Why are you lying to me? What the hell is wrong with you?

There is a style of leadership that is honest, direct, and forceful, yet it is also respectful

When you are in a leadership position, there is no reason to use insults or curse words. While it is natural to sometimes feel anger, it is mistake to give into the anger. Doing so can amount to self-sabotage, since you might alienate some of your best workers.

I have the impression that some people grew up in families where the only time people spoke frankly was when they were angry, and so some people grew up thinking that “angry talk” and “honest talk” are the same thing. They are not. In fact, they are often opposites.

In 2011 I was working at a travel site that gathered up travel deals from the major air, cruise and hotel companies and then promoted them on the site (the companies paid us to promote their deals). The whole tech team was just six engineers, and Sonia was our project manager and also our entire QA team.

One week, after we pushed out some new code, Sonia tested the web site – informally clicking around, looking for any mistakes.

Sonia: I don't think I'm seeing all of the travel deals that I should be seeing.

Me: What is missing?

Sonia: See, if I search for Bermuda I see certain deals, and if I search for Saint Vincent I see certain deals, and if I add in a specific date range I can still see all of those deals, but if I instead search for "Caribbean" then three deals disappear.

Me: We show Bermuda when people search for “Caribbean”?

Sonia: Yes, we always have. Sometimes our customers are just looking for a cheap island vacation, and we can sell them on Bermuda deals. And we often have more Bermuda deals than Caribbean deals.

Me: Okay, well, we should create a ticket and someone should figure out what's wrong.

Sonia: I'll create the ticket. How many hours do you estimate this will take?

Me: Let's say four hours.

Sonia created the ticket. I assigned this to Jerry, who had written most of our search code.

The next day I knew this ticket would be Jerry's first priority and, early in the day, I saw that he'd marked the ticket as "done" with a note that said "There was no actual bug." Jerry lived in another city, and was working from home, so I reached out to him and we set up a video conversation.

Me: So, you had a chance to look at the problem that Sonia found? The travel deals that aren't being listed when people do certain searches?

Jerry: Yeah, no problem, she was just searching for the wrong things.

Me: What does that mean?

Jerry: She was combining too many search terms. She confused herself.

Me: She confused herself?

Jerry: The code is very complex.

Me: Well, is our search engine supposed to support all of the search terms that she was using?

Jerry: Sure, but if you combine all of it, then certain deals won't show up.

Me: Sonia is very careful. She doesn't usually say some software quirk is a bug unless it really is a bug.

Jerry: The code has to take into account dozens of special circumstances. Sonia just didn't get it.

Me: Sonia herself has, over the years, defined most of the special circumstances that you reference. She defined them and then you turned them into code. It doesn't seem likely that she would not be aware of the special circumstances.

Jerry: Sure, but no one can keep track of all the different ways those special circumstances can combine. Fifty special circumstances can have tens of thousands of combinations. In this case the combinations were just too complicated for her. I checked the Solr configuration and everything is correct.

Me: Okay, thanks for doing that. I appreciate it.

I told Sonia the good news, that there was no actual bug, but she was suspicious of that answer. She spent the next hour running various searches, and taking copious notes, and then consulting with the Travel Deals Team to be sure some searches were not showing up. Then she asked me to review what she'd found, which I did, and I acknowledged there did seem to be a real problem.

At this point three things happened:

1. Sonia created a new ticket.

2. Jerry almost instantly marked it as "done," again with the comment that there was no actual problem.

3. I got angry.

The situation had morphed from a technical problem to an attitude problem. I didn't like Jerry's tone, so I asked for another one-on-one chat with him over video.

Me: Sonia has devoted considerable time to documenting a problem with the travel search.

Jerry: Again, I've explained this to you, there is no actual problem. It's the way she's combining special circumstances, in ways that limit which deals can appear on the site.

