By Pinaki Kathiari
Chief Executive Officer
Honesty Keeps Us in Reality – and That’s Super Important
“Speak with Heart and Sincerity,” that’s our first value at Local Wisdom. It’s an important one because it keeps me and all staff (we call ourselves LWers) grounded in reality. Staying sincere can be hard, though, and it shows up in many almost imperceptible ways.
In this article, I’ll explain and explore a few observations from my work and travels in hopes of helping you spot it when it happens and how to move forward.
Let’s talk about lying…
A few months ago, I spoke at an ALI Conference and listened to another speaker talk about working with Gen Z colleagues. The talk was great, and at the end, instead of having time for Q&A, the speaker proposed a scenario and asked the audience how they would respond.
The scenario they described was a situation where you receive an email from a Gen Z teammate. The employee says they felt like this was not the right work environment for them because of long hours, too many emails, and a pressure-filled environment. This is the first time you have heard this.
I had thoughts on how I would respond with a way to move forward, but before I did, two people from the audience (who identified as Gen Z) commented that the person probably just doesn’t want to work there anymore, and there isn’t anything that would keep them.
That struck me.
I had a way forward to propose, but the person wouldn’t have wanted that. They wanted to leave. And from the comments from the other Gen-Zers, it might not be because of the reasons they mentioned.
This gets into honesty.
Why does it feel so wrong to be honest at work?
Especially when delivering bad news. (Side note: there is a whole “Why Does It Feel So Wrong to Be Human at Work” podcast episode about this topic!)
The problem is that most of us aren’t being honest.
In this scenario, the email – that sounded to me like there was a problem to solve – was actually a resignation. The words led me to believe something that wasn’t true.
It’s not lying, necessarily, but it’s also not telling the truth.
But wouldn’t it be better, more productive, and more liberating, to be honest – even when you’re delivering less-than-ideal news?
Here are a few tips for when you have to deliver bad news:
- It’s better as a conversation. Talk it through rather than emailing or texting. I know it is hard, but it’s a muscle we must exercise. If we don’t, we risk having many people around us believing something untrue because people will read text, subtext, and tone differently than a back-and-forth with vocal delivery and body language.
- It’s better when you are straightforward. In the example above, the message should have been a resignation letter. If, in fact, that was the person’s goal, they shouldn’t have danced around it. They should have simply stated what they wanted — to leave.
- It’s better when you give real reasons. Sometimes, the truth is hard to hear, and it’s hard to say. However, you should always find a way to check if it’s a fact (as opposed to a made-up story in your mind) and challenge yourself to find a way to deliver it in a way that is not cruel. Bonus: in this scenario, having genuine feedback would give the company guidance into how they can improve the employee experience for the person’s colleagues.
This goes hand-in-hand with one of my favorite topics to talk about: how to have difficult conversations. To close out this blog post, I’ll leave you with a Bits of Wisdom video below that outlines how to approach these types of conversations:
