Worse Left Unsaid
Make sure employees tell you what's on their minds, especially in a downturn.
By Mark Henricks •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Les Potter uses a story to illustrate why it's essential tokeep employees talking. A machinist working on a piece of metal foran airplane's landing gear felt something wrong when he liftedit. But he said nothing because his supervisor tended to treatbad-news bearers as if they had caused the problem. The piece wasthen built into the landing gear, which failed during testing. Itwas taken apart and, when nothing wrong was found, put backtogether. The company tested the gear again before the problem wasfinally found and corrected.
"The amount of time wasted on that one failed landing gearwas astronomical," says Potter, a Vienna, Virginia,organizational communication consultant, who says the tale stressesthe importance of maintaining employee communications.
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