Why transparency is eliminated at the time of crisis

We have all heard: “Be transparent with your team.” This is the suggestion that is presented in every start -up panel and leadership workshop, especially when the water becomes rough. And at first glance, it looks like a brain. Who doesn’t want to know the truth? Who does not want to work honestly?

But in the thick of a crisis, the reality is more complicated. When you make the ship steering and the water is cut, the call for transparency begins to sound very easy. There is a very real difference between your team open and overwhelmed. The correct amount of information can be created and confident. Too much, very quickly, or wrongly confused, disturbed and panic.

Most people – especially founders – learn this lesson in a difficult way. It may be starting with a full -fledged effort: As soon as you share every new update, mention every danger and try to add everyone to every tough decision. The intention is good. But then you feel the side effects: disturbing questions, rumors of whisper and a team that feels less stable, not much.

Why transparency here can hurt your team in a crisis and instead of handling it.

Transparency creates noise without context, not explanation

The leadership is filled with dirty, dynamic goals. During a crisis, your dashboards are lit, your inbox is filled with alarm, and each meeting comes a new set of questions. Some people have to divide them all – the more they have to be open – so no one feels or lives in the dark.

But without context, raw information can be worse than saying. If you give your team every data point and alert bull without realizing it first, you are giving them pile of pieces of puzzle and asking to make a picture. Some will try, but most will feel lost. The assumptions fill the space. (And in general, those assumptions do not descend in your favor!)

The context is the one that separates the explanation from chaos. Instead of raw facts, people need to know what the facts are Meaning. Do we face a cash crisis, or just an expected seasonal dip? Is this client’s opinion a symbol of a major phenomenon, or once? As a leader, your job is to translate the story behind the data before you share it on a large scale. If you haven’t realized it yet, you will not have a team.

When you are ready to share, give the background, share your thinking and explain why it makes a difference. And if you don’t know yet, it’s okay to say. “Here we know, what we don’t do, and what we are doing here.” This is more stable than story data and uncertainty.

Emotional Stress

Honesty is important, but so is emotional discipline. Under the pressure of a crisis, it can be a temptation to push your fears and anxiety, almost Almost as a way to invite your team to your tension. But there is a difference between people to go in and to carry their burden.

If you share every fear, doubts or drafts because you are experiencing it, you are at risk of dragging your team into an emotional roller coaster. Instead of feeling involved, they end the shotgun to think about your worst conditions. It may feel like a new mood swing every week, and it’s disturbing and tired.

What your team actually needs is to process yourself with a small circle of your board, teachers or advisers. The job is to help you solve your thinking. Once you get grounded, you can come back and share the most important thing that helps others work.

Share your humanity, yes, but do not turn your town hall into group therapy. Your team deserves your concern, not your reaction.

Transparency is not equal to consensus

One of the biggest misconceptions about transparency is that it means that everyone gets votes. In a crisis, leadership sometimes requires you to make quick decisions, even make unpopular. If you make a mistake in transparency for consensus, you are threatening to slow down everything or worse, giving the impression that every problem is ready for debate.

You can explain your argument and should outline the options you have considered and clear about the risks you are accepting. But finally, your team needs to know that you are responsible for the call and you have confidence in your direction – even if not everyone agrees with it.

Inviting the impression is not the same as opening every title for the team referendum. Sometimes, what people need the most is the assurance that someone is driving.

Time and delivery are just as important as the message

This is not just what you say, but when and how you call it. Leaving a strict update in an email late on Friday or scattering information in the slack can further worsen your team’s anxiety. Instead, gather your team, pay them all your attention and offer a place to ask questions, even if you don’t have all the answers yet.

Think about the completion of your communication. People need check -in regularly, but whenever you get a new input, they do not need a wave of information. Protecting is protected, even when the news itself is not the ones they used to expect.

Transparency, when thoughtfully, creates flexibility and confidence. But in a crisis, your job is not to share the list of every problem and possibility. This is to translate the facts, make them context and to communicate carefully. Honesty is important, but also makes such a decision.

In the most difficult moments, your team is looking for a quiet hand on the wheel. Give them explain and confidence, and you will get these moments more easily.