what we are doing. You know, those things we are doing intentionally.
I reference Andrew Bosworth’s writing a lot, I know, and I will again here: he’s got a great piece from 2018 in which he suggests that leadership transparency is a critical element of developing an “antifragile” team.
It’s easy to see how “antifragility” and intentionality feed back to each other, with transparency the conduit.
Now, it’s worth noting that while “transparency” and “honesty” are related, they are not the same thing. If we imagine honesty as it’s meant when swearing testimony — the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — it’s obviously not a viable standard to enforce in a workplace.
For example, it’s often illegal, not to mention unethical, to talk about certain kinds of personnel issues publicly. As leaders, we probably (and as managers, we definitely) have information about individuals on the team that cannot be shared widely.
We also surely have information that, for better or worse, we are forbidden from sharing for other reasons. Maybe we’re privy to some sensitive negotiations with a big client. Maybe we’ve been read into a big reorg, or hiring freeze, or stock buyback. Unless prison sounds exciting, probably best to limit transparency.
But we may need to make decisions based on this knowledge, even while we haven’t communicated it with the team. These decisions may (read: will) seem arbitrary, or capricious, or even counterproductive to folks without the requisite context.
And…yup, that’s how it goes.
Part of effective transparency is being transparent about what we can’t be transparent about. (Okay, Boyd, settle down.)
Even still, it’s also the case that some folks are just not equipped to handle transparency, even deftly practiced. Especially someone coming from a team or organization that does not operate transparently, experiencing it can be disorienting or overwhelming.
But they need to learn. We can’t always be dealing with graded amounts of information going out to the team, just to coddle some delicate sensibilities. First, that creates perceived — and real! — inequities on the team. Some folks are “in the know” while others aren’t? That’s not going to work.
Second, that kind of information control reinforces the Watercooler Conundrum — information is the coin of the realm, and this is an inflationary force upon it. Do you think some people aren’t hearing about stuff just because you didn’t tell them? Think again.
Finally, being “transparent” about our own uncertainty is its own double-edged sword. It can make us more accessible and relatable to be open about the difficulty of some decisions. It can engender a real sense of investment and commitment to ask for input from the team.
But c’mon. People “want to feel like they are working for someone who they can learn from and who knows what they are doing.” So tread carefully.
All that said, I’ve long felt it better to err on the side of too much, rather than too little, transparency whenever possible. I have incurred the costs of that, for sure, but I’m pretty sure it’s been worth it.
Intentional. Transparent. Inclusive. Accountable.
Let’s get this out of the way: “Inclusive” is the “I” in “DEI.” I am aware of that.
“Oh no, another dirty word.”- Kurt Cobain
Look, the backlash against DEI is fucking stupid. Even when fair critique is leveled (and, sure, there is legitimate critique to be made),1 the result is…what? An argument against generosity, curiosity, and the pursuit of opportunity? Frankly, the backlash is pretty dark — mean-spirited, solipsistic, and regressive.
Still, I’m not sure I can wade too far into the quicksand-filled-with-landmines that is the state of “DEI.”
I’ll just state clearly that I am strongly in favor of the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion on a team, irrespective of any one or another “DEI” program.
So back to inclusiveness as I mean it. Inclusiveness is, first, a mindset. And then it is a set of specific, real-world actions that flow logically from that fount.
It mostly means two things:
Don’t be gate-keep-y, gaslight-y, discriminatory, dismissive, boorish, arrogant, or aggressive. Avoid engaging in this sort of exclusionary behavior — and extirpate it if you see it.
Do expend a little effort to find good ideas where they are. Practice open-mindedness. Try things! Be kind.
You’re paying for an expensive group of experts (your team), you want to actually engage them. All of them! Passive inclusiveness doesn’t cut it.
It starts with communication. We know that “throwing the floor open” for discussion turns out to be far less inclusive than it might first seem, for example. In fact, it mostly provides a forum for the exact same people every time.2
It would be silly not to acknowledge the role that gender expectations, dominant language aptitude, and differing cultural norms all play here. This stuff is real, and pretending it isn’t is myopic and self-defeating.
Does that mean that we therefore need “DEI” programs? It sure doesn’t. But it does mean that practicing the principle of inclusion is just good business — it’s imperative, irrespective of politics.3
Anyway, inclusive communication is not only ensuring that everyone is heard. It’s also ensuring that everyone is hearing. Communication is never one-way. So expending the effort to meet people where they are, and communicate in language they understand, is also key inclusive behavior.
The specifics of how this looks vary radically between teams, organizations, industries. Maybe it’s small working groups, or moderated chat threads, or informal knowledge-share meetings, or curated presentations at all-hands meetings. Maybe all of the above.
