Honesty in Leadership

Being an honest leader can work wonders more than you can imagine. You may ask yourself; how can I be honest with some individuals? You may be saying, “I can’t be honest if it hurts someone’s feelings”. If you aren’t honest with people, it will eventually hurt your team more and the goal you are trying to accomplish. Not only it will hurt the individual or individuals by preventing them from learning and working on their personal growth. Before we get into it, lets me tell you the first thing you need to do.

Before being honest with anyone, you need to be honest with yourself. Yes, that’s right, yourself. You may be saying you are honest to yourself, but what I want you to understand is that everyone will tell themselves a little lie to help ease anything that may become uncomfortable. Everyone does it, I still do it, but the difference is that I catch myself doing it and I become honest with myself. This helps me progress past the situation quicker, easier, and with a clear mind. So, for those of you who are in denial with the prior statement I want you to stop and take a breath, look deep inside, and be honest with yourself. Think of something that happened that was uncomfortable and what it was that you told yourself to help you through discomfort. Now ask yourself, is what you told yourself the truth? Take a second, really think, were you being honest? If the discomfort continued and you couldn’t stop thinking about it and it just continued to bug you, then you probably weren’t honest with yourself. Now, think of the same situation that caused discomfort and be honest with yourself. I am not telling you to blame yourself! I am telling you to be honest about the situation and don’t tell yourself something different to justify your reaction or retraction from that situation. I find it easier to move on past something if I am honest about it right away and when I do so, I have moved passed it within minutes. If it bugs you for hours or days, you have not been completely honest with yourself. Once you master this, you will be able to lead others through honesty.

Let us move on to being honest with others. It is so easy to be let someone know that they did an amazing job, or they helped you out a ton because it is positive. People react well under positive conditions. Not only does it make the other person feel good it makes you feel good. It is a win win situation. What do you do when you need to tell someone that they did not do such a great job? There are ways to do this without a negative response and keep their spirits up. Let me give you and example of one of the many times I had to give negative feedback to an individual that didn’t perform very well and how I turned it around to help grow this individual.

We were in the middle of the summer season which is our peak season for a specific product. Our piece of machinery was having issues and I told an employee that the issue needed to be taken care of before more products had come in. A couple of days have passed, and our shipment of product came in. I went out to talk to the driver as I usually do and see how they have been (he is our regular delivery driver). While I was there and the product was being offloaded, I noticed that the issue had not been fixed but look as if it may have been started but not completed. This threw off our delivery and we ended up having to transfer the load to a different location. I became concerned because I noticed that more projects are not being completed completely by this same individual and I have been having to follow up with him more and more to ensure things were getting complete. The driver left and I called the employee over that was supposed to finish the project.

I asked him why it had not been completed. He said he was about to get it finished but had to get another thing done and then he had to help a customer. At this point, I noticed that he was scattered from here to there. I told him that we needed to get it done and that I would go grab the tools and asked if he would go get, he parts. I grabbed the tools, and he got the parts. We met back at the machinery and began working on it. While we were working, I asked him if everything was going ok. He looked at me and said things were ok and then he asked why. Him asking that question gave me the opportunity to be honest to him about his performance. I stated that I have noticed that his performance had been dwindling and I wanted to make sure he was happy with his position or if there is anything issues that we as a company need to address. He said that he enjoyed his job, but he had been going through a rough divorce. This helped me understand where he was at in his mindset. I offered him any advice I may have to try and help him and let him know if he needed anything to let me know and I would try to help the best I could. I also reminded him that he needs to try to leave it at home and try to focus on his work. I let him know I understood that what he was experiencing was difficult and we would help him out the best we could, but we needed him to be levelheaded at work. I then offered him some time off if he thought he needed it. He denied needing time off, his performance improved, and he became more honest with me if he was having a rough day and I of course helped with tasks and offered an ear if he needed it.

This is just one situation, but what if you are experiencing someone that is just not able to perform the task? Let me tell you of another situation with a different employee I had to let them know that their performance did not meet the standard I was looking for.

I was working with an individual that was young and did not have much experience in the work force. He was a good guy, hilarious, had a great attitude, and did a decent job. There was just one part of the job that he would occasionally mess up on. Now, his screw up wasn’t a big deal but could be a big deal. He would drop things in the production tank (this was not food grade production). Like I said, it wasn’t a big deal but could become a big deal. There were times where we would shut down production for about five minutes, he would find the item he dropped and we would be up and running again, but there were other times where we would shut down for hours looking for this item. He knew he was screwing up and we always tried to keep a positive attitude. He knew that the more time production was down, the more money he was costing the company. He tried his best to find the object and get us up and running again, I will give him that. It just came to the point we couldn’t continue to run this way. I sat him down and let him know that I didn’t think that this was the right fit for him. I was being honest. I also let him know that he did a decent job, and he is a great guy for our culture, but we couldn’t continue to lose money by being shut down from the same mistake repeatedly. He ended up agreeing and stated that he understood my decision. I then let him know that his services were no longer needed. I always tell people their services are no longer needed and never tell people they are fired (unless they ask if they are fired), because they are providing a service, which is a subject I will talk about in another segment. He asked if he could hang out for a little bit because he had to call his wife due to his car had broken down the day before. I told him that he could do that, or I could give him a ride. Many of you are probably thinking “how awkward would that be?” He took the ride, and it wasn’t awkward. It let me tell him that he has many strengths and I know that he will find something he will excel in. I also told him if he needed, I would write a letter of recommendation if he needed. He reached out several times throughout the years and no hard feelings were ever projected toward each other. This is how powerful honesty can be.

I will give you one more example and then I will close this out. I had a hard-working administrator working under me. This was a high stress environment, and most people would not last in this position for more than a season, but she was going on her second season. She approached me in my office one day and stated that she had a job offer that paid more than the position that she was currently doing, and it was worked that she enjoyed doing. She told me that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to take it but in six months, she would be a manager running her own crews. She said that she would stay with our company if I could match the pay that the other company had offered her. I asked what they were offering and when she told me, I told her that there was no way I would be able to match their pay. Being honest, I let her know that this is an opportunity that she should take because I would not be able to offer her a similar opportunity. She then became concerned about what I was going to be able to handle the workload if she accepted the other position. I let her know that I will be able to handle it, I have done it before, and that she should take the position she was offered to better herself and her lifestyle considering that it is something she enjoyed doing. I let her know that I would be happy if she stayed with our company but to let me know when she decided what she was going to do. Later that afternoon, she let me know she would be taking the other position and is officially putting in her two-week notice. The next day she showed up and turned in all company property she had and stated that she didn’t need to show up because I could handle it. Now, being honest may have bit me in the butt, but it gave her the opportunity to better herself. I am not sure what she had made of herself, but I am confident that she had progressed further than my company at the time was able to progress her.

Being honest is, in my opinion, the best thing that you can do. There are ways to be honest without being disrespectful. I find it easier to notify someone of what they need to work on and follow it up with the great things they do. For example, if someone isn’t great at paperwork, let them know that they need to work on their paperwork. Remind them that they do a great at all other aspects of the job or even go above and beyond in some areas but reiterate how important paperwork is and explain why paperwork is so important. Play on their strengths to get them to better their weaknesses.

None of this can be achieved if you are not honest with yourself. When you are honest with yourself, you will grow. When you are honest with other people, they will grow, and you will grow with them.

Do you have an experience where you had to be honest? What was the result? Please share your experiences in the comments. If you found this informative or have a certain situation where you don’t know how to be honest, please like or comment below. If you feel there is a topic which should be covered, let us know in the comments and maybe we will address that topic later. Share and subscribe. We appreciate you and will see you again.