Peter Natra argues honesty means speaking hard truths despite personal risk, and that it's inseparable from integrity. An honest employee admits mistakes; an honest organization follows its own policies consistently from top to bottom. Leaders who ignore the rules they set lose respect and erode trust.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Naked Insider channel. Today we've got Peter Natra. Welcome back.
Thank you.
Today's video, we're going to be answering a very interesting question. Is honesty still valid in today's age?
Honestly? Yes.
Honestly. That's a good remark. Okay, so what is honesty?
Honesty is the ability to say the hard things in spite of the risks and do the hard things in spite of the risks and adhere to what it is that your integrity tells you must be done.
But isn't that more from a. Well, they can say it, but do they act? It's a different thing, Correct?
Yep.
Okay, so what is the value of honesty?
The value of honesty is that you can move forward no matter what it is that you're doing. If you are honest about where you're going or honest about what's happening, you can reassess, rechart your options and move forward in an informed manner.
Okay. Yeah. So if we had to describe an employee, how would you describe an honest employee?
Basically, the employee that is willing to say, hey, Bosson, raise my hand, I stuffed up. And I mean, that's the core of it. There's also risk involved for the employee. So the consequences of that, it's kind of like, yeah, listen, I'm sticking my hand up and saying, this is what happened and whatever else happens from here, let it happen.
But it's also sort of a code of conduct. Correct. I mean, it's an expectation by the employer to look at the employer and say, okay, I'm gonna hire you and I expect you to do the right. Yeah, honest. So I don't want you to go, for example, steal or cause harm to someone because I want you to act in the best interest. Correct?
Correct.
Okay. So from an organization point of view, okay, talking from two perspectives, why is it important from an employee perspective for them to be honest? But why is it important for an organization to have honesty?
So as an, as an individual, to be honest, there are so many things that we can do to make. To be a politician in this life.
Yes.
The problem is that you have to follow those up. You have to keep track of them. And at some point in time, shorter or longer period of time, it's going to trip you up and you're going to be caught out big time.
Yeah.
By your own two left feet, essentially.
Yeah.
From an organization's point of view, honesty is one of the most important commodities to be able to say, okay, this is what's happening. This is where we need to go. It might not be the most exciting Information, or it might not be the most good news, but at least we know. So those are the two things. And it has to be ingrained in both the organisation and in the individual. Because if you have a dishonesty situation, if dishonesty is tolerated within the organization, then things start to bleed out and become unpredictable in ways that nobody can chart yet.
Correct. And we're going to talk about that. Yep. So the question is, how does honesty then manifest itself? How does it show up within an organization?
Within an organization, yeah.
And the employee. So it's not something that people have to work on it. But you talked about it on the side. It becomes a habit.
Well, it is. And I guess that's one of the indicators to see how people are. If they're honest in the little things, they're going to be honest in the big things. And that's just a habitual way of being. And also it's a choice. Every day, every moment, every situation, employees and organizations have a choice. Am I going to be straight about this or am I going to fudge it?
Correct.
And yeah, it's also a discipline in a lot of ways.
And we talked about. Sorry, we do all this side talk, but we talked about honesty and trust because this is a challenge for organizations. For example, when they hire someone, they usually go through a probation period. And this is where you sort of measure the trust. Do I trust this person after three months, four months, six months? Do we take employees for granted that they need to be honest?
We do, but it's also a courtesy. So if we employ someone, we actually extend them the courtesy of giving them a level of trust.
Yes.
It's now up to the employee to reward that level of trust with honesty.
Correct.
And nothing erodes trust faster than not being honest about things.
Yes.
You know, the old adage of how do you build trust? Is you actually do small things, make small and meet small commitments and then increase your commitments from there. That's the formula for creating trust. And that implies honesty and integrity.
Okay, which leads me to that question. What is the difference between honesty and integrity?
Integrity is an understanding that somebody will not break their own code of conduct, will not break their own trust agreement with either the organization, with either the customer, or if you're looking at relationships, you won't break that agreement with the people who you trust or who trust you.
Yep. So let's look at a scenario. You know, you know, when an employee gets hired, they usually go through the process of sort of the organization policies and controls that they have to abide what exactly are they? Number one, from your perspective.
So the policies and controls are guidelines for conduct and they're as much important for the individual as it is for the organisation. So the organisation must also be seen to be adhering to. To those rules and policies, because time after time I've seen walked into organizations and people. It's a bit like the Italian road rules. They're more like guidelines. My apologies. I have driven in Rome and that's fine to a certain extent. But if you're going to run an organization that needs trust and works on trust, it needs to be both ways. If this is what the policy says, it needs to be up and down the organization. So if you're expecting trust to be an expression of your individuals, then you also need to be giving back that trust in what you do, how you follow the policies and how you deal
with the individual, because you get the situation. And some organization will display, for example, where executives and management will look at policies below them so they will circumvent or completely ignore it. But from an employee, how will they see someone that basically doesn't follow the.
Well, the first thing is they lose respect.
Correct.
So the moment you have loss of respect on somebody who is supposedly your superior or direct superior, you lose trust in that individual. So why would you then reward that mistrust with trust?
Yeah. So sort of tying it up. Can you have honesty without integrity?
No. Honesty and integrity work hand in hand. In fact, the measure of integrity is the level of honesty.
All right, so let's talk about a point that we talked earlier on, which is basically when you have dishonesty within an organization or maybe an employee that carries quite a bit of weight, what happens to the organization? What are the risks associated with maybe a culture of dishonesty?
Yeah. If you're in an environment which is habitually dishonest, don't expect that your corporate crown jewels are not up for grabs. It's that simple.
Yeah. All right. Put it blindly. Okay, so coming to the key message, the takeaway for this video is basically, is honesty still important in this, in today's age?
Yes, it is very important in today's age. And I would like to amplify that by saying if you find that somebody is being honest to you, especially if an employee is being honest to you, recognize that there is a risk factor that they're overcoming. They're now placing their trust in you to say, okay, this might be something that you might explode about, but I'm being honest about this. I need you to respect that and be honest back with me as well too. So it's a two way street.
Brilliantly said.
Well, thank you.
Okay, well, with that, we conclude this video. We still have more coming up. If you've got any ideas of some topics that you'd like us to talk, let us know.