Even tactics that seem trivial or silly can have an effect on engagement, like lunchtime gaming sessions, or low-stakes brainstorming. An anonymous question box might get abused by wise-asses (it will be),4 but it also could encourage an insightful question that might otherwise not get asked.
Each of those is its own can of worms, of course, but screw it; everything’s a can of worms. Worms all the way down. May as well go fishing.
The point is that with an inclusive mindset, we’re trying all kinds of things, big and small, to actively engage with as much of the team as possible. Presumably they wouldn’t be there if they didn’t have great ideas. Get them out into the open.
And then from inclusive communication, the mindset billows out to many other aspects of the team’s culture, too.
It’s reasonable accommodations for physical differences, and welcoming of neurodiversity. It’s being demanding and critical of everyone — and being supportive and generous with everyone, too. It’s actively managing the team’s narrative, while being open to the natural evolution of the story as people tell it.
It comes down to this: in any situation, if there are two options and one seems more kind than the other, do that one. Kindness is not weakness and it is not “wokeness.” Never has been, never will be.
Best of all, there is literally no downside to an inclusive mindset. It requires a little conscious intention and a bit of affirmative implementation from management, and that’s pretty much it.
Phew. Okay. That’s “inclusive.” I do not think it’s controversial at all, but this is the world we live in.
Intentional. Transparent. Inclusive. Accountable.
This may actually be the hardest one, though it doesn’t seem like it should be (and notwithstanding all that disingenuous nonsense around “inclusive”).
I have been personally confronted about the notion of accountability by team members in my line of report.
I’ve been asked, very directly, “how am I supposed to hold you accountable for anything? You’re my boss [or my boss’s boss], what power do I have here?”
It’s a fair point. And there are two answers.
First, a lot of organizations offer formal mechanisms to hold your leadership accountable — manager surveys or team health questionnaires, mandatory “upward” feedback, etc. But of course these are only as useful insofar as they are used.
That is, they have to have some teeth in the organization, and the team has to care enough to engage with them in a meaningful way. If no one believes they matter, no one will take the time. (Also note: petulantly marking “not at all” to every question about your level of satisfaction on the survey will generally just get it tossed out as an unserious outlier).
And hopefully, the chain of responsibility above us is paying attention. I’d expect my boss to be noting my behavior and taking in this feedback and using the tools at their disposal — bonuses, promotions, plumb assignments, disciplinary action, whatever — to hold me accountable, just as I might with my team.
But at the end of the day, there’s no point in pretending that will feel satisfying to the team. Unless leadership is specifically removed, the team’s not likely to see whatever accountability might be in play (i.e., their boss may have had their bonus docked, but that’s hardly likely to be public information, see: transparency).
So second, and much more importantly, we as leaders have to ask for feedback — and we have to want to get it. We must actively solicit feedback from our team, and we must make it safe for our teams to challenge us and critique us. We have to care about that feedback. And we have to respond to it.
Now look, not every complaint is actionable — or even legitimate. Of course not! But a culture of accountability begins with leadership consistently trying to improve, and a key element of that is actively seeking, integrating, and responding to critique. And doing it transparently!
But it’s so pithy…
Phew. That’s a lot of words about a very few words.
There’s infinite nuance to be had here, if I’m honest. And while I’ve found these four principles to define a meaningful square of focus for management and leadership, they are but a tiny fraction of the whole.
I mean, I’ve published over forty essays at this point and I’ve only scratched the surface even of my own very limited and very specific experience. But there is value in a foundational philosophy, a guiding ethos.
And…it fits nicely on a shirt.
So.
Behave with intention and be open about it, including actively working to ensure there is as broad engagement as possible, and welcome — invite — feedback and critique. And then act on that feedback…and do it intentionally, transparently, and so forth. And thus shall form a virtuous cycle. Fingers crossed.
Is any one or another “DEI” program a cynical “diversity-washing” effort, rolled out in bad faith as performative “wokeness?” Are others well-intentioned but ham-handed attempts that end up causing collateral damage? I’m sure they exist. Does that make publicly deriding and cancelling those programs any less performative and disingenuous? Or cruel? It does not. Welcome to hell.
Many people, especially “sensitive creative types,” just won’t speak up in a group setting. Could these folks use a little coaching to help improve that skill? Sure, probably couldn’t hurt — comfort before the team is valuable. But the reality is that if someone is on the team for their skills in design or writing or coding or whatever, their time is better spent optimizing those and it’s on us to find other ways to get their participation.
It’s also unmistakably the right way to behave, but that doesn’t seem to matter much at the moment. Ugh.
A select few people reading this will remember Sad Pierre. Ah, the tale of Sad Pierre and the question box...