The Truth About Better Decision-Making (Collection), 2/e

Truth 58. Bad news is good news

We might have gone a little overboard in our efforts to create workplace cultures of empowered employees expected to solve all their problems by themselves. True—a dependent employee is not very productive to have around. Leaders don’t like to have their concentration fractured all day long by little shards of complaints and petty roadblocks that their employees can easily dissolve on their own. It’s one of the manager’s responsibilities to encourage employees to take on challenges independently. You grow your organization by growing your people. And that means often making them do more than they think they can.

But you also have to know what’s going on in your department. Making your employees solve all their ...