25. Be Kind, Yet Truthful.

25. Be Kind, Yet Truthful.

This lesson presented itself to me in a (somewhat) humorous manner yet has served me well in all aspects of management and leadership. I find it interesting how many of life’s lessons can be taught by the most unlikely of teachers and during the most unlikely situations. This is a good reminder to us all that we should constantly be taking in what is around us and learning from all our experiences, both in our personal and professional lives.

The year was 1993 and I had just transferred from the Hewitt Atlanta office to Hewitt New Jersey. My time in Atlanta was formative in many ways, particularly in the people with whom I had the opportunity to work, the consulting experiences I gained, and the skills I had begun to polish. However, one of the unforeseen skills I had picked up during my time in Atlanta was a fairly pronounced Southern accent. Growing up in Florida (albeit North Florida), one does not typically develop too thick of an accent, but if you spend a few years in Georgia, it will most certainly put a drawl in your speech. Therefore, you can imagine the looks I received when I arrived in New Jersey where everyone thought I was as “Country as Corn Flakes!”

At that time, Hewitt was still serving free breakfast and lunch to their associates. Yes, this unique employee benefit was offered to everyone during Hewitt’s heyday – the privately-held golden years. We had a full-scale kitchen at the office and there was a staff that prepared and served us daily meals. Over time, we would develop relationships with the staff and they would get to know us, our likes, and our preferences. In 1993, the woman that ran the Hewitt NJ Cafeteria was named Mo and she was a real spitfire. 

After a month or so, most everyone had deduced that I was not from NJ, including Mo. One morning she approached me with a giant smile on her face, generosity in her heart, and a bowl in her hands. She was excited to see me and presented me with a bowl of freshly made grits. It was an incredibly kind gesture because, as you could imagine, grits weren’t a standard menu item in New Jersey. She went out of her way to research how to make small batches of grits and the various ways to make them. It was incredibly gracious, and I didn’t know what to say other than Thank You and tell her how appreciative I was that she went out of her way to make me feel at home. 

The issue is/was, I cannot stand grits. Never have liked them, never will like them. I would not eat them in a house, not with a mouse, not here, not there -- not anywhere. So, I took my appreciation and my grits upstairs to my office and sheepishly dropped them in the trashcan. 

Can you guess what Mo made me for breakfast the next day? The day after that and the day after that? She was excited to greet me each morning and present me with my freshly made bowl of grits, created especially for me. Given that I had accepted them the first day without telling her the truth, I found myself perpetuating the lie day after day by politely accepting them, thanking her, and then returning to my desk and depositing them into my circular file. Thankfully, the grits production slowed and became more of a “special occasion meal,” but the fact still remained that I had never been truthful with Mo and I carried this guilt and she carried this well-intentioned burden of making grits that were being sent to a NJ landfill.

This situation served a great management and leadership lesson for me as it spilled beyond the NJ cafeteria.  My initial inability to share the truth caused a great deal of unnecessary work and an uncomfortableness within an otherwise positive relationship. This happens every day in people management and leadership. Often, a manager will feel they are doing the right thing by bypassing a performance issue and not addressing it directly, for fear of disrupting the status quo. At the end of the day, when a leader fails to address performance of an individual or a team, for whatever the reason, they have failed not only themselves, but have hindered the progression of the mission and the development of everyone involved.  A leader may feel they are doing what is right by “being nice” or by “addressing it later,” but this often leads to creating unnecessary work and an uncomfortableness within otherwise positive relationships, just like with Mo.

I recently came across a Simon Sinek quote that perfectly captures the essence of this for managers and leaders. He said, “it is better to disappoint people with the truth than to appease them with a lie.” 

Had Mo served Simon grits back in 1993, she would have saved a whole bunch of time in the kitchen!