You Said Your Door Was Open

You say your door is always open. You ask "any concerns?" at the end of every meeting. And still, the bad news reaches you late — from the very people who smiled and said "all good."

This episode is about why. Meet Priya, a project lead in Singapore who warned her London manager about a doomed deadline three weeks early — and watched him miss it completely, because her warning didn't sound like a warning to him. Neither of them did anything wrong. The project failed anyway.

We unpack the two forces behind almost every "why did nobody tell me?" moment: the emperor problem (the higher you sit, the less you hear) and power distance (why correcting the boss costs some of your people far more than others — a price they feel through their own cultural norms, whether or not it's real on your team). Then, four simple moves you can start this week to make honest feedback cheap enough for everyone on your team to afford — not just the loud ones.

An open door removes a barrier. It doesn't remove the risk. Here's what to build instead.

Work with Brendan: If this is a live issue for your team right now, it's exactly the kind of thing I work through one-to-one with leaders — advisory, coaching and workshops. More at https://brendanthomasquinn.com

Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

Music by Denis Pavlov / DPmusic via Pixabay.

Sources: Hastings & Meyer, No Rules Rules (2020) · Hofstede et al., Cultures and Organisations (2010) · Meyer, The Culture Map (2014)

Cultural Friction is hosted by Brendan Thomas Quinn who works with leaders and teams navigating cultural friction within teams that work together or are dispersed around the world — as an advisor, coach, and workshop facilitator, and as Adjunct Lecturer on an International Business Masters programme teaching Cross-Cultural Communication, Cultural Friction brings that same real-world, research-backed approach to your ears in 20 minutes.

Enjoying the show? A quick rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify genuinely helps other leaders find it.

And, if you have comments or would like to suggest future topics to be discussed, let us know, we'd love to hear from you.

