While it’s a normal and common human emotion, business leaders can’t afford to succumb to denial, the Inc.com article “The Most Dangerous Coping Mechanism in Business,” explains. When there’s bad news, it’s normal to use the first stage of grief as a coping mechanism, but as a leader you need to know how to recognize and ward off this phenomenon. Inc.com offers these tips, derived from business consultant Ron Ashkenas’s article for Harvard Business Review:

Encourage your team not to sugar coat bad news. No matter how hard you try, sometimes engaging in ‘wishful hearing’ and taking news how you want it to be, not how it really is, is going to happen. That’s why you need to value and embrace employees that aren’t scared to tell you the bad news or call you out if you’re not seeing a situation for what it truly is.

Pay attention to the details. Often times, signs of a downward trend won’t appear in reports, news, or sales figures. To really stay ahead of the game, you need keen observational skills to notice signs that there’s trouble on the horizon. Focus on the details, and consider everything you notice a potential issue. That way, you’ll avoid declining to attend to a small problem that could become a big one if ignored.

Talk it out. Create a culture of checks and balances, so that if you’re missing something, someone will point it out. “While denial can still occur, it is less likely when teams are able to look at the situation from multiple angles, challenge underlying assumptions, and eventually get a better picture of what’s really going on,” Ashkenas wrote.

Click here to read the article from Inc.com.