Stop Apologizing for Telling the Truth

People who can't tell the truth at work will spin out elaborate stories about how years ago, somebody in their office told the boss something s/he didn't want to hear, with horrible consequences.

They love to tell those stories, because the stories reinforce their belief that they can take their employer's money and carry the job title without telling the truth about what's broken. 

As kids we were taught to tell the truth, but in the working world it's often easier to bite our tongues, and so working people make that choice every day.

Then they go home and complain to their spouse about the idiot boss or the evil co-worker, but they were right there when the evil was happening! They could have said something, but they didn't.

They were afraid to speak - but they'll never tell you that.

When an opportunity arises to tell the emperor his clothes are non-existent, the fearful person says "Looking sharp there, your Majesty!" They don't realize how that choice hurts them.

It doesn't hurt the naked emperor -- he only got the response he was expecting. It hurts the fearful employee personally when they know what's wrong but choose to stay silent.

We all have opportunities to tell the truth at work, but often we let the opportunities pass. It's not just salaried employees who clamp their lips together when they should speak. Consultants do it, too.

They're afraid of losing the next piece of business from a client, so they either lie outright or stay silent. It's good for them that lie detectors are not yet standard conference room accoutrements! 

I write about the relationships between third-party recruiters and their clients pretty often. All a recruiter has to do is tell a client "I won't ask the candidates for their salary history, because that's intrusive and irrelevant. I'll ask them for their salary requirement, instead."

Many recruiters won't do that very reasonable thing. They complain instead, "My client insists on having that information!"

What is a consultant if he or she isn't also an advisor? If you are not an advisor and coach to your clients, you're a shill and a sellout. There are a lot of recruiters in that category, but they don't populate the category by themselves.

There are lots of other people in there with them -- consultants and experts who fawn and compliment their clients just to stay in their good graces. 

Fear is rampant at work, but there's a remedy for fear, and that is to tell the truth and damn the torpedoes. The people who know this are the folks who've tried it.

Everybody says "I can't tell the truth at work -- I'm afraid of getting fired!" but that is a pale excuse, and no one believes it.

You don't get fired for politely telling the truth at work and if you feel that you might, then you're working in the wrong place anyway.

How long will you get up in the morning, look in the mirror and tell the person looking back at you "I can't tell the truth at work, so I keep quiet, but I also keep getting up and going to work in that place where I can't be myself."?

I'm sure your parents didn't raise a doormat. Have you settled into a situation where you can rationalize the unpleasant parts of your life away and pretend they don't matter? 

Nobody expects you to mount a revolution, but adults do expect other adults to say what they are thinking, especially when it does harm to customers, employees, vendors and shareholders to stay silent.

You can speak your truth professionally and politely.  You can wait for the right moment, and take everybody's feelings into account.

You can ask questions like these:

• "I confess that I'm confused about this idea, Martin. I'm not sure I see how it solves our problem -- can you please lay it out for me, so I understand?"
• "I struggle with that logic, Joanne -- do you really think that adding another pre-employment test to our hiring process will give us better hires? Won't more steps in the process tend to drive people away, beginning with the applicants who have the most competing opportunities and thus don't have to jump over all the hurdles we put in place for them?"

You cannot step into your own Human Workplace until you tell the truth at work, first to  yourself and then to the people who can fix whatever is broken.

You owe it to yourself to speak up when you disagree with a decision or when something unethical or unprofessional is happening around you.

You can stay silent, go home and kick the dog, but that will weaken your truth-telling muscles and over time, your body will rebel. 

Our client Todd got to that point. He was getting colds every few weeks. There was nothing wrong with him except that he  had missed about fifty opportunities to speak honestly to his boss about the direction of the sales department for which he served as Assistant Manager.

Finally Todd called a coffee meeting with his boss, Eric. As so often happens, the universe arranged things so that Eric was in a great mood that day, excited about a new client that Todd and the team had brought in.

"Given how our business is growing, can you see how giving the team more latitude and junking our outdated call report system will help our team feel more ownership of their jobs?" asked Todd.

Eric said "I've been saying that for years!"

Todd was ready to give Eric credit for Todd's ideas as long as the conversation kept moving in the right direction.

"Excellent," Todd told Eric. "That's just what I think, too. We need to update the sales compensation plan and give our team a reason to care about hitting their numbers."

"You're reading my mind," said Eric.

Todd rejoiced inside and got busy re-designing every element of the sales leadership program. Eric left the company six months  later and Todd took over the sales management role.

His CEO said "It was obvious when you stopped kowtowing to Eric and started to be your own person a few months back."

You'll speak up when you realize the damage you do to yourself and your team by keeping silent.

Not everyone will love you for your candor.

Once you reach the age of 35 or 40 you will realize that staying silent to please the people around you is an insult to your body and even to your ancestors, about whom I know very little but still feel certain they were brave and hardy souls.

We won't grow our muscles unless we use them and our vocal cords, of course, are muscles. What can you tell the truth about at work today?