Transcript

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You say your door is always open and you ask any concerns at the end of every meeting. You've told your team more than once that you want to hear when you've done something wrong. The problem is that nobody actually tells you when you've done something wrong. You get the nods, you get the all good, and then three weeks later or whenever it is, a problem lands on your desk that half the team saw coming. That same half that said everything was all good. So you ask yourself that obvious question, why did nobody say anything? Today I want to show you why that question is the wrong question, and I want to give you a better one. The crucial difference being that you ask this one before the disaster rather than when you're standing in the middle of it. Today, one open door doesn't get you any feedback on what to build instead. Let's go. Hi, this is Cultural Friction, and this is our second episode. It's really great to have you here. Our first episode focused on Swift Trust, and you can hear that wherever it is that you get your podcasts. You can like, subscribe, download, click the links. That all helps us to reach more people who may enjoy and value this content. So let's get started with this week. This week's topic is all about having that open door policy, but not actually having anybody giving you feedback. So I want to introduce you to Priya. Now, Priya, she is a project lead in Singapore. Her manager, James, he's in London. And for three weeks now, Priya has known something that James doesn't. The client deadline that he's committed to isn't gonna happen. The integration work that they need to do is just too big. And she's totally sure of it, and she's told him. And in a status call, in a meeting, she said, the timeline for the integration phase is quite ambitious. We may need to keep an eye on it. That was her warning. Now, what did James hear? He heard a careful project lead being careful, and he said, That's a great shout, let's monitor it. And then he moved on to the next item. Meeting over, everything fine. Everything fine except for Priya's warning has pretty much been overlooked. Now, that sentence, in Priya's opinion, this is not her being careful. So where Priya comes from, you don't tell your boss that he's wrong, and you certainly don't tell your boss that he's wrong in front of a group of people in a group meeting. So you just don't do it. So a sentence like quite ambitious, we may want to keep an eye on it, said out loud in a group meeting for Priya. That's her putting a big red flag up in the air, setting the alarm bells off. This is a problem, and we're not going to be able to do it. And she's expecting James to hear that, and she's expecting him to come to her afterwards and say, Priya, you flagged that we've got a problem with this. Tell me what you're seeing. He never came. So think about what Priya knows now. So she's raised this, he's heard it, he's acknowledged it, and he's decided to carry on. So in her mind, the message has been delivered and the decision has been made. It's his core, he's the boss. So now she's done what she needs to do, she can stop raising it. She's not talking about it, she's not scared about it, she's done the right thing, raised an issue, and now she can back off. James has made the decision. Um, and that's a respect, and he's made that decision, in her opinion, with his eyes wide open. But three weeks later, that deadline arrives, and obviously, as she knew it would, it's failed. Clients unhappy, James is unhappy, everybody's unhappy, and in the kind of wash-up that happens at the end of when things go wrong like this, those immortal words that we hear so often from managers is why did nobody tell me? And Priya quietly, she's stunned because she did tell him, she knows she's told him, and he even acknowledged it, and he moved on. Now, this happens a lot. This is not something that's um uncommon, and it's not that James is a bad manager. In actual fact, James is probably a really great manager, probably reads all the necessary things he needs to read, tries to implement them at work, looks after his team, does the best that he can to have a great working environment. Um, but the problem is that he didn't hear what Prier was saying, and it's not just bad managers that get this wrong, good managers get this wrong too. Um, so what is it? Two completely different meanings. James needed the warning to sound like a warning. Prier gave the loudest possible warning that she could give in that room according to how she works, but still the project had a massive bump in the road. Now, here's where most leaders take a wrong turn. After something like this, they decide right, this team needs to be braver, they need to be coming to me and giving me more feedback, I need to hear more, they need to be more courageous. They start looking for people who will push back more, and maybe you've even said it yourself. I've certainly heard it a lot. I want people to tell me, come on, give me some feedback, push back on me, you know, don't be scared. But look at what James had already done. Open door. Every week he asks, any concerns? Every week he's right, don't feel don't feel scared, come and tell me if I'm getting something wrong. In his world, he's constantly saying, challenge me, push back, tell me what I'm wrong, or tell me what I'm not seeing. He's made himself totally available as a manager can be. But available is kind of the word that really mats here because available is not the problem that Priya is having. She doesn't have a problem with his availability. She can reach James anytime that she wants, she can go to his office, she could have a water cooler moment. You know, that's not the problem. The problem here for Priya is the price. It's what it costs for someone like her to stand in a meeting in front of everybody and tell a senior person that his plan won't work. James has removed