When is the Right Time to Tell a Secret? (Shhhh don't tell anyone)

How can you be telling me this now? I was counting on you! If you had only told me this when you first knew! I can't believe you waited this long!

It's never fun learning a secret that's been kept from you.

It's not fun holding onto a secret either that will leave others (coworkers, friends, loved ones) disappointed and, in all likelihood, angry.

When, if ever, is it a good idea to keep secrets? And when is the best time to reveal them?

Let's locate this discussion in a few specific scenarios.

Scenario #1: You intend to leave the company in six months and have begun preparations to move into another state and workplace. When is the right time to tell your boss you're leaving? Do you give your boss two-weeks notice, a month, or more?

To what degree does the relationship you have with your current employer matter? If it's an adversarial relationship, you might be tempted to wait until the last minute to reveal your secret, but that's bound to create even more bad blood (and impugn your reputation). But does that mean you should tell your current employer the minute you know for sure you're leaving? What if that resulted in your firing and several months without paychecks?

Even if you're in good standing with your current employer, does honesty serve both parties? Will it lead to an uncomfortable six months?

Scenario #2: You are the CEO and owner of a business, and you plan on retiring in three years. You've begun your 5-year strategic plan with your staff. When do you tell your senior team and then the whole company that you're leaving?

Scenario #3: You're going on maternity leave and you don't intend on returning to work afterward. When would be the right time to let your company know?

"When is the right time?" This question has bothered me for years! The scenarios above all revolve around leaving an organization. There are many more secrets people keep from their coworkers and employers naturally, but few have as much impact. The end of a relationship--even a professional one--dredges of emotions and issues of worth and appreciation.

A few factors to consider:

#1: There's a window in which secrets can be revealed without violating trust between individuals. It's a short period of time really. A week maybe.

#2: The longer the secret is kept, the more likely trust will be violated.

#3: The longer a secret is kept, the harder it is to know when to reveal it. You may feel like the window has passed.

#4: When a secret is revealed, the party that's been kept in the dark will want to know how long the secret has been held--so that they can better assess the level of duplicity/dishonesty and their interactions with you during that period.

#5: Mental fatigue comes from holding onto a secret--and from creating lies or untruths to preserve it.

#6: How much will you need to rely on others to maintain your secret? Are they capable of doing so? And is it fair to ask them to do so?

#7: If you tell one person, do you need to tell everyone?

#8: Do you tell people individually or collectively?

There's a reason why people keep secrets! Revealing a secret isn't simple. It involves a lot of calculations, which is why, I suspect, people get paralyzed and fail to make a decision. Then time passes and they feel it's too late to reveal the truth.

What do you think is the right thing to do? When has this happened to you? Please leave your comments and see if we can get to greater clarity on this...

Raising Money From Venture Capitalists

Because many of my friends and clients are entrepreneurs, I am often asked, "How do you go about raising money?" Our early funding was entirely government grants that we received in exchange for bringing jobs to the rural communities. When my business partner and I needed to do additional fund raising, we decided to go to the public markets and list on NASDAQ. In doing that we avoided the very challenging effort of going to the VC communitiy.

We went on the road with very skilled fundraisers who did it for a living. We were not left up to our own devices, which may or may not have been a good thing. Today, when asked about how to raise money, I often direct people to David Rose's presentation at TED.

Top 11 Questions to Ask to find Resolution to Conflict

(Previous Blog Post w/ Stewart Levine)
Part II Interview with Stewart Levine, author of Getting to Resolution

Gary Cohen: What are the Top 10 Questions you ask--or suggest to your clients to ask--when needing to find resolution to conflict?

