Honesty. It’s something that we all know what it means but each of us has our own personal definitions of what falls under its umbrella. Is it dishonest to withhold honesty in order to spare someone’s feelings? Where is the line between honest and tactless? How can you balance the necessity of truth and the encouragement of ideas? Are they working against each other?
Once you start looking into the nuances, it’s hard to stop the questions. What does truthfulness have to do with being a good leader?
In the next series of posts, we will discuss what it means to be an ethically honest leader and why that’s crucial to team building. You can find the rest here (insert hyperlink)
Building a team requires a hearty amount of trust and trust is built on the back of honest communication. Being a leader, whether you chose this, or it was thrust upon you, is a balancing act. In CEO magazine’s 2016 survey, 89% of the 100,000 respondents stated that honesty was the single most important quality in a leader. However, 62% percent of respondents to Ask Your Target Market’s survey said that people can be too honest at times. So, where’s the balance?
Barking orders and saying the first thing that comes to mind will get you mindless subservient underlings; not a good team. On the other hand, being lackadaisical and covert will get you a team that wanders around without any improvement in sight.
The balance lies in knowing your end goal. If you goal is to improve employee performance, then you need to share feedback frequently, constructively, and honestly. You cannot expect staff to know their shortcomings if you are not sharing them. According to Patty McCord, the former chief talent officer for Netflix, “people can hear anything as long as it’s true.” While I agree with McCord, I think a crucial part is missing in her logic. The message needs to be delivered with tact.
For example:
You’re a manager of a restaurant. You’re trying to get one employee from your wait staff to improve the accuracy of their tickets. You’ve noticed this employee does not write down modifications to their orders (hold the onion, add mayo, etc.) The unsuccessful leader will give loud unhelpful criticism which ultimately embarrasses the employee and causes resentment. “Becky, why do your tickets always suck? Just wright down everything the customer wants, okay?” Now, the leader that cares about the well-being of their team will take Becky aside and give direct, honest feedback with kindness. “Becky, I noticed that your tickets are consistently missing the order modifications. The orders you submit are returned more often than other servers due to this. The kitchen staff end up wasting food and time because they don’t know to add or remove things. Please write modifications from now on. Are you able to do this?”
You’ll see that in the productive and successful example, the manager took into consideration that Becky is not intentionally making mistakes but was honest with the issues her mistakes cause. Honesty isn’t always comfortable, but it is necessary in team building.