every obstacle, but he hasn't removed this one. The price. And it's the reason that James never saw this coming. On the same team, there's Eric. Eric's based in Stockholm. Eric pushes back on everything loudly, cheerfully, in front of everyone, confidently, always pushing back, and occasionally before you've even finished a sentence. Where Eric comes from, that isn't being rude. That's you know, his his his cultural tendencies are to contribute, and actually, if he doesn't contribute in this way, he doesn't feel that he's being honest with anybody. So um, does James think that people are pushing back? Yeah, because he's got people like Eric in his team. So Eric, unfortunately for him, is the reason that the silence is invisible. His team isn't quiet, it's just that his team is unevenly quiet, James's team. Some voices carry easily, and some are paying a full price for every word. And if you lead a mixed international team, I put money on it that you've got your own Eric, and somewhere in that team you've probably got your own Priya. So why does this happen? In my opinion, there are two main reasons. Reason one: the higher you go in an organization, the less you are probably going to hear. Now, this doesn't have anything to do with culture, and it's it's probably true of nearly every leader everywhere, and it's probably true of you as well. Um, Reed Hastings, who's the founder of Netflix, and Erin Meyer, who's a researcher on uh culture and teams and businesses, they wrote about this in their book on Netflix's culture, and they gave it a name. They called it the Emperor problem. Maybe you've heard the story of the Emperor and his new clothes, who the Emperor is convinced that he's wearing the finest uh clothes there are that money can buy, however, he's actually walking around naked. Um, and and what is this? So, the concept is that the more senior you become, the fewer people are willing to tell you what they really think, and the more likely you are to be strolling around your office wearing pretty bad decisions that everybody can see but you, but nobody is telling you. And you know, this isn't this isn't uh a phenomenon, you know. Think about your career when you were a junior. Did you feel comfortable challenging your boss? Did you feel comfortable giving negative feedback, saying a decision wasn't wrong? You know, were you confident enough to do that? And then add in those cultural defaults where in some cultures you don't challenge your boss, um, you certainly don't do that in group in in full group dynamics. So, you know, challenging is really complicated and it's different depending on where our natural defaults are, and those depend on our culture. So the more that your decisions really matter, the more careful people are going to be about giving you negative feedback on them. So, exactly when you need that kind of straight information, you're probably going to receive the least of it. You can you can watch this happening uh in in offices all over the world. Notice what happens the moment a senior person gives their view first, the room quietly reorganizes itself around that view. People who maybe firmly disagreed 90 seconds ago, two minutes ago, are now building on this new idea that this senior person has brought into the room. This is the emperor problem in miniature, and it happens everywhere in Stockholm, in London, in Dallas, in New Delhi, in Brisbane. Um, you know, this is people reorganizing themselves around a senior figure because that's what you do, that's what a lot of people do. Now, the second reason is that the price of correcting the bus isn't the same for everyone, and we mentioned this a little bit earlier about Priya and that she pays a price that maybe Eric is not paying. Now, for Eric, telling James that the deadline won't hold, it costs him nothing because where he grew up, where he's trained, that is totally normal and it's totally safe. So staying quiet for Eric actually would be a strange thing for him to do. It's not natural for him to do. But for Priya, that same sentence is expensive, and it risks embarrassing James in front of the team, it risks marking her out among her own colleagues as somebody who doesn't know how things are done, and there's always a chance that she's wrong, and being wrong and disrespectful is far worse than just being wrong. It's not about shyness and it's not about a lack of confidence, it's just an accurate reading of the world that Priya grew up in, and this is Paradison. So for her, there is a real cost of getting it wrong, but there's a real cost of just even speaking up. Um, and this is all based on her culture and and her norms. You just don't give blunt feedback to a boss in public because that has a cost to you, it's not an accepted way of doing things, and just because Eric does it, it does not mean that it's safe for you to do it, and that price, that price could be a reprimand, it could be a career that stalls, the promotion that never comes, the allocation of jobs that really are are below you and uh are not for you. So there's a real cost and a real price for Priya. Priya has to say something, so she speaks in the loudest terms that she knows how. And when that price is high, messages often get wrapped up in softer packaging. The words carry a hint, and the listener is expected to unwrap it. That may be difficult, often means no. We'll do our best, can mean this is never going to happen. Let me check with the team. This can mean that the conversation's over. And quite ambitious, well, we know that means that it isn't going to work. If you've ever come out of a call with an overseas team thinking yes, they're on board, and then you've watched the thing that you've agreed just quietly fall apart or not happen, it's quite likely that this is what's happened to you. The warnings have been wrapped up in in softer packaging, and you've not you've not heard the warnings coming. It's not that anybody's misled you, you