My grandmother is one of the most honest people I’ve ever met. How could I ever forget the time I went to Hebrew School with my grandmother and heard her ask my friend’s mom if she was pregnant?
Recent Comments
Popular Posts
4 RESPONSES TO "HOW TO MANAGE YOUR IMAGE: BE CANDID"
The challenge with being honest in all things is that you risk more rejection, the basis for most of our fears. But everyone says they want "honesty." So help those around you be more honest by being more accepting--make a conscious effort to reject their honesty less.
@Jay: You touch on an interesting point. By being honest and disclosing something to people, you help them become honest with you. It definitely helps with trust.
Like Jack Welch mentioned, honesty=efficiency. The reason you don't become friends with people right away is because you usually need time to feel comfortable around each other. Only then are you honest with the other person. Have you noticed that after that occurs, you can talk about anything?
By being honest right from the get go, you speed that process up by leaps and bounds. In short, you make that process more efficient.
Thanks for the comments!
Thanks for a great post. I definitely agree with the basic premise. Being honest and candid with those around you does lend itself to increased productivity. Setting a standard of openness allows for a freer flow of ideas, more rapid identification of problems, and a more relaxed atmosphere which allows people to focus more on their work than on office politics.
However, I am concerned with the recurrent theme of being brutally honest and not caring what others think that I was seeing throughout the post. It may just me being sensitive to the issue, but I do value my coworkers and their thoughts, and I wouldn't insult them under the guise of being honest with them. If there's a problem with their work, I'm not going to tell them "This is a piece of crap," or "You're screwing that up." I'm going to acknowledge that they're trying, that they put in a lot of hard work, but unfortunately we need to fix some things, or even start over. And I'm going to offer to help, even if it's only by finding someone else to work with them, because I'm too swamped.
Being honest is definitely important, but that's because it's part of caring about your work and being a trustworthy member of your team. Honesty without that caring can actually be detrimental to productivity and the team's dynamics.
Hi Will,
Thanks for the comments. The problem with not telling the truth is that issues that should be resolved now, end up lingering and causing more problems as they're being ignored.
I never said being mean was the correct way to be honest, but I did say "If the truth doesn’t scare you, then you really don’t care what other people think."
I think you might have mis-understood this a bit. It's not that I don't care about other people's feedback and opinions, but rather that if you're too afraid of what other people think, you'll be too scared to speak your mind.
This inhibits discussion and resolution of issues, specifically if someone you are working with is under performing.
GOT SOMETHING TO SAY?