#590 Denial of Facts in Leadership: Why Mindset Is No Substitute for Evidence | Niels Brabandt
Denial of Facts in Leadership: Why Mindset Is No Substitute for Evidence
When the facts are unambiguous, leaders act accordingly. We all agree, don't we? In reality, I receive a rising number of emails describing the opposite: a situation clearly proven by facts, and leaders who reply that they have a mission, a goal, and that the facts do not matter. Not every leader behaves like this, but a significant number now do. Denial of truth in leadership causes serious harm to organisations, so this week we look at why it happens, what it looks like and how to do better.
Typical examples: from politics to the sales floor
Politics provides the most visible example. Someone runs for office and loses. The usual reactions are legitimate: step down, analyse what went wrong, change, or try again. A growing number, however, claim the election was stolen. Asked for evidence, they have none to their name.
Business is not immune. Imagine a sales team that agrees in October on plus 5% for next year, an ambitious stretch goal after plus 2% this year. In December, a massive crisis hits the economy, beyond anyone's control. Or imagine you sell into a regulated field where government spending buys your product, and governments announce a 10% cut in that sector. Still, the target remains plus 5%. Ask how this should happen, and the answer is: work on your mindset.
The mindset trap
Mindset has become the most omnipresent term whenever leaders have no facts, no reasoning and no plan. For a leader, it is a bad look: it makes you appear hopeless and helpless at the same time. Anyone with commercial responsibility must be able to justify decisions. If you cannot justify a decision, you should reconsider it.
The same pattern appears in productivity. A team of 14 loses three people to retirement. Job adverts do not attract enough candidates. Two more colleagues decide to retire. Suddenly you are at nine, and when three people call in sick for a couple of weeks, you are at six out of 14. The leadership response in a real case I know: put a pivot on the community and get the job done. There is not a single bit of reasonable content in that phrase.
What leaders can actually do
Desperate situations call for concrete decisions. For the three weeks until colleagues return, skip non-essential admin, focus the team on customers and closing deals, and accept slightly delayed delivery. Take admin off people's desks. Bring in external support. All of this is fair game, and everyone understands it. Telling people to work on their mindset is like asking someone to jump four metres high. It is not humanly possible, and no amount of mindset will change that.
Both sides carry responsibility
Those on the receiving end also need an understanding of the situation. Standing on the other side, calling management a clueless bunch and never bringing forward a single idea makes you equally part of the problem. If you have brought forward ideas 41 times in three years and been told off 41 times, the responsibility lies with leadership, which has lost its social legitimacy. But in large organisations, where goals are often set at a very high level and rarely broken down logically, local leaders must at least try to deliver. Pull a few deals forward, optimise a budget, improve a process. Look for opportunity before declaring that none exists.
Sometimes the end of opportunity is real. In a passport office, every step has legal consequences, and the process has been optimised for years. Nobody can skip identity checks or accept any photo that looks roughly right. When you can prove by facts that the end of opportunity has been reached, the honest choice is between more hours or accepting delays. In most cases, though, there is still room to change how work is done.
Facts rule, and the burden of proof lies with the claim
Implementation starts with one principle: facts rule. You need reliable and verifiable facts, and the person making a claim carries the burden of proof. That applies in every direction. Germany, for example, has spent years describing itself as permanently in crisis, yet the latest forecasts point to growth again. For an economy of that size, growth of one to two percent is meaningful. Leaders lose credibility when every crisis is treated as real and unavoidable while every recovery is dismissed as temporary and irrelevant to their sector.
The same discipline applies to employees. Decisions such as moving production abroad may be painful, and criticism is legitimate while a decision is open. Once it is made and will not change, the difference between successful and unsuccessful people is clear: some say they do not like it but make the best of it, others complain for years and become the least popular person in the office. A claim backed by facts, for example that a process is not tax compliant, deserves to stop work immediately. A difference in opinion, once leadership has decided, does not.
How agreement replaces frustration
The same logic applies to sensitive topics such as revoking remote work, which companies often do without scientific evidence. Understand the motives, ride the wave where necessary, and keep the conversation factual. As soon as facts and proven evidence are on the table, people can find a compromise, or agree that something cannot change and make the best of it together. That agreement always leads to a better outcome than ideology, wishful thinking or personal opinion.
Leadership does not mean ignoring uncomfortable truths. It means recognising them and turning them into the best possible decision. I wish you every success in putting this into practice in your organisation.
Niels Brabandt
---
More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
Is excellent leadership important to you?
