The Insecurity Problem

This week, I experienced magic. 

I talked with Peter Greer, CEO of Hope International. He said something that got me thinking, which sent me back into notes and transcripts from hundreds of other CEO conversations.

I saw the same thing everywhere. It snapped into focus. Like magic.

Here’s what Peter said on this week’s episode of The Nonprofit CEO Podcast:

"We tend to minimize weakness. We tend to not talk about failure. We love to talk about all the successes and we love to show graphs that are up and to the right. And I think that what that can unintentionally do is miss out on the identification of things that aren't working, of learning from failure as one of our greatest teachers. And unfortunately can cause an organizational culture of saying it's not okay to share your challenge."

I’ve written before about The Niceness Trap, about how CEOs across the sector have told me in private that they often are too nice to colleagues who are close to them, that they wait too long to remove someone who is not good at their job. (Let me know if you need me to send you that article.)

The Niceness Trap is fundamentally dishonest, a hiding of the weakness of an employee. The Insecurity Problem is also fundamentally dishonest, but it is hiding something else.