The Greatest Truth Telling Fallacy

Do you really know if everyone around you is being honest with you?

No one wants to be lied to, yet untruths are everywhere. No one wants to admit they may occasionally lie, but they hypocritically expect everyone else to always tell the truth.

It is one of my recent most popular requests to work on in my strategy work with executives: Helping teams understand the value of, and putting into practice, truth telling.

In my corporate work life at Microsoft, BMW, Amazon, and Marconi, I found the Truth-Telling Fallacy to be the most frustrating part of business life. It became clearer as I rose through the corporate ranks, but I also found it everywhere—from larger international companies to family-run businesses and privately held companies. The Truth-Telling Fallacy affects businesses of every size, impacting senior executives, managers, and teams alike.

Here are the five factors in play:

1. THE MORE SENIOR YOU RISE, FEWER PEOPLE TELL YOU THE TRUTH
If you’re a CEO or at the top of the organization, think back to earlier in your career. Remember how much feedback and real talk you had about your performance? Did you notice that start to evaporate throughout your career as you got promoted?
“I need your unfiltered advice on this acquisition strategy, Val.”

That is what one CEO client called me to say as she was reviewing two potential acquisitions as part of the company’s growth plan. She had not been with the company long and was still changing its truth-telling (or lack thereof!) culture, and they needed a blunt assessment. There is unique value in having external unfiltered advice, but as a leader your real opportunity is unlocking it internally, because sadly, too many people are afraid to give senior people the truth.

2. THOSE AT THE TOP OF THE COMPANY NEED THE MOST FEEDBACK
I’ve been in far too many product reviews, board discussions, and leadership meetings where the attendees could be replaced with those bobble-head figures that are given out before sports games! If these executive gatherings are not truth-telling opportunities, where exactly are senior leaders supposed to get their truth telling and straight-up feedback?

3. YOU NEED TO BE COMFORTABLE WITH BEING UNCOMFORTABLE
It is not easy to hear truth telling. It can be awkward, difficult, and even painful to receive. Not everyone has the knowledge, skills, or mindset to get comfortable with these feelings. Throughout this book you will learn specific tools to use, words to quote, and preparation to follow to receive such feedback. The greatest news is that this is all teachable, but the tough news is that the greatest barrier to changing here is you. - You need to be ready to build new habits for asking for and receiving the truth from those around you.

4. COMPANIES INVERSELY SPEND ALL THEIR TIME ON TRUTH TELLING IN THE WRONG PLACES
Billions in resources each year are spent on training across companies. Unfortunately, the majority of this is spent in the most junior ranks of the company, when the opposite is needed with top teams, executives, people managers, the CEO, and the board.

Actual truth telling is inversely proportioned to the need for truth telling. Similarly, the investment in giving those who need it help with changing the level of truth telling is spent in the wrong place. When I talk about training and development here, for any investment, I don’t mean bland instruction or click-happy online guides, but true intentional investment in time, accountability, and resources for how to create a truth-telling company.

This extract comes from my third book Words That Work. In Chapter 2 you will learn how to raise the performance bar of your teams, in Chapter 8 you will learn how to unlock the power of your board, and finally in Chapter 11 you will receive the playbook of tools to make all this happen.

5. TRUTH TELLING NEEDS TO BE REWARDED
The final, and perhaps most critical, factor in creating a truth-telling company is how you reward truth telling. The much-critiqued Fyre Festival of 2017 had everybody fooled that there really would be a celebrity-packed luxury holiday with headline musicians and exclusive accommodations. The reality was that it was a disastrous, food-starved, cheap camping trip without any entertainment. When Netflix and Amazon filmed their exposé documentaries, hindsight whistleblowers came out in full force. I’ve seen CEOs publicly thank truth tellers who point out mistakes they have made. Amazon has a leadership principle named has backbone. During my corporate career on the Amazon fashion leadership team, you could not be promoted to a manager, director, or vice president if your immediate manager could not give strong evidence that you had displayed backbone with those more senior than you.

I simply love watching teams realize the value of, and then put into practice truth telling.

It could have stopped WeWork calling cappuccinos lattes for many years because their CEO got mixed up with the two drinks and no one corrected him. Instead, the barista and all the employees at the headquarters renamed the coffee drinks to fit with what CEO Adam Neumann incorrectly believed they were called based on his preference of frothy foam versus steamed milk.

This almost unbelievable tale is the modern-day version of the emperor who has no clothes. Not one single person at WeWork felt they could tell Neumann the truth about coffee. Instead, it became a widespread part of the WeWork culture of drink ordering. Every time any intern, new employee, senior executive, or visitor ordered a coffee, they played along, changing the name, explaining to those not in the know the façade that had been built because of their CEO.

Which begs the question, if they were dishonest about coffee, what else were they covering up or lying about?

Do you have any cappuccino err I mean latte moments in your team?

Only a conversation with your team will tell…

Want to hear more? You can download chapter one of Words That Work here as a gift from me.