There’s a growing body of research to show that the highest functioning teams are the most honest.  They can share their actual experiences, thoughts, and feelings without fear of repercussion.  And that allows them to shed the tremendous cognitive load most teams carry by constantly thinking about HOW to say something, whether to say it, or what magical combination of words will avoid upsetting THIS person while still influencing THAT person.  Most teams spend an outrageous amount of energy doing that sort of performative “dance” with each other.  Even though our bodies and hearts hate that dance, we still do it.  We do it because of fear.  We do it because we don’t feel safe enough NOT to do it.  

For about the first two years of your life, you didn’t really know how to be dishonest.  You didn’t know how to sugar-coat a message.  You were terrible at managing your image.  You lived in a state of total emotional honesty and you were “aligned” in your behavior. In other words, the way you felt was the way you behaved. Now, as an adult, that idea might sound immature and “unprofessional”…

Visualize yourself surrounded by the people you work with.  With some of them you might feel closely connected, like you are “with” them.  While with others, you might feel more distant or even “against” them - as if there is a barrier that exists to truly understanding and connecting with them.   The more we start to understand that barrier, the more we see that it may not be between us, but inside of us.  And that barrier has a name: ego.   

It seems like every week there’s a trending story about the latest company that’s fighting the power struggle of getting people back to the workplace.  I don’t know how this will end. Clearly, there’s benefits to working from home - and those may be too powerful to overcome for many people.  But it seems like many companies are just attempting to lure their employees out of their homes with workplace perks and/or reverting to ultimatums when the perks prove ineffective or impractical.  And what about schools and hospitals and places where people can’t work from home?  Are they at a permanent disadvantage for recruiting talent?

I spent many years as a leader avoiding my own pain and trying to create the illusion of a pain-free team.  I constantly thought about how to keep everyone’s focus on how well things were going, and ensure that my leaders were responding immediately to even the smallest challenge team members were facing - lest their experience become painful in some way. 

It helped me create a team culture that was very “positive.”  I’m not sure it helped me create a team culture that was very safe.

When does honesty backfire?  When we’re not being honest with ourselves first.  Almost every leader we work with has a sense that “good” leaders are honest - even when it’s hard.  They say the hard thing.  And a lot of our leadership intensives are spent exploring what that feels like.  But there is a problem with focusing FIRST on being honest with others. 

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. 

Many leaders have mixed feelings about inviting more vulnerability on their teams.  But when a team can’t be vulnerable, they manipulate instead.

“Manipulate” is a word that gets a strong reaction from most people.  But when we consider the definition – to control or influence someone – it’s often not a devious behavior, but a very common and understandable one.  Especially at work.  And especially when people don’t feel completely safe.  

On average, we have about 4,000 weeks to spend on this planet. Most of those will be “work weeks.”

We spend a lot of our lives with the people we work with. When it comes to the emotional roller-coaster that is the human experience, the reality is that much of that ride will be taken with our coworkers.

My daughter is a year and a half, and the question that’s been looming over my wife and me is whether we’re going to try for a second child.  When we first started talking about it, it seemed like we were just in different places (I wanted another one and she didn’t).  But recently we started having a fully honest conversation.