Chad Silverstein argues that leaders rarely tell the truth because it hurts, but candor early and paired with care beats silence. Address problems fast, calibrate bluntness by how much trust you've built, and make truthfulness a core principle.
Chapters
It's amazing how much people lie. You know, liars lie, cheaters cheat, and it's just a fact. Whether it's on their resume, whether it's because they don't want to get in trouble, whether it's because they want to look good and get your approval, make someone else look bad, not take responsibility, whatever. The reason being is that, you know, people lie. And it's an unfortunate thing. Now, people who can tell the truth and how they can give that truth over, that is a rare quality. And that's something that leaders need to build into their core. And it's such a funny thing how hard it is to tell the truth. And I think the reason is because it hurts. A lot of times when you have to tell someone the truth. And let's just use work, for example, because someone's maybe not pulling their weight or they screwed up and didn't take responsibility, or you just have to tell them something hard. And whether you're in a position to be able to do that or not shouldn't make a difference whether you're the boss or whether you're not the boss, whether you have a boss. We should be wired to tell the truth. It's so much easier to live that way. As soon as you tell a lie, as soon as you smudge the truth a little bit, you got to cover that up if you're going to follow through with that and you got to then lie about the lie and at some point in your life, you got to give it up and you gotta just accept the fact that it is refreshing when people can just speak their truth. Now remember, your truth doesn't make it true. Your truth is your truth. And that doesn't make it so. So you have to be clear and humble yourself and know that you know your truth could be wrong, but at least people will know where you're coming from. And if that means you have to tell your co worker or, you know, your kid or a friend or someone in the community something that's going to hurt, then you owe it to that person to do it. Now, you have to keep in mind, if you have no trust with this person, then you may have to do it a little different than you would with someone that you do have trust with. Because if I have an abundance of trust with one of my co workers that I've worked with for 10 years, then I can hit them right between the eyes with truth because they know how much I care about them, they know it's coming from a good place, and then I Love them. But someone who's brand new who I have to tell them, hey, this is how you get fired by doing xyz. And I see you doing it. There's no trust there. They're going to freak out when they hear me say that. And I have to be a little sensitive to that. But again, it's always easier to be harder up front and loosen up the reins than to be soft on people and then have to get harder down the road when people aren't working out well or they're not pulling their weight. So remember, tough first and then loosen up. It's a lot easier again, just to get to loosen the reins. But people deserve to hear the truth. And because it's so rare and people don't do it, it's important that you do and you adopt some principle when it comes to the truth. However you want to do that in your six pack and your core and your principles, you put that in there in your worldview, make sure that you know what you believe and make sure you know what situations maybe you're going to bend. The truth is going to be whether it's because your spouse asks you how they look today or how the food, dinner, whatever it is to spare people's feelings may be a different exception. Your and and your howevers to your statements. Because again, it's never just black and white. It's never a never or all always. And it's okay to make exceptions, but you want to be known. For someone who tells the truth, you have to accept the truth. And be careful not to triple D people to defend, deny, destroy. When you hear something and remember that most people don't hear the truth. And as much as it might hurt, you owe it to people that you work with especially to tell them the truth. Whether it's that you believe in them or don't believe in them, they're not pulling their weight. They need to increase their performance. They need to show up on time. Whatever it is that you have an issue with, it's better to address it than sweep it under the rug because those problems aren't going away. And the reason that I said hit people hard when they first come in and they're brand new and be tougher then is because when people are brand new, they're trying to make a good first impression. So whatever you see from people in the interview or during their first couple weeks, that's the best you're going to see of them. And the same goes for anything that's negative. Whatever you see that's negative because they're trying to put on their best impression. You can multiply that by about 10. Because that's just going to get worse. Because once they get comfortable, more of it's going to come out. So you want to hit those bad habits right off the bat. Tell people the truth. And do it from a good place, not when you're angry. Truth and love, not truth and anger. And be a truth teller.
