Given the nature and relevancy of the topic (see: Government response to COVID-19 Pandemic) This entry, 976 words, is a bit longer than I would ordinarily post. Yet, I hope you find it timely and worthy of the few minutes it takes to read it.

Blessings to All, Woody

Because of ultra-high expectations for transparency in and from leaders during times of crises, the question “Why is so little transparency found among bad leaders?” must be considered.

Transparency discloses and enables inherent goodness and strength of character. Also, transparency has a generational component because most early career personnel understand it to mean openness and accessibility. Older, more experienced personnel add truthfulness to this definition.

Depending on generation or employment culture, this addition may cause disconnects between understanding and application. A lack of access doesn’t always mean a lack of transparency on the part of a person, group, company, or even a government.

Because of advancements in achieving immediate access to information via Internet technologies, devices, and mobility, a sense of entitlement that results from immediate access appears in many young employees. Generally, they find lack of immediate access to information enormously egregious, especially when they perceive they need it.

Many employees interpret a lack of access or restriction of access to people, strategies, policies, and information as an absence of transparency. Applied to its greatest degree, transparency means “what I want, when I want it, in the form I want it.” Nothing else will do. Transparency defined this way often leads to misunderstandings between worker generations, high emotions, a sense of entitlement, and organizational imbalances. More mature individuals, particularly those who have been in the workplace prior to Internet technologies, view transparency somewhat differently. They seldom have had immediate access to huge amounts of information. These employees acclimated to the demands and requirements of the organization on a different informational basis. Complete transparency—as in complete and immediate access to information—was seldom an issue.

There’s a big difference between appropriate and inappropriate transparency. Absolute disclosure and the removal of all policies and hurdles to transparency are sometimes appropriate, sometimes not. For example, using the text TMI, “too much information,” is inappropriate transparency.

Leaders are not expected or required to disclose everything. Dr. Kent Keith’s Ten Paradoxical Commandments include Number 5: “Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.” This has particular merit for considering the issue of transparency. Bad leaders assume the first part of the sentence to be true while good leaders live out the second part of the commandment. This positive attitude toward transparency includes having a true openness to full review and even intense scrutiny. True transparency ties to what Zenger and Folkman advocate as the center stake of leadership: trust.

Bad leaders often rely on a “just trust me” strategy regarding issues of transparency. This approach is particularly prevalent among those who have proven themselves to be serially untrustworthy and not apt to recognize their accountability both to others and to core standards. Good leaders provide fair, timely, open, appropriate, accurate disclosures. Transparency precedes and follows them like the pleasant, comforting aroma of freshly brewed coffee on chilly day. Great leaders are fully trustworthy. Employees trust them because their transparency builds their authority and restrains them from overstepping and exploiting their authority.

Moreover, if transparency is defined as genuineness, openness, truthfulness, approachability, accessibility, and full disclosure, then it presents a high management threshold to achieve. Transparent people and organizations are just that—transparent and open. Those who are least inclined to transparency are those who tend to tout their transparency the most. One reason for this pattern is that transparency has a hard link to accountability. Bad leaders are likely to disavow this linkage, preferring to ignore it.

Faced with challenge, good leaders see through weak, unclear arguments, get to the heart of the issue, and seldom make the claim of a lack of transparency. On occasion, lack of transparency is strategically necessary, and good leaders know the difference between this type of application and lack of transparency as a means to hide the truth. Yet many times, bad leaders don’t have the skills or experience to see through arguments, so they claim their opponents lack transparency. Sometimes bad leaders hide behind “need to know” arguments as reasons for not being transparent. Stating that someone or something lacks transparency can become a strategy to be thrown in the face of any one with whom a bad leader disagrees. So, carefully examine the motives and actions of people claiming transparency while stating that those to whom they may be opposed lack transparency. There are occasions when a lack of transparency is a strategic necessity. Good leaders know the difference between this type of application and using transparency as a means of hiding the truth. A lack of access to information doesn’t always mean a lack of transparency nor does using the lack of transparency argument against an opponent mean the opponent has something to hide.

Good leaders embody transparency. Bad leaders demand transparency of others but seldom see it as a requirement for themselves. For bad leaders, transparency does not easily occur, nor is it a natural first response. Good managers understand that not all information held by the organization can or should be made available to all constituents. Information that can legally, ethically, strategically, and morally be made available should take place internally and externally. An organization or a leader does not lack transparency when highly sensitive information or legally sealed data is not disclosed.

Truly superior leaders have the ability to orchestrate transparency to a degree that it is productive, rather than unproductive and harmful. Followers grant superior leaders this flexibility, because they have proven themselves to be wise in the use of transparency. When transparency is defined as genuineness, openness, truthfulness, approachability, and accessibility, then it presents a high threshold and is likely to make a bad leader uncomfortable. Realize that bad leaders aren’t necessarily bad because they withhold information. They withhold information as a means of displaying and exercising their power to keep others in the dark when they needn’t be.