Should  you ever sugar-coat bad news? How about over-riding what you know in your heart of hearts?

Do you sometimes choose to ignore or avoid accepting reality, so you don’t have to address underlying problems?

Everyone knows that the Eurozone is in a mess – lurching from one pending disaster to another.  And absent a plan all its members can and will get behind, you know there’s worse to come!

There are too many political leaders who would rather peddle denial than grasp nettles to solve problems once and for all.

But is there a better way?

Leaders don’t bury their heads in sand, they communicate

When things go wrong in business or politics, burying your head in the sand and hoping that bad news will go away is almost always the wrong tack to take.

Stop for a moment and see if you can think of an exception.  Hard, isn’t it?

Mind you, simply outlining problems without putting forward plausible solutions isn’t much smarter.

Great leaders try to get out in front of a story by communicating with honesty and vision to address whatever challenges a company or country may face.

Ignoring serious problems leads people to draw their own conclusions and, if these are based on rumour and/or flawed suppositions, commonly results in making the original issues worse or negates potential solutions.

Europe’s political leaders must earn greater trust to solve the Euro crisis

Executive recruiters will tell you the most vital skill sought when filling senior managerial positions is communication skills – the ability to articulate, to inspire and to motivate others.

As the phrase goes, “no one is an island “and we achieve precious little if we don’t work with others to get things done.

And people won’t follow those they don’t trust.

This is a fundamental truth that applies to all corporate and political communication – from customer service to sales and from town hall meetings to national broadcasts.

Enter the Euro crisis…

If Europe’s political leaders expect to earn trust and garner support from financial markets and their own electorates, they need to meet all 4 of the following criteria:

1. They must acknowledge the true extent of the problems that need to be solved,
2. They take adequate individual and collective ownership of these problems ,
3. They must outline vision to resolve these problems that all can get behind, and
4. They must demonstrate by what they say and do that they have the vested interests of the Euro group at heart

This is a “cometh the hour…” moment, when Europe needs be united as we stand and not divided as we fall.

How do you inspire confidence in others?