What are you telling your workers?

If you wouldn’t accept the answer yourself, don’t try to sell it to someone else. (Least of all a subordinate!)

Flying from the east coast back to Seattle, we were told the flight had been moved from to a different gate. A real inconvenience when the gates are in different terminals at Dallas-Fort Worth airport. On arriving at the gate we were told that the plane was going to be 2 hours late.

I could have accepted the delay except for the aircraft loading at the gate for Sacramento with a departure time of 5 minutes before my scheduled flight to Seattle. Airlines don’t plan for two aircraft scheduled to depart with in 5 minutes of each other to occupy the same gate. Obviously someone knew that the Seattle flight would not be filling that gate at that time far enough in advance to schedule the Sacramento flight to load there.

The change in plans is a so what, travel can be like that. The insulting part was to get an answer that was obviously not true! The truth was obviously that we should have been told - Your flight is delayed 2 hours. It is now scheduled for 5PM at gate 16.

How would you feel if your boss gave you an answer that you would not accept from a subordinate? Worse yet, how do you feel about yourself if you give a subordinate an answer you wouldn't accept from them?

The single test for the answer you are about to give is “Would you be satisfied with the same answer from a subordinate or supervisor” if the answer is anything less than an unequivocal yes, DON’T SAY IT!