Was my question to leadership out of line?

Q&A with a question from the best work community

Dear Maya…

I asked this question in our town hall the other day.

Our site head took great offense to it. He said “I am shocked at this question” and proceeded to say that “we have a big screen tv, a basketball court, tennis court, a grill etc. this morale thing goes both ways but if you’re not happy being here I understand if people leave.” I didn’t think I worded it offensively. They don’t affirm us in any way. They say our numbers are great, we’re surpassing benchmarks, now do it again with no incentives and less money AND they don’t allow us to ask questions anonymously. Was I out of line or could I have worded it differently???

sincerely,

frustrated and over it

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well, frustrated and over it, first things first.

I’m sorry that happened. It’s very frustrating. It also leads to not wanting to ask more questions. Which is essentially what they want unfortunately.

 But let’s also be super clear…

1. no, you weren’t out of line. 

2. it’s a super relevant and fair question. 

3. there’s nothing wrong the wording. 

This is managing through control, not context. 

Leading by control means you can’t ask any questions … it’s “do as I say” energy. 

The confident choice is to manage through context.  In this approach, leaders are radically transparent on why decisions are being made, how they’re being made and the different outcomes they are trying to navigate through. 

As an employee, context helps you understand why things are happening. You can still disagree with them but at least you have understanding, which is ultimately what people are seeking. 

Leading through context requires much more energy from leaders — they have to explain more, field more questions, respond in an emotionally intelligent way, sit in discomfort and sometimes look bad or be misunderstood by employees.  But in the end, employees will ALWAYS have more respect for leaders who lead with context. 

At the heart of any relationship is trust and one of my favorite books on the topic is Speed of Trust.  In the book they talk about the two sides of trust:

1. Character — do I trust your character and morality? are you who you say you are?

2. Competence — do I trust your ability to deliver results? can you do what you say you can do?

Leading with context allows for the opportunity for us to evaluate both character and competence to be present. By giving you the information that led to the decisions, you have more to work with to decide “can I trust you?” But if you never take time to break things down, it’s likely we’ll have holes in understanding their character and competence and I won’t trust you. 

Also, them not allowing you to ask anonymously is crazy work.  I can just imagine the leader responding in snarky tone while saying your name — public shaming and humiliation. Classic control textbook.  Let me guess, you won’t want to ask a question again? That’s exactly what they want. 

You take away the paycheck and this is essentially slavery. This is what the workplace was designed after: plantations. I wrote more about that in the post, the workplace is killing black women.

So basically…

Control disempowers. 

Context empowers. 

Control breeds distrust.

Context breeds trust. 

My cofounder and I talk about this and the importance of environment on the podcast, TruthWorks with Patty McCord and Jessica Neal, the pioneers and legends who created the revolutionary Netflix culture. 

Environment is so important and I believe it’s every company’s super power. You take a fish out of water it can’t survive. You take a plant out of soil it dies. It can give life or it can grossly accelerate death.  Almost every company says they care about culture and environment, but I’d estimate that 99% don’t do the work required to actually live it out, as shown by your leaders response that a basketball court is at the heart of employee morale. *rolls eyes*

Since you are in one that seems to be classically toxic, you have to do what would you would do if the air in an environment wasn’t breathable — put on your oxygen mask first and protect yourself so you can breathe. If this is how leadership typically replies, I’m not going to encourage you to try and change things because it’s probably a pretty fixed environment that will require significant overhaul and leadership personnel changes to shift even a little bit. But since they also responded with “numbers are going up,” they don’t think anything’s wrong and are probably complaining that you asked the question! 

Since they wanna be like that, recalibrate your energy and do what you need to do get the job done and nothing more. Controlling environments can feel suffocating but you must remain well because we need you to be well.

Sending you so much love wherever you are. 

M

PS. download why?! and try it out.

PPS. If you have a workplace question where you’d like insight and advice from my perspective, dm me or drop it in the comments 🤍