The Fable of Napoleon's Lieutenant

I don't take credit for this one. This is one of the leadership lessons I learned at West Point.

Napoleon routinely picked the dumbest soldier in his army and appointed him lieutenant on his personal staff. Before issuing an order to his army, he would give the order to this lieutenant and then ask the lieutenant to repeat it back. If the lieutenant made a mistake, Napoleon would re-write the order until the lieutenant got it right. Napoleon's reasoning was that if the lieutenant could understand the order, then surely his generals could also understand the order.

The moral of the story is that it is not the manager's responsibility to give instructions that can be understood, but rather, the manager's responsibility is to give instructions that cannot be misunderstood.

Admittedly, This is a difficult skill for managers to learn. The primary barrier is embarrassment. The manager is embarrassed to ask for the employee's to provide feed back since this can show that the manager does not know how to communicate. The employee is embarrassed to provide feedback since this can show that the employee does not understand. For both sides, there is a possibility for this exercise to expose weakness. However, if the manager and employee can conduct this exercise routinely, then both will gain trust with each other and both will learn how to communicate better.

There is also a discussion on LinkedIn.