Dive Brief:

• In order to avoid disappointing your employees, you must willingly disappoint them, according to a LinkedIn blog post.
• Writing at LinkedIn Pulse, author Patrick Ledden, a professor at Vanderbilt University, says that paradox simply means that "wise leaders are willing to forgo short-term employee happiness for long-term employee growth, development and fulfillment."
• Ledden writes that unfortunately, immature, inexperienced and unsure leaders often violate the paradox, noting that he himself has done it in an effort to "avoid conflict, please an employee, expedite a solution, control a situation, or some other 'well intended' reason."

Dive Insight:

Ledden offers four examples of how it happens, including: failing to give candid and timely feedback; taking on an employee's problem; accomplishing an employee's work, and telling an employee how to do something.

In each of those examples, Ledden says the harm is by "satisfying the employee in the short-term, the leader is taking away the chance for the employee to learn, grow, and develop. In the long-run, the employee will be dissatisfied as she or he will be less competitive, less competent, and less prepared for future challenges."

He adds that he is not saying a leaders should abandon an employee, but he is saying that a leader should "examine the task, the competence and character of the employee, and the risk associated with success and failure. Then, the leader can determine what role to play."