Honesty - The Most Precious Commodity

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Teams rely on one over-riding commodity to be truly effective – complete honesty. And if a team is going to progress to a new level, the natural points of tension and conflict need to be explored and exploited. Its not that executives seek to hide things from each other, or even deliberately avoid conflict, but often an individual feels pressured to conform or to be the one that brings harmony back to an uncomfortable situation.

Fear of saying the ‘wrong’ thing can cripple a team, and nothing destroys progress within an organisation quicker than disunity amongst the senior team.

In my experience the manifestation of this is where individual Directors communicate one thing within the team, and something different in the wider organisation. But why would a Director say one thing in a Board Meeting, and another outside? Simply, they do not hold absolute honesty to be the most valuable commodity that binds them together as a single cohesive unit.

Since none of us would say that individual Directors deliberately lie to each other, or mischievously act in conspiracy with cynics lower down the organisation, what exactly am I talking about? I am talking about situations where an individual Director chooses in a meeting with their  co-Directors to communicate (whether overtly in words, or subtly through body language, or indeed simply through omission – doing nothing!) that they are in agreement with a decision, but then goes out and behaves in a way that communicates that they do not agree.

Take the case of a Board agreeing that each Director will allocate one member of their staff to a central task force. And lets say this decision is taken in October. So how can it arise that 4 months later only two of the Directors have actioned the decision and the rest are still querying whether its really necessary. How can this happen? Was the decision made or wasn’t it? What has stopped the 3 non-conforming Directors from actioning the decision? Why has the CEO allowed the situation to go unchallenged? Are they all in fact in a conspiracy with each other? Something is not right, so what is it?

There are a number of reasons why as an individual Director, we might choose to say one thing and then do another.

Fear – a very powerful motivator. If we fear that communicating our disagreement will cause a negative reaction from either the CEO or indeed any of our colleagues, then we may not be courageous enough to voice our views honestly, especially where we may have gone along with the thinking to date. The fear of evoking that look of judgement from a colleague across the table that says “how can you be raising this now, after what you said to me last week?” or perhaps even worse, the look from the CEO that says “how can you possibly believe what you are saying?” might be enough to stop us from going against the decision. Maybe we just don’t want to be seen as over pedantic or cautious.

Care – another very powerful motivator. If we know that saying no to the CEO or to a colleague will disappoint that person, then we may be tempted to go along with a decision. Maybe we feel that to really be honest, we have to risk making one of our colleagues look foolish. We can often allow personal sensitivities to get in the way of true honesty.

Hope – a much used but unpublicised strategy. Sometimes we may disagree, but we actually tell ourselves that it will probably work out ok, and that maybe we shouldn’t rock the boat. After all, who are we to stand against our colleagues? We then persuade ourselves that they are probably right and we then ‘hope’ that it will all work out. Or maybe we just ‘hope’ that we can say yes and then no one will actually follow up?

Culture – maybe its simpler than all the reasons above. Maybe we just have a culture whereby we are actually all in conspiracy with each other – where we can all go along with the CEO, but that experience has taught us that we can get away with not actually doing anything about it, especially where we can obfuscate with a mountain of excuses. If we know from experience that the team will accept my not achieving something or not having acted on something by the deadline, then why would I put myself under pressure?  

There are many forces at work that could stop a team from being completely honest. However, as individuals, if we are going to ‘go along’ with a team decision, are we then going to go out and wholeheartedly work to make the decision a success? Or are we going to go out and effectively do nothing? Worse – are we going to go out and betray our disagreement by the way in which we behave. Employees are very cute readers of body language, and know instinctively when we are not behind something.

We work incredibly hard in our organisations to minimise cost and waste, and to maximise productivity and efficiency. And these things are clearly measurable when it comes to employees, equipment and money. However, all the gains we can make in these areas pale into insignificance when put against ‘management’ efficiency. If we can achieve maximum efficiency in management, we gain on many fronts – fewer managers (and therefore lower costs), speedier decisions and actions (and therefore faster growth) and more involved and motivated employees (and therefore higher quality).

And the way to maximise management efficiency is to ensure that absolute honesty sits at the heart of the team culture round the board room table.

Article excerpted from “And The Leader Is….” and “Corporate Emotional Intelligence…” by Gareth Chick

About the Author:

Gareth Chick is a 40 year corporate veteran with a global profile. His career has included hugely successful spells as CFO, CEO and Chairman in both public and private sectors, including private equity. What makes Gareth's experience unique is that he combined those executive roles with a part time career as a leadership trainer, researching psychology, neuroscience and psychotherapy to create leadership development programmes used now by many major global corporations. In the last 15 years Gareth has trained over 5000 managers and served as Executive Coach to over 200 senior execs including FTSE100 CEOs and Fortune 500 VPs. As Founder of Collaborative Equity LLP, “promoting corporate cultures and sustainable business models of shared ownership, shared responsibility and shared rewards", Gareth acts as consultant to many global leaders, specialising in first time CEOs and Start Up founders. ↠ find out more at ceq.com

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Gareth Chick

Gareth Chick is Founder and Managing Partner of Collaborative Equity LLP, “promoting corporate cultures and sustainable business models of shared ownership, shared responsibility and shared rewards.”