Honesty at work

So if you’re thinking about leadership philosophy, and you should think a little about it, here’s an item that’s got to be on the list: Be honest.

Yes it’s obvious, but here’s the thing about honesty: it’s usually hardest when it matters the most. But when you stick to it you’ll find benefits you never planned for, along paths you hadn’t thought were even related to the situation in which you were honest.

Unfortunately, early in your academic and professional career you can get away very easily with not being honest. You can commiserate with a classmate over his “unfair” grade on the last test, even when you really believe he spent too much time that week partying instead of studying. You can blame the project plan if your teammate misses critical deadlines when you really believe that she spent too much time surfing the web instead of working.

The consequences for these dishonesties are relatively slight in the near term, and for the sake of camaraderie you will be tempted to take this path. You shouldn’t go this way.

Starting on the path of honesty early will serve you well long into the future. You’ll develop tact and grace, learning how to be honest without being mean, in a much lower stakes environment than if you don’t start until you are the leader of an outsized team. And you’ll develop a reputation for forthrightness that will serve you well as you are considered for advancement.

How to approach this?

When your boss or friend or wife or classmate asks you for feedback, make it honest. In the case of your boss, you may have to be careful about phrasing if you disagree with her or his pet project, and you want to be clear that you will follow directions (as long as they are legal, ethical, and moral) and do everything you can to make the boss’s choice a success.

All of this said, however, when your opinion is requested, you don’t serve anyone by saying you agree if you don’t. If the decision works out, the boss may appreciate your candor and your ability to work hard in support of a choice even when you don’t agree with it. All involved will also be looking for evidence that you learned from your mistake, so figure out why you were wrong and make an adjustment! If the decision doesn’t work out, the boss will likely turn to you again and perhaps assign more weight to your opinions in the future. Be respectful of the boss’s position and mindful of possible hurt feelings and resentment of a challenge to authority, but be honest.

An example

Take the simple, but very common, example of the annual performance review. This ritual is easy if you have a staff made entirely of “USDA Grade A” employees. Since no one actually has such a magical staff, the performance review is never easy in practice, and for new supervisors it can be downright miserable. How do you tell Michelle that her performance isn’t up to your or the company’s expectations?

Here’s the situation: Michelle has a chronic problem with missing deadlines, and it has delayed two major projects this year. You’ve only been her manager for a year, and before that you were her co-worker for three years. She’s older than you, with more experience at the company. And besides, she’s not going to take this well, and you don’t want to hurt her feelings.

You can avoid the situation, or deal with it.

Choice one: the duck and run

Your first choice is to focus on the things she did well, give her a slightly above average review, and mumble something about perhaps being on time a little more often with deadlines. She walks away (probably) happy, gets a small raise, and spends the next year not doing anything differently.

But because you aren’t satisfied with her performance, you begin to give the harder assignments to other team members. She notices this, and is beginning to feel left out. Because you haven’t told her anything is wrong with her performance, she concludes that this is personal: “You just don’t like me anymore.” She becomes disgruntled, discontent, and shares her feelings with the rest of her teammates, undermining your effectiveness as their leader.

Ultimately she may leave the group—this is actually the best possible way such a situation can go, because if she stays she’ll become increasingly unhappy, and have an increasingly negative effect on your team. Either she’ll quit, or you’ll find a way to make her someone else’s problem. Either way, you’ve got a broken team and a former friend.

The right choice: face the issue with an honest assessment

Your second choice is to be up front at the beginning. Tell Michelle, very specifically, in which areas she needs to improve. Give her examples of times that she succeeded and also of times when she didn’t meet expectations. Tell her why her non-performance was a problem. Was the project late? Did it go over budget? Was the report not well received? Did you lose the contract?

Specifically, make sure you cover the following three items:

1. Be honest about impact so that she can understand why her performance is really a problem.
2. Be clear about your expectations for her.
3. Work with her to develop a scenario in which she can work on the things she needs to improve.

I am surprised at how well these situations generally end, at least in the long term. I personally find them very challenging. I hate to see people upset. But, it simply isn’t fair to ask the rest of the team to deal with the consequences of a decision by me to avoid an uncomfortable situation.

A tough thing to do

Is it hard? Yes. Honesty is not usually explicitly encouraged in the workplace. It can make things bumpier in the short term. But it is worth it in the long term, both ethically and for your career. Just look at all the trouble that dishonest leaders are having at major corporations these days.

This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.