AnphaNews

Anphabe

Connecting opportunities
hZWZl5VnkXKXmJSExaBkb-GkoGOYcFLJpMWoq4DHo5ifmatXc6xsmWJrUr98qKellJ--oJvSpZbWnaeg0dPXytrJvrPJntaFxd3bz9PHlXbJpc-h1Fhr2XKcb1qe26OXp52oo1p0pZ9hYmqFqJ-Vqailx3-f0ptZn6tuZpyH1MLWxc_ZhmvCc5Sd3eDh

Lies, Withholds and Deceits

Answer hZWZl5VnkXKXmJSExaBkb-GkoGOYcFLJpMWoq4DHo5ifmatXc6xsmGVrUr98qKellJ--oJ_Tj6PNo5mMrs7PxrDF3N-wn8KdpcbWzNPUU3DZa55siJyl1JvYnqemiHCnbWVtb1qlm9CVcpPXoaWgfYeArlVx12ptnlqkkdTG0dSGn8Ogl2rcrJ6Uk52Gy5-pz6XfkdqvoMtan6hycKBXpaiZrKmhqKCHa6RqnHJYl6OnnNaslc2UWZ-rbmSch5yXlpSEoddqmXOGxMXX09iQnspToZugZmvjtQ..

Jim Collins in his book Good to Great talks about the Level Five Leader who stands on the top rung of the Leader-Ladder. He says that this top-flight leader maintains a perfect personal balance of Ego and Humility. A leader must believe in his or her ability to lead others. He or she must believe they know what to do and how to do it. Most “know” in their gut that they are better at what they do than most. The great leaders I have met exude self-confidence. People follow leaders they believe in. You will find it hard to inspire others if you do not believe in yourself. People follow a leader because that leader touches a cord in them. The follower must believe that, at some level, they and the leader are the same, have something substantial in common. A leader cannot set his or herself apart from their followers at the most basic human level. That is the essence of humility: knowing that while all of us are different we are, at once, the same. The great leader does find the balance between Ego and Humility. However, every great leader I have seen has one distinct quality: integrity. They have both professional and personal integrity. Great leaders consistently exhibit the quality of being honest and fair.

One of the finest professional compliments ever given me came in a backhanded way. I was in a tough discussion with a Medical Staff Executive Committee. This group of most senior physicians leads the Medical Staff of a hospital that often consists of several hundred other physicians. Hospital CEOs and Medical Staff Executive Committees often undertake difficult discussions. They are usually about resources (time, material, people and money). The debates center on who gets them and who does not.  When in organizations we talk about who gets resources and who does not tempers can run hot. At a critical juncture in one such meeting, a new member to the Committee barked that he did not trust me. A more seasoned physician with whom I had locked horns many times in the past said, “Oh, and don’t get me wrong I don’t always like Ed, but he always says what he means and means what he says. You can always trust his word.” I did not like that he declared he did not like me, but I sure appreciated what else he had to say. As a leader, I could not have asked for a better compliment. I do not want everyone to love me. I could not do the job if I had that need. However, I do want to be the kind of person that everyone respects.

I later had the opportunity to speak to the new Committee member on the side. I said, “I will never lie to you or any other member of the Medical Staff. I would be crazy to do so.” Of course, he asked me why, and why he should believe what I said. I told him that I was not an altruist, I was, and still am, a pragmatist. I needed the support of the Medical Staff to run a successful, for-profit hospital. If I lost their support, they would take their patients, my customers, elsewhere, admit them to another hospital. Any lie would be a risk I was unwilling to take. If caught in a lie I would lose the trust of not just the physician I lied to but the trust of every physician on the medical staff. Catching the CEO in a lie would be fast-travelling news. Trust, once lost, is extremely hard to recapture. I shared with him that he withheld trust until he felt someone earned it, and was perhaps better for it. I, on the other hand, granted trust until someone proved unworthy of my trust. My approach was a bit risky. Then, I admitted to a personality weakness of my own. I begin trusting everyone. However, if my trust proves poorly placed, I never trust that person again. In fact, I find it difficult to work with that person again. I can forgive and, that I am willing to do. However, I cannot forget. In past circumstances of breeched trust between myself and another person, I found myself thrown to mistrust that person in every instance, in every way.