know, somebody told you no politely in packaging that you kind of took at face value, but you didn't really understand. And it goes the other way too. Your direct, well-meaning feedback may land for some people like a slap in the face because the way you're packaging the words feels super blunt, means that it's really serious, that there's trouble ahead, and you don't actually mean that. If you put these two reasons together, you can see what's happening. Being the boss means that you hear less, it's just an unfortunate fact of going up to an organization without having the things in place that allow people to really give feedback. And as we've seen, an open door just isn't enough. Leading across cultures means some of your people are paying a much higher price in their understanding to give you negative feedback. And when they do give you that feedback, it may be that it's arriving to you in packaging that you don't recognize. An open door gives people access. That is fabulous, and that is great. But the access is not the thing that's missing, it's the price. Um, that's the problem, and an open door doesn't lower that price. So telling Priya my door is always open and expecting honest pushback, it's like telling somebody that the road is perfectly safe to cross, and then you get surprised when they still look both ways. You know, we need to allow for other ways to enable people to feedback, especially on those negative things where they need to push back. And now, uh one last thing, because this affects so many of the teams that I work with. If your team is remote, all of this gets a lot harder. In an office, the real warning comes in the corridor two minutes after the meeting, a little quiet after-record conversation at the water cooler in the kitchen, making a cup of coffee. You know, that's where that second attempt may come, and that's probably where Priya would have made a second attempt. But in a distributed team, when you're just working across uh video calls, there is no corridor. Everything is said in a meeting in front of everyone, or it's typed into writing where it sits forever and everybody can see. Both options raise the price for Priya. And if your team went global faster than your habits did, that's the part of why this silence is growing. Okay, so what do we do about it? Um, first of all, we need to stop waiting for people to be brave, um, and we need to start building some structure. Bravery is asking Priya to pay a price, as we've talked about. Structure is lowering that price for Priya and for people like Priya. And I think there's four moves that you can do to start this, and you can you can implement these this week. So, first move: replace the open floor with a standing question. So, the question, any concerns? Asked in an open meeting. This is an invitation to volunteer into risk in public with no script. Almost nobody takes it. So take that moment out of the room entirely. Put one fixed question into your one-to-ones, the same question and the same slot every single week. One of my favorites is what's the biggest risk on this project right now? Now you might be thinking, hang on, Priya's already raised the deadline issue. So in her mind, James has heard and he's decided to press on. So wouldn't she just stay quiet and think, well, he knows all about it? Here's why she doesn't. And this is the whole the whole point. When Priya spoke up in that meeting, she was volunteering. She was volunteering a correction to a senior person in public, and that was the expensive part for Priya, and she'll only ever do that in careful packaging, which is packaging that we may miss. But when James asks her directly in private, what's the biggest risk right now? She isn't volunteering anymore. She's answering. And answering a direct question from your boss is not disrespectful. It's what you're supposed to do. The question flips the whole exchange. He carries the act of raising the subject, not prayer, and all she has to do is to answer it. And that answer could genuinely be honestly, the integration deadline is a problem. And then we have an opportunity to explore that deeper. That's why the wording asks for her read right now. Not asking for news, just her read right now. Ask, is there anything that I haven't heard about? And Priya can truthfully think he's heard about it. And I've told him the concern slips through the exact loophole that you've built into the question. But if you ask what's the biggest risk right now, then the deadline's back on the table every single week. Whether or not Priya believes that you've already heard it or already dismissed it or already decided, nothing gets to be old news because you're asking about today. Look at what that question does. It's private. So the audience has gone, it's routine. So answering it isn't a dramatic act. It puts the asking on you and only the answering on Priya, and it comes back every week. So a warning that got missed in week one gets a second chance in week two, it gets a chance in week three, and week four. So there's lots of opportunities for this feedback to actually get to you, which you really, really need to hear. A concern needs to slip past you like every single week for it to get lost, and in the open floor world, in that open meeting, kind of only needs to slip past you once and it's gone. And this is this is a trick that we can use not just for projects but for personal feedback. You know, when somebody needs to give feedback to you, doing that in an open floor scenario just doesn't work well. So once a month, in your one-to-ones, ask what's the one thing that I could do better. It's the same principle, you're doing the asking, and they're doing the answering. But there is one warning on the wording though, because it does matter. Never ask, was I wrong about anything? Because to answer that, someone has to look you in the eye and say, Yeah, you were wrong. And Priya is never going to do that. Um, but