Me: That doesn't matter. There are deals that the Travel Deals Team wants to have on the site, and those deals are not appearing. So whatever code you wrote in the past, that code is now going to change.

Jerry: But I already told you...

Me: Doesn't matter! We are trying to sell some deals! We want to make some money! The Travel Deals Team wants these deals to appear on the site! We are going to change the code to be sure these deals show up!

Jerry: But I made some good decisions about what shows up when. For instance, I don’t like the idea of showing deals for Bermuda when someone searches for “Caribbean.”

Me: You do not have the authority to veto decisions made by the product team! If they decided that people looking for a cheap island vacation might also be interested in Bermuda, presumably our product team made that decision after they did careful research about our customers.

Jerry: What if they made a mistake? What if their research is bad?

Me: You are free to schedule a meeting with them and make all of your views known to them, but you have to do that honestly, by talking to them directly. You don’t get to make secret decisions without telling anyone. You don’t get to veto the product team but then disguise your veto by talking nonsense about the complexity of the code.

Jerry (with a heavy sigh): Okay, okay, okay, whatever, okay? Whatever. This is stupid, but I'll look into it.

Me: No, don't bother. I'm going to handle this ticket myself.

By this point I'd lost faith in Jerry. I wasn't sure he was working in good faith, and worse, I couldn't trust what he was saying to me. Maybe he was feeling lazy or maybe he was trying to defend the code he'd written in the past. Either way, something kept him from fixing this problem the first time he looked at it, and now I wanted a better understanding of what was going wrong.

As it turned out, the problem was subtle and very deep. The next day, I spent several hours tracking it down. In the end, the problem was in our configuration for Solr, our search tool. The configuration was wrong. Working closely with Sonia, I fixed the problem, and then we ran some tests in a test sandbox environment, to convince ourselves that my update to the code would really fix the problem. The next day we pushed out the new code and thankfully the problem was fixed.

That ended the software problem, but it didn't end the attitude issue. To have healthy team dynamics we had to be able to trust each other, and I wanted to make that clear to Jerry. We had another one-on-one video chat.

Me: I fixed this issue with the search tool and those travel deals that were not appearing on the site.

Jerry: What was the issue?

Me: There was a mistake in the Solr configuration that affected how data was copied over from our main database. A copy error and a cache issue.

Jerry: Well, okay, good job. I'm glad you figured that out.

Me: I want to ask you something. When you originally took the ticket, I noticed that you were fairly quick to mark it "done." Do you remember how long you spent on it?

Jerry: I looked at the Solr configuration, but everything looked correct to me.

Me: Right, sure, but how much time did that take you?

Jerry: About 15 minutes.

Me: The ticket was estimated to take four hours.

Jerry: Why would I waste four hours on a ticket if I could do it in 15 minutes?

Me: But you didn't really do it, did you?

Jerry: I mean, come on, I did what I could to see if there was a problem.

Me: Did you read any of Sonia's documentation? In 15 minutes?

Jerry: Maybe?

Me: Here is the thing. Sonia is the best project manager that I've ever worked with. She is very careful. She documents everything. If she says there is a problem, then there is almost certainly a problem.

Jerry: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see where you are going with this, but no one is perfect. I'm sure she makes mistakes sometimes.

Me: She didn't make a mistake this time.

Jerry: Okay, this time I made a mistake, what do you want?

Me: I want you to take bug reports seriously, when they come from a trusted source.

Jerry: Okay, whatever, from now on I'll take all of Sonia's bug reports seriously.

Me: That means reading all of her documentation.

Jerry: Right, right, sure.

Me: I feel like you're not really listening to me.

Jerry: I am listening to you! For god's sake, what do you want? I'm not doing anything else right now. I'm sitting here listening to you.

Me: I need you to understand this. You will not ever do anything like this again.

Jerry: Yeah, yeah, I already said that, I'll check out Sonia's bug reports, yeah.

Me: Great, do that, but also, I mean about me. Don't do anything like this ever again.