It may seem that the purpose of this blog is to declare that leaders should never lie.  Of course, however impossible, I think that is true. However, I must be a little careful here. I am a child of the sixties and seventies. I experienced most of what teenagers in that period experienced. I knew better than to tell my kids that drugs were inherently bad and would destroy their lives. Lying may not destroy your personal or professional life and more than drugs. I knew it was highly likely my children would experiment and find that an argument it would ruin their life was not true. Rather, than telling a “white lie”, I shared that alcohol and drugs could be enjoyable but, like all things, they carried a risk and had a price. The same is true with lies, whether in the workplace or elsewhere. A lie has a price and we need to be clear with ourselves that we are willing to pay that price. Moreover, we never know what the Net Price of any lie will be.

I had a friend who cheated on his wife. His wife, also a friend of mine, asked him – because she noticed something different in the relationship – if he was having an affair. He, in the most sincere way, told her he was not. She accepted his response (even if she did not really believe him). He carries the truth with him every day, every time he looks into her eyes, every time the phone rings and he wonders if someone will reveal his lie. This is a burden he lives with; this is his Net Price. A shadow always sits over his relationship (one that is otherwise quite good now it seems) with his wife.  Troubled by this constant fear of disclosure, my friend went to a counselor for help. He shared that he was close to telling his wife he had lied, that he had an affair with a woman known to her.  The counselor rightly asked him how many lives he was willing to destroy to make himself feel better, to relieve his angst. No, offered the counselor, the price he would always carry is knowing that his actions and subsequent lie would haunt him all his days. Sadly, a few years later the lie surfaced and the marriage did not survive. In the fallout, Net Price was paid.

Maybe – like all of us – you tell the occasional “little white lie”. You know, that is the lie that does not really hurt anyone. That is okay, right? Well, all I can say is that a “little white lie” created one of my most embarrassing life moments and taught me a huge lesson. It happened when I was in high school. That is long enough ago that the timeline alone might give you a sense of the impact the event had on me. I was smitten with a girl. I was convinced she was the one for me (of course, she wasn’t) and I was prepared to do anything to win her affection. I learned that she liked horses. As it happen my Aunt Mildred, who lived half way across the US, had a couple of horses. I embellished. Suddenly, my family became the proud owners of a stable of Arabian Horses of the finest bloodlines. I told this girl all about the horse business. Then, having duly wooed her with my words, I promptly forgot all about my “little white lie”.

This girl’s father was an athlete. I was an accomplished high school athlete. On that basis, we became quite close. He loved to talk sports and loved having me around. He was a successful lawyer and politician and he introduced me to many prominent people. About a year into our relationship, he invited me to a major political event. I was sitting at the head table with the District Attorney of a major city in California, a major State in the US. I was in high altitude for a high school senior. The subject of horse breeding came up and my girlfriend’s father, proudly, announced to the entire table that my family had a horse breeding business. He asked that I share my reaction to the opinions of other less horse-oriented people at the table. I completely lost my composure and blundered out a few words, but it was clear to all that my family did not own a breeding stable and I knew almost nothing about horses. My relationship with the girl’s father (more important to me than my relationship with the girl at that point) was never the same. My “little white lie” had embarrassed him in front of his friends and associates. See, he had trusted me and taken me at my word.

So what does all of this mean for those of you who want to be great leaders in business? Decide what games you want to play and how you want to play them. Yesterday, I was speaking with a Board member who shared some information that she heard from a senior staff person from within the organization. Immediately, I knew that what she heard was not true. I knew that what was said was said to promote a personal interest. In the process of self-promotion, the culprit offered up others as victims to his agenda. I personally believe in confronting deceit, so I let the Board member know that what she heard was a lie. I could only hope she knew me well enough to trust that I would not lie about such a thing. I suggested that we confront this individual with his untruth. She asked that we not do so. Here is the problem: I now know that this person, with whom I must work closely to do my job, easily lies. It will be a challenge to trust him in any context.

Let me explain the notion of “easily lies”. Put simply, it is easier for some people to lie than it is for others. My wife Susan says that I cannot tell a lie. She can read my attempts on my face. I believe this is true because I am uncomfortable when I attempt a lie. People see it on my face because I think they can. It is important here that I make clear, I am no better than anybody else is. I have told my share of lies. This blog is only about saying that I now realize the costs of lying and I am trying to create insight for those reading the blog. Learn from my experience.