Stewart Levine:

1. What is it, and briefly what's your "story" about it? (how do you talk to yourself about the conflict?)
2. On a scale of 1-5 (1 being slightly agitated, 5 being gripped by emotion) how do you feel about the other people involved and engaging in the dialogue? Are you ready to engage in effective collaborative negotiation? What will enable you to do that?
3. Can you treat the resolution process as an opportunity to listen and learn?
4. Can you participate with open mind and open heart?
5. Can you accept that with trust, good faith, and creativity everyone can win and get what they need?
6. What aspects of the resolution process are you unsure of?
7. Do you need a third party facilitator? Why?
8. Are you willing to have compassion and stand in the shoes of others involved?
9. Are you fully aware of what the conflict is costing you?
10. Are you ready to let go, forgive and make an agreement for the future?
11. What other support will empower you to engage authentically?

Related Blog Post:
Leadership Resolution - Interview with Stewart Levine

See what your leadership style is with CO2 Partners Leadership Style Assessment

Leadership Resolution - Interview with Stewart Levine author of "Getting to Resolution"

I would like to welcome Stewart Levine to our Just Ask Leadership Blog.
Stewart Levine is founder of Resolution Works and author of "Getting To Resolution" Stewart is a creative problem solver. He is widely recognized for creating agreement and empowerment in the most challenging circumstances. He improves productivity while saving the enormous cost of conflict. His innovative work with "Agreements for Results' and his "Resolutionary" conversational models are unique.

Gary Cohen: How did you decide to make conflict resolution your area of expertise?

Stewart Levine: It was what I naturally did in situations. Here’s the opening story from my book:

During my second year of law school I had my first “real” lawyer’s job. I was an intern at a local legal services clinic. On my first day I was handed 25 cases “to work on.” This would be my job for the semester. Three weeks later I asked the managing attorney for more cases. When he asked about the 25 he had given me, I told him that I had resolved them. He was very surprised—and very curious. He asked how I had done it. I told him that I had reviewed the files, spoken to the clients, thought about a fair outcome and what needed to be done, called the attorney or agency on the other side, and reached a satisfactory resolution. I knew nothing about being a lawyer. I had no inclination that the cases were difficult, needed to take a long time, or had to be handled in any particular way. With common sense and a “beginner’s mind,” I found the solution that worked best for all concerned. Simple? It was for me! I spent the next 12 years becoming a “successful” lawyer—and becoming less effective at resolving matters. Then, feeling frustrated, anxious, and fearful, I stopped practicing law. I have been in “recovery” ever since, recovering what I knew about resolution when I started, discovering its component parts and learning how to teach and model it for others. As a young attorney, although I listened politely to more senior lawyers, I was surprised at the coaching I received. Standard practice discouraged communication among the parties in conflict, communication that I had used in my legal services cases, communication essential for efficient resolution. Many lawyers were playing a very different game from the one my natural instincts chose. Since you have spent much of your career helping others resolve or embracing conflict, how has it informed the way you behave in your personal relationships (You know the shoe makers dilemma)? I live my life very congruent with my work…I do walk the talk…and I sleep very well at night!

Gary Cohen: There are many books on the subject of dealing with conflict resolution what was it that you thought was not being offered in those that you have address with your most recent book, Getting to Resolution?

Stewart Levine: I provide a step by step road map…a conversational process people can follow by the numbers.

Gary Cohen: Some businesses today are deciding to merge companies together to survive this economic downturn. In merging companies together there are usually conflicts between cultures. Sometimes as dramatic as when one side of the business is unionized while the other side is not unionized. What would you recommend to resolve such possible cultural and economic conflicts?

Stewart Levine: Dialogue, conversation, giving people on the front line the tools, capacity and responsibility for creating their own solutions.

Business Partners rarely value each other until it is too late. What advise do you have for partnerships to increase their performance and enhance their appreciation of differing perspectives?

Make sure they have clear agreements on the front end, and I do not mean legal agreements.

The best way to prevent conflict is to have a covenantal relationship – meeting of mind and heart.

My agreement model provides the conversational template to do that.

Gary Cohen: What resolution have you been involved in that had the biggest impact for you or your client? And what did you do to accomplish this outcome?