Jerry: Do what? What are you talking about?

Me: Don't give me your assurance that you've examined a piece of code and you are certain there is no bug, when in fact you did not examine the code, you did not examine the bug report, you didn't even understand what the bug report actually said. Don't mark a ticket as "done" when you haven't even started on it.

Jerry: I didn't want to waste time on a non-issue.

Me: You ended up wasting Sonia's time and also my time. And you kept travel deals off the site for several days when we could have been making money off them.

Jerry (heavy sigh): Yes, okay, that was bad on my part. I get that. I apologize. Okay? I apologize.

Me: I appreciate that, but the most important thing is that, in the future, I can trust you when you say "There is no bug."

Jerry: Yes, okay, whatever.

Me: If you pull a ticket that authorizes you to do four hours of exploration, then use some of that time and do an honest exploration.

Jerry: Yes, okay, okay, okay, whatever.

Me: I’m worried you’re not listening to me.

Jerry: For god’s sake, what do you want?

Me: I don’t want to have this conversation a second time. I don’t want to have to repeat myself in a month or two. So I need to know you understand me right now.

Jerry: Yes, whatever, I will read Sonia’s bug reports, I already said that.

Me: No, no, no. That is a secondary issue. What is the main issue?

Jerry: For god’s sake… (quiet a moment, then a deep breath) You need to be able to trust me. If I say there is no bug, you need to be able to believe me when I say it. You don’t want to have to second guess me. You need to know I’m being honest.

Me: Exactly. Can you do it?

Jerry: Yes, I will be accurate and careful from now on, so you can trust what I say. If I have a concern, I will raise it with you directly and honestly.

Me: Okay, great. Thank you for talking to me about this.

And thankfully, he really did get it, and we never needed to have a conversation like that again. By confronting him directly about his resistance to feedback, and by getting him to fully commit to changing his attitude, I managed to fix this problem with a single conversation. And though that conversation might have been awkward and uncomfortable and difficult, it also kept us from having to have the same conversation a month or two later.

It is possible to talk to people directly, honestly, firmly, and respectfully, to communicate how you expect them to work with you. Please note what I didn't do: I didn't use swear words, or raise my voice, nor did I say anything personal about their character or work ethic, other than how it applied in this specific case. You might think I've cleaned up this dialogue for this newsletter, but no. I do not ever use curse words in a business context, and I recommend this, since any use of curse words carries the risk that people will feel you are being disrespectful.

Some managers are afraid of this kind of direct, honest conversation. They fall back to a style of communication that is much more passive aggressive. I've seen cases where, after an incident like this, the manager will send an email to the whole team, and without any reference to the original incident that is motivating the email, they will write "If you get a bug report, please investigate it thoroughly." Most of the time, such communication is a mistake. Every worker is different, and they will make different kinds of mistakes, and your feedback to them needs to be specific to them. Maybe you have one worker who dismisses bug reports, and another worker who comes in late to work, and another worker who leaves food on their desk overnight, and another worker who never tests their own code. Does that mean you should send four different emails, advising the whole team to take bug reports seriously, come in on time, don't leave food out overnight, and test your own work? No, the number of possible mistakes is infinite, so you'd have to send an infinite amount of email. Worse, people tend to ignore such emails – if the workers know that you're afraid to confront them, then they know they can continue in their bad habits with few consequences. Instead, you need to have one-on-one conversations with each worker, and you need to give them feedback that is specific to them.

Context matters. My conversation with Jerry was respectful because it was a private, one-on-one conversation. If I had addressed him like that in a group setting, then he'd have more reason to feel attacked, and therefore he'd have more reason to get defensive. In that case there would be less chance of him actually listening to me. All such feedback should be given privately, in one-on-one conversations. If you want someone to change their behavior, this is always the best form of conversation.

But why are you so mean?

