Think back to the last meeting you attended where executives addressed an employee audience. Did anybody mention the elephants in the room?

Not likely.

Elephants are those forbidden subjects and hard questions that lurk in the back of everyone’s mind - and which senior management hopes have gone unnoticed.

Every organization has its own elephants. But if you listed them, you’d be surprised at how the same themes exist in company after company. Here are some verbatim examples from email surveys and focus groups at various organizations I’ve worked with.

• Senior leadership paints a picture of Utopia. What world do they live in?
• I’ve met with the mayor of this city more times than I’ve met with my department leader.
• We have managers, not leaders.
• How can our executives say, “We are all in this together” when they get all the benefits and we get all the cuts?
• Our best people are leaving and the “dead wood” is staying.
• No one cares how hard we work.
• Loyalty is a one-way street here.
• They talk about collaboration, but we don’t get rewarded for it.
• The wrong people get promoted into leadership positions.
• Leaders don’t tell us the whole story.
• We don’t believe what leadership says about the change/takeover/downsizing/merger/restructuring.


What if, at the next employee meeting, leaders introduced the elephants in the room? What if they used that opportunity to set a tone of openness and candor? How do you think people would react?

Well, in my experience, a well-planned session around these unspeakable issues would build employee engagement better than all the “rah-rah” motivational speeches ever could. It would break down barriers, create equity between leadership and workers, and jolt people out of their complacent or skeptical mindsets.

Here’s how I’d recommend designing such a session:

1. Use email and focus groups to uncover key issues. Capture exact words and phrases.

2. Create a “Top 10 Elephants” list.

3. Prepare executives for the process, but don’t let them see the list beforehand.

4. Bring in an outside moderator to ask pointed questions and push for real answers.

Sound risky? Sure. But how risky is it to believe that employees can focus on strategic objectives while surrounded by a herd of elephants?