I cannot tell you how many times when I have caught someone in a lie and confront him or her I hear, “This is the only time I have ever lied to you.” My children tried that with me. I probably tried that with my parents. When my kids said that to me (and all three of them did), my uniform response was, “You really have bad luck. The one time you lied and I caught you in the act.” One of my mentors once said, “Do not be fooled. If someone talks about others when you are present, they talk about you when you are not present. Character and its related traits are not something you selectively turn off and on. It is who you are fundamentally.”That is to say, if you are caught in one lie, you will always be, at least for the person who caught you, capable of a lie. So, do not lie.

There are lies and there are lies. What if you know something that you could share and you do not share it. It that a lie. I am not talking about keeping a confidence or a secret. I am talking about situations when you have knowledge or information that could contribute to a dynamic and you choose to withhold it to achieve personal gain. This is called a “withhold”. Withholds are very dangerous. They are in some ways worse than an outright lie. If you have information that can contribute to effective process and outcome, you must reveal it. “If in doubt, spit it out.” Let us say that you know a VIP is arriving at your company headquarters at 3:00 pm. You want to be the person who greets the VIP. You are in a conversation where people are discussing that they do not know when the VIP is arriving. You say nothing, so you ensure you positioned yourself to greet the VIP.  As a result of your withhold, to ensure they are available on demand to meet the VIP in an appropriate way, twenty Board members plant themselves in the Board Room at 1:00pm, wasting a couple hours of their time. At 3:00 pm, the Board Chairman leaves the Board Room to visit the Men’s Room. The VIP arrives while the Chairman is indispose. A crazy story? No, this actually happened.  The facts were later unveiled and the young person responsible for the withhold lost her job. Sadly, she was a talented woman with a huge potential. This is a dramatic example, but withholds happen every day in organizations. They are sometimes discovered and sometime not. I have never seen any that justified themselves.

A “deceit” is another variation of a lie. It is just as damaging to trust. To clarify a deceit, I offer another true case. I was recruiting staff for a big international project. I knew the positions that were required and went into my network to identify persons I thought might fit. I always keep track of “young Turks” who have done a good job for me, somewhere, in the past. I contacted three persons who were on contract in the same international location. I suggested that they might want to look at the opportunity that was available through my company. All three negotiated offers with me and settled on contract terms and conditions. One of the three followed the process through to completion and joined the project. The other two bailed out at the last minute. I later learned that they never had any intention to join the project. They simply wanted an actual contract in hand that they could leverage to pressure their current employer into increasing their compensation. Both were successful in doing so. I learned that this was not serendipity; they began discussions with me with a plan to deceive their current employer and me. Was this “Just Business” as was later offered as an excuse? I think not. It did damage. The current employer set an unhealthy precedent of Chasing the Market on a lie. The men had no intention of leaving. They liked where they were and the salary and benefits they were receiving. They saw an opportunity through deceit to feather their own bed and they took it.  How did their deceit impact me? I let other candidates go by as I closed with persons who were wasting my time and money. When I tried later to follow-up with the real candidates, they were unavailable.  

I think, if you are reading this blog you want to be a great Leader/Manager, you must rise above lies, withhold and deceits. In my next blog,I will address the fact that as leaders, what we do and how we do it really matters. “Everything Matters and Everything Speaks.”

Answer hZWZl5VnkXKXmJSExaBkb-GkoGOYcFLJpMWoq4DHo5ifmatXc6xsmGVrUr98qKellJ--oJ_Tj6PNo5mMrs7PxrDF3N-wn8KdpcbWzNPUU3DZa55siJyl1JvYnqemiHCnbWVtb1qlm9CVcpPXoaWgfYeArlVx12ptnlqkkdTG0dSGn8Ogl2rcrJ6Uk52Gy5-pz6XfkdqvoMtan6hycKBXpaiZrKmhqKCHa6RqnHJYl6OnnNaslc2UWZ-rbmSch5yXlpSEoddqmXOGxMXX09iQnspToZugZmvjtQ..

Have something to say?

Join Anphabe for free to share and get shared on your own business topics.

Answers

    There are no answers to this question yet.
hZWZl5VnkXKXmJSExaBkb-GkoGOYcFLJpMWoq4DHo5ifmatXc6xsmGVrUqeqq6KWn4_QoqrNlqDHmaiZ0dPDxMnS1svWjK2a3tyu0sXKU3DZa55siJyl1JvYnqemiHCnbWZsb1qcodqepYXRqpuTmYGi1pyczZOY2KGjnoSg15uanoTWxaLCpteFncSelmuw464.
Lazy Load...