A few months ago I posted this story online. In response I got a comment from someone who disliked the way I handled this:

You are recounting an argument that you are proud to have won, and where you are proud to have put a subordinate in his place. In your eyes, this is an example of good leadership because you did it in a way that was merely firm rather than, say, abusive.

You achieved behavioral compliance, which is definitely better than nothing, but genuinely good leadership in that situation would have involved more two-way communication, empathy and active listening to build a mutual understanding.

By the end of the article, I'm left with no understanding of what Jerry's motives were or why he behaved and communicated the way he did. You didn't seem to be interested in engaging him more deeply to find out. Instead, you seem exclusively focused on achieving your "I'm right, you're wrong" moment.

In response, keep in mind these things:

1. Fully understood, respectful leadership means respect for everyone, not just the person I happen to be talking to right now. Aggressively pushing Jerry to be more honest in the future was, in part, how I demonstrated my respect for the Travel Deals Team and for Sonia. They were not in the room to defend themselves, but Jerry had disrespected them, so I needed to defend the importance of their work.

2. Some managers adopt a passive-aggressive style where they pretend there has been no conflict, even when there has been conflict. This passive-aggressive style does tremendous damage to an organization. Where there has been some kind of conflict, you need to address it directly. The commenter is suggesting that I should simply assume that Jerry was operating in good faith, even though I had some evidence that he was not. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a necessary legal standard to protect us from the overwhelming power of the government, but among private citizens if you assume someone is innocent and operating in good faith when you have evidence that they are not, then you are simply a sucker who is going to be easily manipulated by bad faith actors. Keep in mind, I spoke to Jerry in good faith during our first conversation, it was only in our final conversation that I assumed he had been operating in bad faith.

3. I encourage a democratic culture, but that means the people on my teams have to be honest with each other. No one doubted that Jerry was a talented engineer, but if he made changes secretly, or if he secretly ignored directions from the Travel Deals Team, then he was undermining our democratic process.

4. If you value a democratic process, then you must enforce compliance to that process. Failure to enforce compliance is not democratic or empowering or generous or liberal or kind or intelligent. A failure to defend your process is simply idiocy or cowardice. If you think your process is a bad one, then you have an obligation to change it, but once you’ve got a process that you think is a good one, then you need to enforce compliance to it, or you have no process, merely anarchy, and your company will not survive.

5. There is a time and a place for healthy debate regarding all of our decisions. Jerry was free to meet with people and make his opinions known. Of the people who report to me, no one has ever been punished for making a strong case for their ideas, even if their ideas disagree with what the majority of the team favors. But all such conversations have to be done in compliance with the overall process, and that process means that once a decision is made, we all stick with it. In other words, if you want to run a business in a democratic fashion, you need a strong dose of "democratic centralism." By contrast, anarchism is the enemy of group decisions.

6. Jerry's motivation was implied when he said “I don’t like the idea of showing deals for Bermuda when someone searches for Caribbean.” This suggests that his ego was so great that he was willing to defy the clear intent of the Travel Deals Team, while also ignoring the feedback he was getting from Sonia. He was using his control of the code to impose his will on the situation, in defiance of all of the other stakeholders at the company. This cannot be tolerated or ignored, it has to be confronted. And, again, this is not a court of law, a manager in this situation should not wait till they have overwhelming evidence, they should demand a confrontation as soon as their instincts tell them that something is a bit off or suspicious. I gave Jerry multiple chances to reassure me he respected the decisions being made by others, but he did not give me any such assurance till, at the very end, I forced it out of him.

My advice: if you are in a leadership position, don't be weak, don't be a coward, and don't shy away from conflict. If something seems suspicious, confront it directly. Give people a chance to explain themselves, but be absolutely sure that when they walk away from the encounter, they have agreed to abide by the policies and processes that you've established at your company.

This post was an excerpt from my book One-on-One Meetings Are Underrated; Group Meetings Waste Time. Check it out for more such stories.

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