Leadership And Blunt Honesty
by Miki Saxon
Be sure to read this terrific article in Forbes shows you why reading Machiavelli’s The Prince is well worth your time as it is a great guide to handling the powerful people at work and other places who have the ability to make your life hell. Machiavelli spent four months at Cesare Borgia’s court and lived to tell the tale and offer up guidance to the rest of us.
“In popular culture, Machiavelli is synonymous with deceit and treachery. However, Machiavelli’s main concerns were the security of the state and the welfare of its people. Much of his leadership advice is plain common sense.”
For most of my years in business, my clients’ nickname for me has been Michiavelli and I always saw it as a great compliment.
In addition to common sense, one of the traits we have in common is unvarnished honesty. Phil Gerbyshak over at Slacker Manager once asked me how that bluntness affected managing and other interactions; it was no problem as long as I never lost site of four basic points.
Blunt honesty is not about being
- insulting, demeaning or contemptuous; or
- personal attacks.
It is about
- telling someone the truth as you see it and then listening and hearing their responses;
- the clearly understanding that they have full reciprocity when they do respond;
- never retaliating for their honesty.
For example,
When interviewing a company that isn’t doing well a candidate may say one of the following,
“I’ve read that your financials are really messed up. Whose fault is it and what are you doing to fix it?”
“I’ve read that the company is experiencing a period of financial difficulty; has the cause been identified and how could I contribute to the solution?”
The content is the same, but the manager would be justified for scratching the candidate for the first, while the candidate should drop the company if there is no valid response to the second
When your team is not doing as well as you like you can say,
“Your productivity has gone to hell and I need you guys to get your acts together and bring it back up.”
“Our productivity is down; we need to identify the causes and work together to turn it around.”
For which manager would you rather work?
Honesty may be blunt, even brutal when people don’t want to hear it, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be harsh.
(Hat tip to KG Charles-Harris for sending me the Forbes article.)
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Image credit: flickr