Let's have a chat: NB@NB-Networks.com
Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielsbrabandt
Website: www.NB-Networks.biz
Podcast and Videocast Transcript
When the facts are unambiguous, your leaders will act accordingly. We all agree, don't we? Don't we? What? Do you seriously think that some leaders act and ignore the facts? Welcome to this week's episode. My name is Niels, Niels Brabandt, and we need to talk about the denial of truth in the leadership area. There's one massive issue going on, and I receive a rising number of emails regarding this. And it means that people say, we have a situation proven by facts, and then leaders, and of course, not every leader does that, but a significant number of leaders now say, look, I have a certain mission, I have a certain goal, I don't care about the facts, we have to achieve that goal.
And of course some people say, oh, when you don't aim for the stars... So please don't, please do not go down the road of motivational speaking, because motivational speaking has barely anything to do with anything factual. We now have to see why certain leaders ignore the facts and how to do better. And of course we have to see what the typical examples are for this. When leadership denies the truth, leadership and the denial of truth, this is of course obviously a significant harm to the organisation.
We now have to see how to do this better. The question now is, what can we do here? And of course, the first question before even that is, what are typical examples? And one typical example, of course, in reality is politics. Let's say you run for a certain position in a party, or you run with your party for a certain election, and you do not get elected. The usual reaction of a certain number of politicians is they step down, or they say we didn't win the vote, or they say this is what we did wrong and then they change accordingly, or they do not, they leave politics, or they stay and try to run another time. All fair game.
However, a rising number of politicians now go down the road of saying, oh, we actually won, but the election was stolen by... and then they make up something. And as soon as people say, could you please give us the evidence for the oh so stolen, for the oh so stolen election, they never have any evidence to their name. And it doesn't stop in politics. When you now say politics is very special, I work in free enterprise, I'll give you another example. Let's say you sell a certain item. In October, the team agrees next year we're going for plus 5%.
In the market, that's a reasonable goal. Bit high with the investment sector we're in. But let's do a very ambitious one. Last year we did plus 2%. Next year plus 5%. Why not? Stretch goal. We do it. In December, a massive crisis hits the economy. A massive crisis beyond all of your control. And then someone says, well, you know, it's plus 5% anyway. Okay.
And then, of course, some people say, look, let's say you work in a regulated field. Let's say you work in a field where government spending is the money that buys your product. And when governments now announce they are cutting spending in that sector by 10 percent and someone tells you you have to go for plus 5 percent, there needs to be some sort of magic in there. And of course, when you say, how should we make this happen? The usual answer you receive is, oh, you have to work on your mindset.
Mindset. The term mindset became the most omnipresent term when leaders say, I don't have facts on my side, I don't have reasoning, I didn't put any thought in there, just work on your mindset. And by the way, as a leader this is a really bad look, because it makes you look really hopeless and also helpless on the matter. Be aware of that as soon as you have anything sales related to your name. You need to be able to justify your decisions. And if you do not have any justification for your decisions, you might reconsider your decision.
When you now say, hey, we can do something, let's talk about that in a minute. And of course, by the way, when it comes to productivity, that is the next aspect of denial of truth. A typical example, you are in a sales team, 14 people, or you are in an admin team of 14 people. And then of course, some people retire. So you say, hey, three people retire next year. That's quite something. You put a job ad out there, but you don't find enough people.
And suddenly, two more people say, oh, we retire because we have our money together. I think I've done my job. I think it's enough. Thank you very much. I am going to leave after this year. So suddenly, you're not short by three. You're short by five. So instead of 14, you're there with nine people. And then three other people, who are also of a reasonable age, and one of them even not being of reasonable age, this is a real situation, by the way, they call in sick.
All three of them, not for a long term, but for a couple of weeks. So suddenly you are down to six people out of 14. And what did the leader say here? The leader said, yeah, well, you know, we have to put a pivot on the community, whatever that means, pivot on the community and then make the best out of it. We need to get the job done. There is not a single bit of reasonable content in that whole phrase, which is questionable from start to finish.
The question is now, what can you do as a leader when you face desperate situations and you have to achieve certain goals or at least try the best of your abilities to do so? So let's talk about perspective here. And the perspective here is first, what can people do? Let's say, for example, you say, hey, so far you're sitting a lot with admin work. For the next three weeks, until our three people are back who called in sick, we skip the admin. We do all the admin afterwards, hit the phone, get the customers in, close the deals.
