Greg Stevenson explains how employees filter bad news for executives, creating layers of distortion that cripple decision-making. He argues leaders must find people willing to tell them uncomfortable truths before they reach the top, or they'll be blind to problems that have festered for months.
Most senior executives think the answer is yes. Most of them are wrong. Here is the pattern I see consistently. The more senior you become, the more authority you carry, the more consequences attached to your reactions, the less likely people are to tell you what is actually happening. Not because they're dishonest, because they've learned, consciously or not, what you want to hear. They've noticed what happens when you receive news badly. They've seen who— what gets rewarded and what doesn't, and they've adjusted their communication accordingly. By the time an executive reaches CEO level, the information reaching them has often been filtered through 4 or 5 layers of that adjustment. What they receive is not the truth. It's a version of the truth that has been shaped to land well. The cost of that is enormous because the CEO role requires you to make decisions based on reality. If the reality you're working with from has been curated, your decisions are built on a foundation that isn't solid. I've seen this play out in turnaround situations. The problem the board finally surfaces has been visible at operational level for 18 months. Everyone knew Nobody told the CEO. Not because they were protecting something. Because the culture around that CEO had made honesty feel costly. So do the people around you tell you the truth? Can you name the 2 or 3 people who will tell you something you generally don't want to hear? And does that actually happen? If you can't name them, that's the work. Before the role, not during it.
