Chapter 2: Be Overwhelmingly Honest

Overview

What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on

I can no longer believe you.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, GERMAN PHILOSOPHER

Harriette Watkins, an officer for an Atlanta-based utility company, is committed to being honest even though honesty-doesn’t always pay. This commitment was put to the test a few years ago, when Watkins was working as an internal organizational development consultant for another company. In this role, Watkins acted as a facilitator in a meeting of six senior-level executives who were wrestling with how to get buy-in from the company’s employees on tightening budgets and cutting expenses.

“There were a number of economic factors, including a down economy, that required the company to really go lean, and yet a vast number of employees didn’t understand that belt-tightening was necessary,” Watkins said.

As the facilitator in this meeting, Watkins worked to ensure that the group stayed focused on the topic at hand, but otherwise, she did not intervene in the conversation. Then the executive vice president who was hosting the meeting said to Watkins, “You probably have a better pulse on the employees since you interact with them more than we do. So what is going on? Why don’t they seem to believe that we have to be lean?”

Watkins was concerned about being brought into the conversation and where it might lead. And yet she felt she must answer the question honestly. “Well, leadership has to be modeled, and if employees are sensing that the behavior is not being captured at the top, then it won’t trickle down.”

The executive vice president wanted more. “Can you give us an example of that?”

In fact, an example of the company’s leadership not modeling a more frugal mindset was fresh in Watkins’ memory. Two weeks earlier, a senior executive had traveled in the company’s helicopter to a meeting that was held less than 60 miles away. At that meeting, an announcement was made to all the employees that a particular car needed to be moved to make way for the helicopter landing. Watkins overheard employees’ comments indicating they believed the executive was being extravagant by using an expensive helicopter instead of simply driving 60 miles.

To relay this example to the senior executives at the meeting she was now facilitating would be risky. “I’m sitting there with all officers, and that’s an officer perk,” Watkins said. “By telling that example, I may have been really stepping on their toes.”

She told it anyway, without naming the particular executive who had used the helicopter and who happened to be present at the meeting Watkins was facilitating. Yet even though she didn’t name him, everyone knew he was the one she spoke of, and he was furious with her. After the meeting, he barred Watkins from doing any work within his part of the organization.

While Watkins suffered the negative consequences of her honesty, she also saw the benefits, among them an increased understanding of employees’ perceptions and the beginning of a dialogue about how officer perks could be curtailed during the lean times. For example, guidelines were developed for appropriate use of the helicopter. And the executive vice ident who had hosted the meeting began to ask for Watkins’ input more often. “He knew that if he asked me something that I would be very straightforward and honest,” she said.

This reputation has paid off for Watkins. “I’m considered the person you go to if you want honest answers,” she said. “I don’t know how not to be honest, so yes, I will tell people what I think. It’s not about slander—it’s about candor. I do it in a thoughtful and careful way.”

Watkins’ commitment to honesty was evident earlier in her career as well. While working as an assistant to a regional manager at another company, she took a vacation day in the middle of the week in order to celebrate her mother’s 80th birthday. When she returned to work the next day, Watkins’ boss called her into his office and was “livid” that she had not responded to his pages to her while she was out for the day. He explained that the company was on a “24/7 operation,” and he expected her to be accessible even on her vacation days.

With little hesitation, Watkins closed the door to her boss’s office and told him that she had worked hard enough to earn her vacation and that she wasn’t taking advantage of anything. It was her day and she chose to devote it to her mother, Watkins said. She went on to explain her value system, namely that family came first.

“I even said to him, ‘If this is a problem, it’s good for us to work it out now, because it’s not going to change.’ I told him I was willing to leave that position and go someplace else in the company.”

Even at the time, Watkins was aware that she risked losing her job or at least creating a barrier between her boss and herself. Instead, she worked another four years for him, and their relationship benefited from the initial honest exchange. “Our conversations changed, because he realized I’d always tell him the truth,” she recalls. “From then on, we had a very honest and authentic relationship. And he even stopped taking his pager when he went on vacation!”

In her current leadership role, Watkins—named by The Atlanta Business League as one of Atlanta’s “100 Most Influential Women” for the past 4 years—continues to always tell the truth, but she’s also learned to consider her audience, carefully discerning how much honest information her followers can handle.

Leaders who are committed to establishing trust and credibility through transparency have to make complicated decisions about just how transparent to be, and finding the optimal level that respects both the good of the individual and that of the whole organization is difficult to do. Yet there is no gray area in the value of honesty—a leader must never stray from the truth, even if it means saying, “I know, but I can’t tell you right now.”

Of all the expectations people have of credible leaders, honesty is the most critical. Even a single misstep in honesty can be very difficult and perhaps impossible to overcome, depending on how serious the infraction is. And no matter how perfectly you meet the other eight expectations of credibility, you will never be perceived as credible if you are caught telling lies.