Stewart Levine: Resolution Gives Life Gail Johnson is the executive director of Sierra Adoption, a nonprofit transforming lives of foster children through finding permanent adoptive families. Thousands of children are trapped in the California foster care system, out of reach of adoptive families. More than half of foster youth who come of age without a permanent family are homeless, in prison, or dead within two years. Gail’s success recruiting and preparing families to adopt children with disabilities often ended in the frustration of being told such children were “unadoptable.” Because of Gail’s work, California no longer considers any child unadoptable! In 1999, Sierra was engaged in a federally funded partnership with the Sacramento County agency that was referring children to Sierra. The working relationship had fallen apart. Gail wanted to resolve long- and short-term conflict, get beyond mistrust, and forge a high-performance team. Few believed the partnership could be salvaged, let alone become a high-performance team. Sixteen people were gathered and over twelve hours in two days using the Cycle of Resolution, the conflicts were resolved and a working agreement was structured. That agreement was the foundation for a healthy, productive partnership with a new vision of collaboration. In the first year following the intervention, 109 “unadoptable” children were placed in permanent families.



Gary Cohen: Stuart, you work with a great number of leaders in your work under high stress circumstances. How do you find leaders use questions to demonstrate their leadership? And what kind of questions do they ask?

Stewart Levine: Good leaders take responsibility FIRST…they always ask what they did or did not do to create the particular challenge they face What implications are there for leaders who over use telling verses asking? …they are not leaders… They may get compliance, never inspiration People do not learn to think People resent not having control They do not develop successors, leaders

Gary Cohen: Is there any other insight you would like to share with us?

Stewart Levine: Critical to engage and:
Realize it is a learning process – teaching and learning about each others perspective… Show up…be present to deal with the situation Listen to them Tell YOUR truth (know there are other truths) Allow yourself to be influenced by what you hear

Gary Cohen: What are your Top 10 Questions that you ask or suggest to your clients to ask when needing to find resolution to conflict? (Tomorrow's Blog Post)



Find out what your Leadership Style is with CO2 Partners Leadership Style Assessment!

If You Keep Looking You are Apt To Find It!

It was believed for many years that when you flip it you have a 50/50 chance of being able to call which side will land up. Recently, new research shows that when you flip a coin the coin is said to have a 60% chance of landing on the side of the coin that is face up at the beginning of the toss (Recent Study).

I liken this to how you act when you believe something is true. You will continue to find what you begin looking at from the start of the toss. You will support what represents affirming data and avoid the data that counters your opinion. You do this because you see your belief system as yourself and if you are wrong then you must be flawed. As you move into Thanksgiving week you can choose to look at the positive attributes of those in your life on one side of your coin or you can look for the less appealing qualities on the other side. What side of the coin do you want to be looking at when your sitting beside your friends, relatives and colleagues?

As a leader remind yourself that what you see at the beginning of events will cognitively bias you. You may want to reconsider if it is really true!

Listening - A different way to actively listen

For years we have heard about how communications works with a sender and a receiver. What this model does not help people understand is what is happening for both the sender and receiver cognitive processes. What is happening is a process of connecting new information or input with past information or input. By doing this those connections create meaning for each party. Often the receiver is finishing the senders message by predicting what he or she is going to say. Based on the beginning of the connection process. Jeff Hawkins author of On Intelligence describe the way the process the brain works in an effort to invent a new way of computing.



We see this notion of connection in how the brain works to how technology is trying to mesh-up the way we work with computers. Shiftables are at the very beginning of this trend. Shiftables were developed by David Merrill at the MIT Labs.



In Just Ask Leadership you learn that asking questions is a powerful way to help your employees engage, align and connect. This happens best when you as the leader help co-workers find those connections by asking the right questions to find those connections. This is similar the meaning making that Jeff Hawkins is studying in brain research at the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, and David Merrill is doing research on Shiftables at the MIT Media Lab. It is trying to facilitate the connections to the brain to expedite and enhance the cognitive resources available to each of us.