We're a bit delayed on delivery, though, but we focus on closing deals first. Fair game, anyone knows this is possible. When someone says, look, we take the admin off you, someone else is going to do that for you, perfect. When someone says, oh, I call in external people, we get external people in for help, brilliant, then go for it. But simply telling people, oh, work on your mindset, basically means I have no idea as a leader, I'm hopeless, I'm helpless, but I tell you to do it anyway.
It is like telling someone, could you please jump four metres high? This is so far not humanly possible, but, you know, work on your mindset. And surprisingly, they don't jump four metres high. Who could have thought? By the way, on the other hand, for the people who are affected by these kinds of talks, you also need to develop an understanding of the situation, because standing on the other side and saying, oh, management, all a clueless bunch, they have no idea what they're going to say, standing on the nagging side of the game, standing on the other side of the game as the nagging and frustrated one, doesn't help anyone either.
When you look into what you could do and you don't bring forward a single idea, then you are equally part of the problem. When you now say, hey, look, I've brought forward ideas 41 times in the last three years and 41 out of 41 times they told me off and said, not your business, just do what we say, fair game, then it's on them. Then they frustrate you to a level that leaders basically lost their whole social legitimisation. Then of course it's fair that you say, no, sorry, not again.
But having a certain understanding, when you especially work in a larger organisation where goals are set often on a very high level, not often broken down to a reasonable logical amount, and you see your leaders have to adjust to that, your leaders have to at least try to achieve these goals, then it's not really helpful when you say, I just ignore this. So maybe you can adjust a tiny bit, maybe you can pull forward a certain couple of deals, maybe you can help here or there, maybe you can simply say, hey, I get the database of other people, I think we can optimise our budget here, I think we can optimise our processes here. Try to do something, because what you have to look at is, is there any kind of opportunity in there where we can still change?
And by the way, it's fair to say when you say we reached the end of opportunity. I'll give you an example. Let's say someone sits in the public office for passports, where you can say there is a process in there which is neat, which is tidy, which has been optimised for years. When your job is passports, you have to follow every step in there. You can't say, yeah, just look this up. You know, I found some opportunities. So first, we don't check if they are really that person. We don't check names and we just leave out if the birth date is correct.
And with the photo, they can bring the photo of someone else. We're just flexible, or maybe a JPEG AI file. As long as it looks reasonably like someone, let's just put forward a passport. Of course, that's not possible. So when you can confirm and prove by facts that the end of opportunity is reached, then you have to choose between either working a lot harder with more hours, creating overtime, which many people don't want, or you have to say, we simply have to walk through it and call delays on everything.
But in most cases you have an opportunity to change certain aspects of what you do there. The question is now, how do you implement this in reality? So the implementation in reality here is first and foremost: facts rule. You need reliable and verifiable facts. The person making the claim has the burden of proof. When someone says, for example, oh, Germany's in a massive crisis, yeah, you know, Germans are always complaining. I mean, lots of nations are, but Germany's been complaining for years, and they had reasonable grounds to complain, saying, oh, it's not looking too great. Well, the latest numbers said that the economy is growing again. Some say what, 1.3, 1.6, 1.9 percent. When you say, oh, two percent isn't much for an economy of that scale, it is quite something, because when you are in the top tier of economies, you usually don't grow anymore by 9%, except when you come from a space where you say the whole country wasn't developed as of yet.
So that's not a fact in Germany. So 1.3, 1.6, 1.9% is a reasonable amount of growth. So be aware that you put this forward accordingly and you work with the facts. And by the way, getting back to the people who are always complaining, when you say you have a reason to complain, always check if there is really a reliable fact behind that. Is what you claim really reliable? And then, of course, you have to understand that sometimes a decision was made and you have to make the best out of it.
I'll give you an example. Let's say executives decide your production facilities, which were in the country so far, are now given to another country. And you say, oh, it's more travel and it's more transport. Everything gets delayed and the quality isn't great. It'll take years to get them up to the level. Well, maybe executives had to decide: if we produce inside our own country, it's just so expensive that no one is going to buy our goods anymore.
And of course you can now bring forward reasonable criticism, you can make suggestions to make things better, you can offer help to optimise things. However, when you see that the decision is made and it will not change, the differentiation between successful and non-successful people really is between the ones who say, I don't like it, but I make the best out of it. And believe me, more than once have I been in there, that during processes, during projects, something changed, not for the better at all, but we had to make the best out of it. Or you're sitting there complaining all day long, saying everything was better back in the days, back in the days, back in the days, and you become the least popular person in the office. And by the way, you will be ignored for any kind of career for the foreseeable future. By the way, rightfully so.
