Honesty in Leadership

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Honesty in leadership is a trait that is too often lacking. The more egregious examples that come to mind may be companies like Enron or Theranos, whose leaders told blatant lies about the company’s performance or drove colleagues to commit legally questionable actions at their request. But there is also a second level of dishonesty that is more common and can also impact employees and the companies they work for.

This type of dishonesty can be summed up in three traits. The first is the softening of truths before they are shared with colleagues. Leaders at various levels share important information but spin, removing the key stats or leaving out crucial context to make the information seem better than it is. This softening of the truth adds up over time to give employees an incomplete picture of their performance, the teams they are a part of, and the organizations they work in day to day.

The second is not sharing the hard truths. The role of a leader is to develop the people on your team and help them reach their full potential. They cannot grow if they don’t experience the pains that lead to growth, and that means having hard conversations about the company, the team, and their individual performance. Many leaders will tell you that they encountered some hard truths along their career journey, and they are better for it, yet many leaders remain unwilling to lead hard conversations themselves. Broadly speaking, no one wants the bad news, and no one wants to give it, but 92 percent of respondents agree that negative feedback, if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.¹

Finally, a reluctance to cascade may result in poor sharing of information. Plenty of organizations have trouble cascading information from the top down. Projects, decisions, and key information are usually shared with senior leaders first, with the expectation that it will work its way down to the people who need to execute against it. Quite often, that doesn’t happen, as leaders fail to do their part in the cascade, not sharing information down the line with their direct reports, or do not stick to the "single source of truth," adding their own context to company materials. The result can be like a bad game of telephone.

To address these issues, leaders must begin taking intentional action and follow these three rules of sharing:

1. Share true and honest emotions: Vulnerability as a leader allows colleagues to be vulnerable as well. Leaders may be surprised to see how their team is there to support them, and how vulnerability can build better relationships and more trusting, open communication. When you have an opportunity to share something meaningful, especially an honest emotion, take the risk.
2. Share the hard truths: The best leaders are willing to have hard conversations with their teams and team members, and hard conversations are not always negative feedback. Your best team members will one day be leaders themselves. Think about how much they could benefit by seeing the choices you made and why you made them. Think about the times you were given a push at just the right time by a leader to help get you to the next level of your career. These are conversations that, if done well, happen only a few times in a career but can be the stepping stones to great leadership.
3. Share more context than you think: Your colleagues want to know what is going on, so it is vital that you share key information with them whenever possible. You don’t need to tell them every detail you’re privy to, but providing just 10 percent more than you might initially think to give could make a huge difference in their understanding. The small edits to information are hard to spot, because a key role of leadership is to interpret for your team, but your role as a leader is to take those messages that you are sharing and make them useful to your team, by providing understanding and value. Don’t just cascade a message; help to make sure it is impactful for your team.

If you want to be an honest leader, it is not as easy as just saying more. You’ll need to prepare for meetings differently, sitting with content and figuring out what it means for your team and how to share it. It means putting yourself out there in ways that many of us have not done before and are uncomfortable doing. It means taking a deeper look at your team, who they are, and what they bring to the table, so, if necessary, you can help them achieve that next level.

Honest leadership is hard work. But it is what our organizations and our teams need.