While waiting for a movie to begin, a friend’s sister chatted with the wheelchair-bound man seated near her. The man had been a flight instructor until a plane crash paralyzed him from the waist down. Apparently, he hesitated to take over the controls for fear of undermining his student’s confidence. The student was also badly injured, even if his feelings were spared.
Speaking of movies, have you ever watched a really terrible film and wondered how it got made? Didn’t the director or the producer or the actors know it was awful? Filmmaking is a collaborative endeavor, so it is likely that many of the hundreds of people working on the movie knew the work was going badly, but probably lacked the fortitude to say so. Hollywood is notoriously ego-driven, and ego-driven enterprises do not abide much candor.
The first amendment of the US Constitution recognizes that a free society needs candor to thrive. Candor should likewise be the first guarantee of company culture, because that’s how you unlock your coworkers’ creativity. It’s also how you uncover and learn from your mistakes. I’ve always felt that as an entrepreneur, with my money on the line, I want to know all the dirt.
Candor languishes in an organization where people manage their careers instead of the business. “Yes-men” are quite common. There’s nothing special about them. Too many leaders prefer pretty lies to ugly truths, even if they bear responsibility for dealing with the ugly truths. My dad depended on his workers to aggravate him; he wanted to hear the salespeople’s complaints about the products and the factory workers’ complaints about the equipment. It cost him a lot of sleepless nights, but it’s how he kept improving the company.
In Good to Great (Collins Business, 2001), Jim Collins explains that the best leaders derive ego satisfaction from the success of the company, not self-aggrandizement. These leaders possess enough humility to encourage – even demand – candor in their organizations, because a key component of the good-to-great transformation is the determination to face facts, however unpleasant.
Candor does not require the blurting out of everything that pops into your head. Nor must your honest opinions be delivered callously. Tact helps us communicate more effectively, but tact must not obscure meaning. Deano (blog editor) often observes that people don’t need sensitivity training as much as they need de-sensitivity training, so they can set their feelings aside and apply their intellect to organizational problem solving.
Whether we censor ourselves for fear of hurting someone’s feelings, or we censor ourselves for fear of personal repercussions, our timidity denies to others the greatest value we can offer: independent thought. Show respect for others by being honest with them. Show respect for yourself by being honest with others, regardless of the cost.
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Letters to a Young Contrarian (Basic Books, 2005).