Do We Really Want Totally Transparent Leaders?

You probably noticed a few weeks back that former President Bill Clinton tweaked current President Barack Obama for not projecting a positive enough attitude about economic recovery.

And of course when Obama did proclaim confidence in his latest recovery measures, he was criticized for too much optimism when knowing full well there is no way of judging whether the plan will work.

Which leads to a very controversial question now being debated by Harvard Business School professor Jim Heskett on HBS Working Knowledge: How Frank or Deceptive Should Leaders Be?
At first blush, we want our leaders to be brutally honest about what they are feeling, right? We can take it. But chief executives hate accenting the negative. "Leading from pessimism," as one exec told Heskett, can cause morale to drop, which can cause performance to drop, which can end with the CEO being dropped.

Heskett asks:

"What's the fine line that leaders have to walk between transparency and candor on the one hand and the need to create self-fulfilling prophecies and confidence through stories on the other? To what degree do leaders owe it to others in their organizations to mask personal negative feelings in an effort to inspire good performance?"

If he were to have been brutally honest, Sully could have told his 155 passengers that he was going to ditch the aircraft in the Hudson River, and that in aviation history few people survive a water landing. Those words most certainly would have caused deadly panic.

Instead, moments before splashdown, he simply announced over the intercom, "Brace for impact."

So what do you tell you're employees when you're about to take them into the Hudson?