The Truth About Honesty

Think you’re honest? We all do. I rarely meet anyone who doesn’t believe that he or she is a good, old-fashioned, truth telling citizen. However, if you are a truly honest person, then you are a rarity, because studies on dishonest behavior assert that practically everyone is something of a fibber if not an out and out liar. Consider

• In a survey of 40,000 people, 93 percent admitted to lying “regularly and habitually” in the workplace ( Fast Company, 9/97).

• College students admit that at least 70 percent of their excuses for missed assignments are lies ( Psychology Today, 11/2002).

• Of 12,750 workers, only 63 percent feel that their companies conduct business with honesty and integrity (Business Week, 9/2/2002).

To be credible, you must be overwhelmingly honest— so honest that people never question whether what you say is the truth as you know it. And if this weren’t difficult enough, you must be overwhelmingly honest in ways that show respect and care for people. Doing all this—especially in today’s complicated world—requires tremendous skill, practice, and fortitude.

In their landmark book on credibility, authors and leadership experts James Kouzes and Barry Posner wrote: “Of all the attributes of credibility, however, there is one that is unquestionably of greatest importance. The dimension of honesty accounts for more of the variance in believability than all of the other factors combined” (Credibility, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1993, p. 24).

You may be a person who “wants the best” for all, who is sincerely kind, and who seeks understanding and keeps promises, but if you veer from the truth—even for the “good” reasons of not wanting to hurt another’s feelings or wanting things to go smoothly—your credibility will suffer.

Matthew, a charismatic 56-year-old who has held leadership positions in several industries for more than 30 years, knows how crucial honesty is to his performance as a leader. “I had an experience very early in my career that changed me and made me become totally committed to honesty,” he once confided. As a young division manager at a consumer products company, Matthew had selected Jim, who seemed capable and well liked, as his new sales manager, but within a few months, Matthew realized that he had misjudged Jim’s abilities for a managerial position. Still, Matthew supported Jim and tried to manage the sales team through him. Ayear later Jim sat across from Matthew and angrily described a year of struggle and disappointment. “You knew from the start that I was not qualified to do this job, and you sat by and said nothing. You should have told me,” Jim told Matthew. Rather than tell Jim the truth early on, Matthew had chosen to “let the situation play out.”

Despite Matthew’s best intentions, his lack of honesty resulted in the loss of an employee whose other talents Matthew valued and could have benefited the company in other ways. Matthew’s company had to invest in replacing Jim, and the team had to suffer through the transition. It was a hard lesson for Matthew, but it stuck. “When I’m faced with the difficult choice of telling the truth or avoiding it, I always see Jim’s face in front of me. Then the choice seems easy—I tell the truth.”

A leader’s ability to build a history of consistently telling the truth correlates directly with the level of trust others have for that leader. And trust is vital to motivating and influencing others, making leaders’ truth-telling skills indicative not only of their personal reputation but also of their entire organization’s level of success.

And yet, individuals often miss the mark in assessing how honest others believe them to be. We believe that we are honest just like we believe that we are nice. To think otherwise would challenge our whole sense of self. How do you rate your ability to be honest in all transactions? How would others rate you?