When you cover-up, you are saying its ok not to give your best.

It percolates down to the bottom member of your team. Deep into your systems and processes. Into your people and their mindsets.

Because when you see a problem, you start keeping it to yourself – and to your organization – hoping to correct it quietly. No open discussion over the root cause issues. No collective intelligence to sort it out.

Firstly, this breeds incompetence, leading you to more – and more – situations where you blunder and perform beneath capacity. It becomes your culture – personal or organizational. Your employees will begin following your example.

Secondly, instead of admitting an error to your customers and facing it openly, you are leaving your downstream people to handle it – the ones least experienced, with the least info at their hand and significantly, the ones for lack of clarity and authority, are likely to be the most inadequate in handling the situation – caught between the customer and the organisation’s directives.

When you speak out it’s a single stance you are taking, and you are taking a stance. All your employees need to do now, is follow your lead.

When you leave it to them, you leave it open to multiple responses. No matter what you direct them to do, they will answer differently, depending on their nature, relation with customer and the situation.

The dualness of response would not just confuse the customer, but put them off too. Plus, it leaves them with a stronger impression of your incompetence.

Thirdly, when you force your employees to take on the tough job of facing the customer while you seat yourself behind, you lose your own employees’ trust. Trouble is, when you cover-up from the outsider, it becomes a habit and you start covering up from the insider too. Your employees sense it. On the one hand, it’s the beginning of distrust. On the other, they begin to look to you to cover up their incompetencies too.

For more on the Cover-up series, search my blog for the key word Cover-ups.