Is “honesty” a skill?
I’ve had many moments in my leadership that bring up regret or shame because, looking back, I can see where my choices hurt someone or sent a damaging message to my team. Often, I wasn’t coming from an honest place in those moments - I was acting too quickly from a place of defensiveness, fear, or hurt - I just didn’t realize it.
It’s easy to think of “honesty” as a virtue - as something we all know how to do and we just need to make the “right choice” to do it. I deeply believe that it’s a SKILL - maybe the ultimate leadership skill - and that honesty can be very HARD to do, even when our desire is to do it. Especially when it comes to being honest with ourselves. How much of all leadership could be tied back to our ability to do these three things?
1. Be honest with ourselves
2. Be honest with others
3. Create space for others to be honest
Doing these three things takes a lot of self-work and deep self-awareness (and therapy helps!). The leader that can do these three things will be more in touch with reality. Their blind spots will shrink, even across lines of difference. They will prevent their ego and neurosis from becoming the work of the team. They will create psychological safety in their organizations. Their meetings will have less of the passive-aggressive behavior, subtext, and “performing for each other” that plague most teams. They will save outrageous amounts of time.
When we’re deeply in touch with ourselves, and can communicate what we are TRULY feeling, experiencing, and thinking, we are more likely to deepen our relationships with others, and invite them to be honest in return. If your “honesty” is hurting others that probably means you’re falling short on being fully honest with yourself, and - like me - acting from a wounded or fearful place, or judging someone for the thing you judge yourself about.
If we start seeing “honesty” as the skill that it is, we might start seeing “leadership development” less about learning some new knowledge or technique and more of a transformative process of connecting with our inner selves.
