After ten weeks in the corporate world, most summer interns are heading home this Friday. Final presentations are wrapped up and offers are being extended. School is back in session.
I was fortunate to have an intern working for me this summer, and even luckier to have landed such a good one. Landon was curious, organized and proactive – drivers of success in any field. He took full ownership of his project, and only came to me for periodic guidance and feedback. He fit in with the team and required zero supervision. In short, he was exactly what we look for in full-time hires.
Most impressive was Landon’s willingness to share what was on his mind. He told me about his second internship this fall and the potential for it to turn into a full time offer. He told me when he de-prioritized intern sessions for other meetings he found more valuable. He told me his concerns about the upcoming recession and its impact on a future full-time role.
And it wasn’t just him. Interns I spoke to broke all the taboos I grew up with: They talked about interests in other fields and other companies, they talked about logging off early on Fridays, and – worst of all – they talked about clubbing!
All summer, I saw the interns practice what I call confident transparency.
For “old-timers” like myself, whose formative work years pre-date COVID, conventional wisdom tells us that showing our cards is a mistake. Work is political, and one person’s honesty is another person’s opportunity. Openness about a competing internship could put your offer at risk. Career uncertainty could make your promotion less likely. Prioritizing your own time could make you look “lazy.”
Confident transparency scares us.
In the past few months, I’ve seen a handful of peers take this thinking to its extreme. Instead of opening up to their leaders about solvable problems that they faced – burnout, frustrating politics, a bad manager – they went straight to the nuclear option, and started looking for new jobs elsewhere. To them, transparency was off the table for a variety of reasons:
- “Nothing will get done.”
- “This is my problem to fix.”
- “My career will be over.”
- “I could get fired.”
From the outside looking in, their logic was clearly flawed. In one case, burnout was the result of months delivering on a successful and high-profile project. In another, the colleague in question was a strong performer covering for their struggling manager. Both people had the career capital to be open about their problems, and yet neither felt comfortable doing so.
They needed to take a page from the interns.
If we steal one thing from this next generation, it should be the understanding that bringing our full selves to work is not nearly as risky as it seems. In our assessment of what’s at stake when we’re open and honest with our leaders, we have vastly overestimated the downside and underestimated the upside.
For example, imagine that you like everything about your job except the workload. There’s just too much to do, and not enough people to do it, and if something doesn’t change you’ll be gone in six months.
What would you do?
One strategy I see often is to say nothing and leave. After all, your boss clearly knows how overworked you are, and doesn’t care. Talking about it won’t help, and might even get you labeled a “complainer.”
But the other option is to think like an intern. Be confidently transparent. Your boss needs you to stick around. You want to stick around. So have the conversation, and if it doesn’t work out, you can still leave in six months. If your boss is an a**hole about it you can leave in three. But maybe – and I’d argue it’s a much larger maybe than you think – things will get better. Without having the conversation there’s no chance of that happening.
If this sounds crazy to you, here are some tactical things you can do to make transparency less risky:
Start Small: Ask your boss to log off early or take a pass on a meeting. Flex your muscles in small ways now, so that you feel comfortable in the future, when it really matters.
Get a Second Opinion: Run through the conversation in advance with a peer and get their perspective. Without skin in the game, they can tell you whether your fears are overblown.
Dig the Well Before You Get Thirsty: Most importantly – do good work. It’s much easier to ask for something when the alternative – you leaving – is everyone’s worst nightmare.
But to drive real change, leaders have to meet their employees halfway – and fostering a culture of openness is a good place to start.
If this summer taught me anything, it’s that transparency is a necessary part of leadership. Without it, I would have been unaware of the two things – a competing internship and fear of a recession – that might keep Landon from returning next year. And while there’s no guarantee he does, I’d much rather help him think through the options than stick my head in the sand. If he comes back, I’ll have set expectations that problems are discussed openly and solved together.
At the end of the day, what confident transparency asks of us – interns, team members and leaders – is sacrifice.
If people want to speak their mind, or have their teams do so, they need to listen. Quite often that means compromise, tough feedback, or the answer no. Not every individual need can be met, particularly in great organizations. As Robert Glazer says, “being a part of a team requires elements of commitment and sacrifice toward a bigger objective… A sports team where everyone is focused on themselves will almost always underperform, as will a team in any workplace.”
As this next generation enters the workforce, it will take effort to shift cultures towards transparency. To me that feels like energy well spent.
– Emmett
What I’m Reading:
News Diet – Robert Glazer
“Over the past few years, especially throughout the more active states of the COVID pandemic, every time I spoke with someone who seemed especially anxious or discouraged, I would ask them if they had been consuming a lot of news in the past few days or hours. Almost always, the answer was yes, it did not matter what medium.”
My Unreasonable Birthday Goals – Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Being useful gives all of us purpose. You can be useful at a job, but you can also be useful as a father, as a friend, as a mentor. You can even be useful by improving yourself, by reading a book that teaches you a new perspective or starting to hit the gym. But it doesn’t require any heavy lifting. You just have to be willing to ask yourself, ‘How can I help?’ instead of ‘How can I hurt?'”
My Twelve Rules for Life – Russ Roberts
“So be kind. Don’t bear a grudge. Don’t keep score. Give people around you the benefit of the doubt. Wag more, bark less.”