I once attended a town hall where an HR executive spoke with a smile on her face shortly after the company announced a significant layoff. Although the person was likely nervous, the smile came across as dismissive, aggravating the already somber tone of the situation among employees.

Many will recognize this scenario as all too familiar: an executive or HR person addresses employees in a town hall, small group setting, or one-on-one as if they were infants who need to be coddled. Picture these examples:

• Use of vague corporate jargon. “We will leverage the synergy of the teams to leapfrog the archaic competition.” Yet there is no mention of how this will be done.
• Fake smile delivering bad news disguised as good. “We are aligning the competitiveness of the company with the industry and offering revised benefits.” (i.e., lower compensation and inferior service providers.)
• Empty calorie clichés such as: “We have to work smarter, not harder.” They have no idea what they’re talking about. If they did, they would share a plan with actions and timelines.

Some may steel-man this approach, arguing: First, executives may fear legal repercussions or sensitivity backlash. Second, they mean well and want to protect employees. Third, they have fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders.

I don’t doubt that they have the best of intentions, but this coddling implies troubling assumptions:

• Employees are fragile for straight talk and can’t handle explanations. That is condescending at best.
• Employees lack emotional or intellectual maturity to hear things as they are.
• Executives sidestep debating strategy or ideas. This doesn’t mean they must seek consensus or obtain permission from employees. Instead, it means that engaging in conversations allows employees to understand the “why” behind decisions. Not only is this crucial for implementing the company’s strategy, but it is also a necessary condition for “disagree and commit.” Without explanations and understanding, it becomes “disagree and resent.”

And these are just the superficial issues. The real damage lies beneath the surface.

Without clear and honest communication, everyone (including employees) avoids investing in the future and taking risks. Why should they? Many of us know a person who quietly quit their job, and have read about products whose quality has fallen to the point of failing critical systems. This reality is also reflected in a Gallup survey report showing that 50% of employees are not engaged.

“Employees still feel more detached from — and less satisfied with — their organizations and are less likely to connect to the companies’ mission and purpose or to feel someone cares about them as a person.”

By coddling employees, they are giving permission for them to underperform, turn their backs on products, avoid accountability, neglect customers, and be sloppy with quality. After all, if employees are too immature to be addressed as grown-ups, it’s only fair that they’re not expected to be high-performers either.

This costs the company dearly, in the form of paying for a workforce that is unproductive, customer churn due to inferior products, and ineffective executives who can’t execute the strategy.

A Better Way

Treat employees like the adults they are. Yes, there are topics that must be kept private; many are required by law or ethics to be confidential. But that is not the issue here. The issue is the attitude of not addressing employees as grown-ups, withholding explanations, and shying away from real conversations.

Be authentic, explain where you’re coming from, and give people the chance to understand.

Also, many employees are reluctant to engage in conversation, especially hard ones, in a public setting. Knowing that, executives should adopt the habit of hosting small group skip-level meetings. And I mean not just skipping one level, but several ones, up to individual contributors. In those smaller settings, they will be able to hear a much better message with a stronger signal. It may not be perfect fidelity, but it is infinitely better than trying to decipher meaning distorted by several layers of management, or decrypt feedback given by the few who mustered the courage to speak in a large group meeting. An initial act of trust from executives will be reciprocated with open and honest conversations from employees.

This is not optional. Only then will employees rise and be high-performing professionals.