16 Ways to Get to the Truth
Insulated leaders don’t ask, because they don’t want to know.
You are less than you could be, because people aren’t telling you the truth.
4 surprising reasons employees don’t speak up:
- Positive suggestions create more work. If you suggest it, you end up doing it.
- Suggestions may be interpreted as criticism or dissatisfaction.
- Speaking up may strain relationships with colleagues.
- Fear the boss will be embarrassed in front of subordinates and/or higher-ups.
16 ways to get to the truth:
If you want people to tell you the truth, be worthy of hearing the truth.
- Acknowledge that people withhold honest feedback and positive suggestions. especially to people with power.
- Build safe environments by valuing, inviting, honoring, and rewarding truth-telling.
- Create cultures where positives are more pervasive than negatives.
- Express gratitude when people speak up. The first response to all feedback is one thing, “Thank you.”
- Focus on improvement, more than mistakes.
- Explore issues and give information, but never defend yourself.
- Don’t embarrass anyone who speaks up, especially if they are misinformed. Make teammates feel like fools and you end up out of the loop.
- Focus on issues and behaviors, not people.
- Evaluate and adapt frequently.
- Keep emotions in check. Unpredictable leaders have self-protective followers.
- Speak in quiet tones when difficult issues come up.
- Never participate in gossip.
- Apologize when you’re wrong. When you fail in public, make it right in public. An apology says you’re not perfect, but you’re trustworthy.
- Take action quickly. If you aren’t sure what to do, follow up.
- Be honest with yourself. Position and authority make it easy for you to pretend you are better than others. Everyone’s on a journey, even you.
- Commit to getting better.
Leaders are the problem, when they believe trust building is something others do.
How might leaders build truth-telling environments?
Good post. Love the introduction; If you want people to tell you the truth, be worthy of hearing the truth
Thank you Ron. I think that blaming others for not speaking up misses the point.
I think I hesitate sometime to making myself open because I’m unsure I’m “ready” for the truth. Your 16 ways are going to help, I’m sure.
Thanks Kris. I respect your candor. You got me thinking about the way negative feedback snowballs. One thing leads to another until we’re total losers. Perhaps, making imperfect progress in one area, rather than “all of life” helps. (speaking for myself, of course)
Honestly, Dan, we should bring back the day of HONESTY. Everyone knows April begins with a day dedicated to lying…April Fool’s Day! Yet, not many people know that April 30th is National Honesty Day in the United States. It’s true. Author M. Hirsh Goldberg established National Honesty Day in the early 1990s as a way to honor the honorable and encourage honesty.
He believed if April was to begin “with fool’s lying,” perhaps April 30 should be a proper day to end on a high moral note.
Honesty Day would be a good time to review the value of this trait. While honesty is not as easy as it seems, an understanding of honesty begins with recognizing God—our ultimate example— is truth (Deut. 32:4) and that He cannot lie (Num. 23:19; Heb. 6:18). Also, He hates falsehood (Prov. 6:16-19). Beyond that, all lies have as their originator evil, himself (John 8:44).
We can use these Scriptures as our guide: “A righteous man hates lying” (Prov. 13:5); love rejoices in truth (1 Cor. 13:6); lying is part of the old nature (Col. 3:9); growth means setting aside deceit (1 Peter 2:1); and speaking truth declares righteousness (Prov. 12:17). Lies sadden God, and truth brings Him joy (Prov. 12:22).
Shoot…let’s make every day Honesty Day.
“Amen Brother…”
Thanks SGT. I never heard of National Honesty Day. Love it. But, I’m not sure organizations could handle Honesty Day as a daily practice.
“DITO, Your on Dano…”
Well said… Nothing more to add from my end!
Thanks Rajiv.
Remember Nicholson in “A Few Good Men”?
“You can’t HANDLE the truth!”
I spent a large part of my working life providing scientific data to the government, and if nothing else it taught me about the gulf between the truth and the “right answer”. Most organisations and leaders are not prepared to look at their role in failure, and so are anything but open to uncomfortable truths. If they were, we wouldn’t need all the the elaborate mechanisms we have to have to protect whistle blowers.
Thanks Mitch. The distinction between the truth and the “right answer” is eye opening. Bring that to the problem of owning our part in failures and you have perfect opportunities to escape the truth.
Dan, this post is truly hitting at the heart of the matter in our workplace. There is far too much fear of saying what is really going on and that suffering in silence has led to the workplace bullying epidemic (as one example) that is happening globally. Here the thing – People will say things to staff that they would never say to the CEO and managers. That automatically means that the staff holds valuable information that the leaders need to know. Truth-telling needs to be supported and rewarded rather than squelched for all the reasons you outline. Great stuff, Dan. I hope it inspires much needed change.
Thanks bjkramen. Thanks for adding the idea that we say things to one group that we don’t say to others. If we say that we would never say that to the CEO, but we say it others, we have a problem.
I have experienced this and had a gut to tell the truth. I got a warning for that. I got a warning for telling that the company culture sucks and managements people management skills are poor.They are based on fear. Discovering that made me stronger. But worst of all, the leaders are fearfull because they do not know how things work. They just asuume instead of actually saying- let me see what you do, I want to know..
Hi Dan and all,
This is a gem to me: “An apology says you’re not perfect, but you’re trustworthy.” That can be applied to many business and personal shortfalls and failures. We had an issue in my company and I was kind of sharp with one of my teammates about the dreaded “what happened”. He had explained poorly and I had listened impatiently. I had to clearly tell him that I am sorry and I definitely don’t blame him for what happened before he was confident and happy – and able apply himself to our problem. I want to be trustworthy, since I can never be perfect 🙂
simply super. keep sharing.
Sometimes when I read your articles I appropriate it into my relationship with my fiancee and I sometimes define leadership as ‘robust attitude’. My fiancee is melancholic and tends to shut a lot of information inside even if it hurts her. I really wanted her to speak up more often and I identified adopted a majority of these steps you highlighted here and it’s like a miracle. We always want to defend ourselves whenever we are hit the face with the truth so much so if the person was misinformed or misinterpreted what we meant. What I did was:
1. Resist the urge to defend myself
2. Appreciated her openness
3. Encouraged her to be more open and know that I am taking this criticism or talk as positive feedback.
4. Resist the urge to want to bring up some wrong she did before so she won’t feel am the only imperfect one. I rather delay it for another time when I generated the conversation.
It is in sync with most of your points here. I will adopt others and extend same to work colleagues. #Amazing