Problems Love To Grow In The Silence Of Shame – So Learn To Love ‘Em Up, Instead

A scenario: you discover, encounter, or uncover a problem at work – but you don’t have a way to solve it.

So you don’t alert your manager, which means they never loop in their manager, and this void of information cascades up to the CEO.

No one else knows what the issue is or where it lies, so you can’t count on any help with solving the problem. The stress of managing a secret problem grows, snowballing downhill with each passing day.

You don’t want to alert the organization about the problem because you don’t have a solution, but you don’t have a solution because you can’t get support from the organization. And all that time? The problem persists, worming its way further into your workflow.

Even just reading that back gave me a pang of anxiety. So what do you do? How do you get out of this vicious cycle?

The former CEO of Boeing and Ford has an idea – and it comes down to love. Alan Mulally was chief engineer on the Boeing 777; he was the reason Ford was the only major American car company that didn’t take a bailout in 2008, creating the #1 automobile brand in the United States in the process.

With four million plane parts, hundreds of thousands of employees, and even more shareholders, Alan is no stranger to problems that compound themselves in silence. But what’s love got to do with it?

When I interviewed Alan Mulally for episode 334 of the Disrupt Yourself podcast, he described a meeting at Ford early on in his tenure as CEO. During that meeting, an executive mustered the courage to switch a project's status from green to red, signifying that the project wasn’t on track.

Everyone was anticipating some kind of backlash, a common occurrence prior to Alan’s leadership. The room hung heavy with apprehension. All eyes turned to Alan, waiting.

So Alan clapped. He thanked the executive for his honesty and bravery in overcoming the silence. Then Alan invited the rest of the team to contribute solutions to figure out how the project would get back on track.

With some applause and a kind word, Alan changed the whole framing of this meeting. The executive who spoke up wasn’t a kid telling his parents he hadn’t started on the science fair project due tomorrow – he was a lighthouse, a beacon warning of danger and pointing the way towards a solution. Alan brushed off the shame and injected a healthy dose of love.

Or to hear Alan say it, sometimes you just have to “love ‘em up.”

Acknowledging there are problems without an obvious solution is a risk. But when organizational cultures are resilient, they not only embrace risks, they embrace the setbacks that are an unavoidable outcome of taking risks. In that boardroom, Alan underlined one of the Seven Accelerants of Growth – Leverage Failure.

Leverage Failure means we reframe our mistakes or setbacks as priceless data, tools for future growth. In fact, Alan calls that red project status a gem, an opportunity to be greater.

Surfacing a problem doesn’t have to feel like waving the flag of defeat. In the right corporate culture of compassion, raising your hand can be an invitation to collaborate on solutions. But before you hunker down and brainstorm, take the time to acknowledge the messenger – and love ‘em up, too.

Imagine bringing a problem to your team – what’s your gut reaction? Are you instinctually a bit scared? Why?

How can you incorporate loving ’em up in your daily, weekly, or monthly meetings?