a better thing would be, what's one thing I could do better? That can be answered with it might have helped to hear more about the delivery team before we agreed on the date. It's the same information, but it's a completely different sentence to have to say to your boss, it's far more positive. Move two. Ask when there is nothing wrong. If the only time you ask for honest input is mid-crisis, that question will always feel like a test and everybody will know what the passing answer is. Ask on an ordinary Tuesday about nothing in particular, that same question feels safe because it isn't attached to anyone's failure. And expect the first few answers to be, oh no, everything's fine. This is totally normal. Um, it's not that the question is failing. That's people just checking whether the question is real. They're kind of like sending out a scout ahead to see if it's if it's safe, if that scout comes back alive. They're watching what happens to the small, harmless answers before they trust you with the big ones. So we have to keep asking the same slot, the same words every week. And the week that we skip it because we're busy or we're under pressure, that's the week that the whole team will quietly file this under. Well, he just says these things, but he doesn't really mean them. Okay, and here's move three give people a way to put it in writing. A shared risks page, a short, asynchronous form, and and I would do that kind of uh so that other people aren't able to read other people's comments, but it's just direct with you, one to one. A regular kind of flag anything here thread. Somewhere that a concern can be raised without an audience and without having to find the perfect words live. Remember, some people are working in a language that's not their native language, it could be their second or third language. So having to get things right in live in a with an audience, that's pressure. So take that pressure away. Priya can type two careful sentences on a Tuesday evening, you can read them calmly on a Wednesday morning, and nobody has had to survive a moment. Now, the writing part of this, it's it's kind of a bridge. If it becomes the only channel, it's like we've kind of just built a bit of a tidier version of silence because maybe nobody's going to contribute in there. But as a first step for a team still learning that correcting upwards is genuinely welcome, that it works, and that it's safe, then it's great for uh making that kind of first attempt cheaper. Um so I would definitely keep that dark, and maybe it's something where people really do contribute. And our fourth move: when someone corrects you, say so out loud. And this is the one that a lot of leaders skip, um, but it does have a huge impact. When a concern reaches you and it's right, act on it and then tell the team. Um, you know, tell the team, Priya flagged a risk on the meridian count last week that I had missed, and we've adjusted the timeline. No drama, no speech about the importance of speaking up, just a fact that somebody gave me negative feedback, it's changed the course of things, and that is really good. Now I know that for some people this may feel like you're uh admitting a mistake, which then costs you your authority, and in some cultures this may well actually be true. But if this is done regularly, um, in my experience, it it can do the opposite. That one sentence, the entire team watches someone correct the bus and they get thanked for it. And remember, most of your team will never be in the room for your one-to-ones with Priya. This is the only one of the four moves they get to see with their own eyes. You cannot say anything about your open door that teaches a fraction as much. One visible moment like that is worth 50 repetitions of you can always come and see me. And notice what none of these four moves asks. They don't ask Priya to toughen up, they don't ask your team to see authority differently. You won't change that. It's not your job, and you can't change that. Every one of these moves changes something you control. When you ask, how you ask, where the answer can land, and what happens to the person who gives that answer. That's the right way around. And if all four of these moves feel a lot for one week, no problem. Start with move one. Just a question. One line dropped into the one-to-ones that you already have. No announcement, no rollout, no all hands, no slide deck, nothing like that. You can start tomorrow morning, and the only person who has to change anything is you. And here's the good news: this works and it works quickly. Picture that same team six months on. James asks his question every week. There's a shared page where the concerns go and it gets read. Twice now the team has watched him credit a correction in open. Prior still wouldn't contradict him in a meeting, that hasn't changed, and it never needed to. But when she sees the next deadline wobbling, she doesn't have to weigh up the price of saying so. There's a place for it, it's private, it's expected, and she's watched with her own eyes that people who use this they come out ahead. That's the moment the door becomes real. Okay, so if you only take one thing from this episode, then please take this. An open door removes a barrier, but it doesn't remove the risk for some people. Being available, it's not the same as being safe to talk to. Most leaders have only ever really opened that door and they haven't really understood why nobody is giving them the feedback that they're looking for. You don't need people to be braver. You need a cheaper way for the people you already have to tell you the truth. If you build it, they will use it. If this is a live issue for your team right now, that's exactly the kind of thing I work through one-to-one with leaders, through advisory, through coaching, and through workshops. You can find out more about the work that I do by visiting brennanthomasquinn.com, and you can also find me on LinkedIn.