or “Hi, I’m Rolf.  I’m a Recovering Suck Up”
By Rolf Crocker VP Associa

As I’ve been about my travels, I’ve been listening to Jack Welch’s latest book entitled “Winning” (© 2005, Harper Audio; downloaded from Audible.com).  Having been a student and a fan of Jack’s style for several years, I have of heard him speak and write often about the need for candor.  Dictionary.com defines candor as, “n 1: ability to make judgments free from discrimination or dishonesty [syn: fairness, fair-mindedness, candour] [ant: unfairness] 2: the quality of being honest and straightforward in attitude and speech [syn: candour, candidness, frankness, forthrightness]”  However, in “Winning”, Jack brings the subject of candor into even greater focus and intensity.  He says, “I would call lack of candor the biggest dirty little secret in business.  It basically blocks smart ideas, fast action and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got.  It’s a killer.”

I now have a confession to make - I am a recovering sycophant (a $5 word for a suck up).  It was never meant to be malicious - it started when I was young and wanting to be liked by people. Sucking up seemed so easy with immediate and relatively positive results.  My early years in management reinforced this principle – the perception that, if I wanted to stay gainfully employed, I needed to tell people what they wanted to hear and be agreeable to what they said.  To a large degree, our entire industry is predicated on the ability to be political and to be able to spin well.  I am not suggesting that these two traits are inherently bad – after all, as managers and leaders, we are as Napoleon said, “dealers in hope.”  That having been said, have we been paying to great a price by allowing poor circumstances to continue because we lack the intestinal fortitude to say what we feel and stand up for what we believe to be true?

Like most traits that are of a ‘character’ nature there is only one place to start – within ourselves.  Do we encourage candor in any of our relationships?  The world is full of people who will tell you what you want to hear, but very few who will tell you what you need to hear.  As I have said before, we all have blind spots – we need the insight of others to see through our own emotional investment and help us see what we cannot.

The one who is generally in the worst position to hear what they need to hear are those who are in leadership positions, particularly CEOs.  Some people intentionally surround themselves with sycophants, other times it is just the feeling of intimidation that comes with the position.  No one wants to look bad, be wrong, be the ‘voice crying in the wilderness’; therefore, information is usually heavily strained and filtered by the time it reaches the top.  Jack Welch understood this early on – that is why he developed GE “Work-Out” (opportunities for upper leadership to hear directly from the workers in the factory what was working, what wasn’t working and to develop an action plan to deal with the issues on the spot) and the concept he called “boundarylessness” – to remove the hierarchal barriers between layers of management, cut through the bureaucratic BS and get clear, unfiltered information.  If you are a leader in your organization, let me ask you - what are you doing to insure you’re not getting ‘spun’?

As I said, I am a recovering suck up.  I began getting cured of this malady when I began being placed in positions of leadership.  I had the good fortune of being mentored by a few very special individuals who recognized this trait and began to challenge me on it.  They would not allow me to accept their ideas or input on face value.  They not only encouraged ‘pushback’ (a Welch term meaning to not only challenge a concept or idea, but propose a well thought-out alternative), but they required it of me.  If I was ‘quick to agree’, it was obvious to them that I was being intellectually lazy and wanting to be liked.  I learned several things from this process:  1) I learned to take ownership of my own beliefs and opinions, 2) I learned that, after a while of this kind of mentoring, I developed confidence that my ideas and solutions could be at least equal to those offered previously and 3) Had I not been encouraged to respond with candor, we could have missed opportunities to further the organizations goals and thereby the bottom line.  And that perhaps is the largest train wreck that a lack of candor causes – the utter and complete waste of time, talent, money and morale.  Time and money are tangible. Talent and morale are somewhat intangible.  However, all will rob an organization of bottom-line production and the opportunity to run at its best.

Robert Greenleaf, in his essay entitled “The Institution as Servant,” asks not how we’re doing when comparing ourselves with others, but what is reasonable and possible utilizing available resources?  Jack Welch tells a story from the early years of GE’s “Work Out” sessions.  After a session held at one of GE’s appliance manufacturing plants, a line worker remarked, “For twenty years you’ve been paying me for my hands – the whole time, you could have had my mind for free!”  That is the kind of power candor can bring to an organization..

Now I use the term ‘recovering’ – am I still a suck up?  It’s pretty rare now.  Like all acquired skills, there is a tendency in all of us when the pressure is on to lapse back into what psychologists call a ‘normative’ condition – going back to what is known and familiar.  Because of human nature in general, candor is difficult for most of us.  That is why candor needs to be actively and aggressively pursued and practiced.

Did I suddenly turn into an obnoxious, abrasive ‘Type A’ personality?  (not that there’s anything wrong with that!)  Absolutely not!  Candor is something that needs to be pursued with dignity and compassion.  Those who know me will tell you I’m a pretty low-key guy.  But I am passionate about what is right and I am passionate about seeing other people succeed.  I have learned that, for me to succeed, I must actively, with honor and dignity, speak with candor and invite and allow others to operate in the same manner toward me.  I have come to believe that any success without consistent and deliberate attention to candor is accidental – and fleeting.

Rolf Crocker is the Vice President of Associa and he can be reached at .