When everything is so awful, consider leaving, maybe. But when you stay, it doesn't seem to be that awful, you just like to complain. So facts rule. And the burden of proof is with the person bringing forward the claim. As soon as you have a scientifically proven, factually backed claim, when you, for example, say this process is not tax compliant in this country, it is perfect to say, I'm not doing the task because it is a crime.
And then people will act accordingly and change the process. But when you say, hey, you have an idea, I have another idea, and they say, sorry, executives now decided on corporate level that their ideas go forward, not yours, sitting there complaining all day long doesn't really change anything. And by the way, when you now say, hey, my company just revoked remote work. Yeah, that's not great, because often companies that revoke remote work do not go by science and not by proven evidence.
What they usually want to do is they want to provoke that people quit their jobs, and what you usually have to do is you have to ride the wave for a month or two, and from there suddenly you have one day at home or two days, and suddenly everything gets diluted down once they met their goal of how many people they wanted to let go. And of course it sounds better for any company in the press to say they revoke remote work than we have to fire people due to economic circumstances. But sitting there complaining when you are most likely in a reasonably comfortable position, especially compared to many others in your country, is not a great look.
It's also not great behaviour. As soon as you say facts and scientifically proven evidence are brought forward and we talk about it, and then we find a compromise, or in some cases you have to say, hey, we can't change it, but we make the best out of it in communication together, agreement will be reached. And as soon as this agreement is reached, you will always have a better outcome, and I wish you all the best implementing that in your organisation. And when you now say, I think I have a couple of questions here, feel free to contact me anytime. So first, of course, when you now watch me on YouTube, feel free to leave a like there. And of course, you can subscribe to this channel. Of course, leave a comment there. Always happy to hear from you.
On top of that, of course, when you now listen to me on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you can, of course, evaluate and rate this whole session. I'm very happy if you give it five stars. Thank you very much for doing so. And recommend this session left, right and centre, online, offline, friends and colleagues. We only grew to our international size by recommendation, not by coincidence. Only by the content. And fortunately, I mean, this is a ton of work every single week to do the research and set everything up, production and whatnot else.
Very, very much appreciated when you do the recommendation here. Thank you very much for doing so. I'm very happy that this grew to its international size. On top of that, very important is when you now say, do you have more than just one episode per week? Yes, we have daily tips. When you, for example, go on YouTube and you do not only subscribe to the channel, but put the tiny bell in there, you receive an update as soon as we have new content, and we have short content every single day, the so-called YouTube Shorts. These YouTube Shorts mean 30 to 60 seconds short leadership tips, which you can use in your daily business, and all of that completely for free.
I promised you at the beginning of the year one tip per day, at least on average, and we're way ahead of plan. So I'm looking forward to seeing you there as well. On top of that, of course, you can also follow me on the podcast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the places to be. When you now say, hey, we need very specific help, we need a trainer, a speaker, a coach, a consultant, a mentor, a project or interim manager, that's what I do for a living. Go to my website NB-Networks.biz and feel free to contact me anytime, NB@NB-Networks.com. I'm looking forward to seeing you there.
And of course, on top of that, when you now say, hey, do you have live sessions? Yes, we do. At least once a month, the live session. You find out about that on expert.nb-networks.com. Very important is, as soon as you go there, it is crucially important that you sign up with your email address, because only with your email address will you receive the information regarding the live session. Only once per week, one email per week, not more, not less.
And all of these emails are 100% content, ad-free guaranteed. Just one a week, every Wednesday morning, you receive that email and you have full access to all the podcasts, to all the articles, to all the videocasts, everything in the English and German language. And in every single email, you find the access link, the date and the time for the next live session. So I'm looking forward to seeing you there. Of course, you can also follow me on social media. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.
You can, of course, also just give me a follow on Instagram or a like on Facebook. Of course, you can also subscribe to my channel on YouTube. And by the way, when you reach out to me via any kind of message, I give a guaranteed answer within 24 hours or less. So no worries, feel free to contact me anytime. The most important thing, however, is always the last thing that I say in every single episode: apply, apply, apply what you learned in this podcast and videocast, because only when you apply what you learned in this episode will you see the positive change that you obviously want to see in your organisation. I wish you all the best doing so. Feel free to get in touch, I'm looking forward to hearing from you. And at the end of this podcast, as well as at the end of this videocast, there's only one thing left for me to say.
Thank you very much for your time.