The Council on Foreign Relations heard from Ajay Banda this afternoon, Executive Chairman of Mastercard. He reminded us that one key to effective operational leadership is to create environments in which employees are relatively unafraid to deliver bad news. "Bad news takes the elevator and good news takes the stairs," he said, underscoring the importance of raising negative issues as soon as possible in order to confront, understand, and resolve them.
No doubt speaking from personal experience, Banda said that "people love to feed you good news when you're the boss. You have to make them feel okay delivering bad news and then you have to live up to it." He added an important and understandable exception to his rule, however, indicating that "if you bring me bad news three times and you're the cause of it in each case, then we'll need to have a discussion."
He believes in the power of listening with patience and acting with urgency, reminding us that in these situations an approachable albeit tough-minded leader needs high IQ, EQ, and DQ - what he refers to as "Decency Quotient." Asking good questions is a central feature of receiving and processing bad news. "You ask many questions, yes," he said," but you don't just throw rocks at people." The substance and tone of the questions should be designed to get answers and not to intimidate and denigrate people. That's when the Decency Quotient is working hardest.
