Fears of Telling the Truth

It would be naïve to advise you to always tell the truth without acknowledging the barriers that make this difficult. We have identified the Eight Great Fears of Telling the Truth:

Fear of retribution
Fear of hurting other people's feelings
Fear of change
Fear of being disliked
Fear of losing support
Fear of paying the price
Fear of losing competitive advantage
Fear of losing face

Fear of Retribution

People often worry that if they say what's on their minds, someone will cause them pain for doing so. This may be realistic. Consider the plight of Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, a former staff scientist and corporate executive with Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company. Wigand had first-hand knowledge of the company's deliberate efforts to get and keep smokers hooked on nicotine. After he revealed what he knew to 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman, he was fired for "poor communication skills," endured lawsuits, was smeared in the media, and even had death threats leveled against him and his family.

The good news was that it saved lives by helping the government force Brown and Williamson to alter the carcinogenic ingredients in its products. It also led to an eventual $236 billion settlement against Big Tobacco. According to David Kessler, then commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), "Dr. Wigand's assistance was central to the FDA's investigation into the role and effect of nicotine in tobacco products."

Dr. Wigand survived the ordeal to do even greater good. He became an award-winning high school teacher, was the recipient of numerous awards for his courage in exposing the tobacco industry's misdeeds, and developed a nonprofit organization called Smoke Free Kids, Inc. to help reduce teen tobacco use. The Insider, an Academy Award-nominated movie about his experiences, was released in 1999.

Of course, not all whistleblowers fare as well as Dr. Wigand. Many are fired and never heard from again, so the danger of retribution remains a very real barrier to telling the truth.

Fear of Hurting Other People's Feelings

People say "the truth hurts" because sometimes it really does. Larry's brother-in-law Kernan was a baseball star all through grade school, high school, and college. He was drafted by the San Francisco Giants and spent the next six years working his way through the team's farm system until he finally reached AAA (the level just below the big leagues). After just one season at this level, his manager told him he wasn't good enough to play in the majors and released him. Kernan will be the first to tell you that the truth can hurt a lot.

On the other hand, what if the manager never told players who were not cutting it that they had to go and why because he didn't want to hurt their feelings? It's too ludicrous to imagine. The manager's job is to weed out the inferior players and promote the superior ones. If it hurts people's feeling, too bad. It comes with the territory. Of course, if he's a decent person, he does it in a way that minimizes the hurt. For example, instead of saying, "You just can't cut it so you're out of here," he might say, "You're a talented ballplayer [which was the truth] and we appreciate your efforts. It's just that we have people who are more talented [also the truth], so we'll have to let you go." Both messages are painful, and both are the truth. The difference is in the degree of collateral damage inflicted. The bottom line, however, is that the manager does not shrink from being honest.

We are not saying that you should go around telling people what you think of them or what their faults are just because you think it's "the truth." Silence is golden when there is no reason to tell them or when it is none of your business. However, how often do we shirk from telling another person the truth when we have good reason to tell them and it is our business, because we don't want to hurt their feelings or offend them?

For example, suppose you notice that a colleague inflates the numbers on his sales reports to make himself look good and increase his commissions. You know that if you say something to him or to your boss, you risk the chance that he will be offended. And what if you're wrong? How embarrassing. So you say nothing, telling yourself that it's none of your business. Meanwhile, his larceny continues, and perhaps expands. How many of the scandals that made up the 2002 Crisis of Ethics in Business USA started with such passivity? We will probably never know, but rarely does evil appear in full bloom. It usually starts small and grows, feeding on the fear of others to make a fuss or stand in its way.

Fear of Change

Remember our friend the psychologist who said, "People always prefer the certainty of misery over the misery of uncertainty." It's always easier to stay where we are than to move somewhere else, especially if where we are is working well for us and "somewhere else" is unknown. Speaking the truth often means admitting that what worked before is now obsolete—and that's a scary thought.

Consider the Tudor Ice Company, founded by Fredrick Tudor in 1803. Convinced that he could make a profit by cutting ice from lakes in the northeast U.S. and sailing it to customers in warmer climes, he sent his first shipment to Martinique in the West Indies. Unfortunately, given the length of the trip and the unsophisticated methods of insulation, his anticipated profits quickly melted away.

But Tudor was persistent. He worked to improve his cutting, insulating, and shipping techniques and by the time of his death in 1866, his company was the number-one ice company in the world, shipping millions of tons of ice per year to markets as far away as India.

By the 1880s, however, Tudor Ice Company's reign of the business was in rapid decline. By the turn of the century, Tudor was out of business—done in by competition that used the newly invented process of refrigeration to produce ice at a fraction of the cost of cutting it.

Ironically, all Tudor had to do to stay in the game was to replace its cutting operations with refrigerated manufacturing. It already had the storage, shipping, and marketing capacity in place. But that never came to pass. Tudor Ice Company trudged forward, cutting ice while competitors redefined the business by producing it mechanically.

It's hard to imagine that the company's managers couldn't see that refrigeration was the superior option, but to accept this truth would have meant abandoning what had worked so well for decades. Such is the strength of the blinders produced by complacency and the fear of change. Consequently, the truth that was so vital to Tudor's survival was most likely never uttered in its board rooms or its planning sessions. In the end, none of the companies that cut ice were able to make the transition to manufacturing it.

To be candid and truthful we have to be willing to embrace the changes that will occur when we speak the truth. Fear of those changes will lead us to keep our mouths shut or, worse, to distort the truth so we never have to consider other ways of producing ice until it is too late.

Fear of Being Disliked

The philosopher William James once said, "No more fiendish punishment can be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof." We all have the need be liked, accepted, and valued by others. And to a certain degree, it's healthy. For our ancestors, being accepted and valued by the tribe was essential to survival. If you weren't, you were ostracized and faced almost certain death, alone and unsupported in a hostile environment. In today's team-oriented world, if our coworkers, subordinates, and superiors do not accept us, it's hard to get anything done.

There is such a thing as too much getting along, which we call the Kumbaya Syndrome. It is often easier not to disagree or express an unpopular opinion when there is pressure from others to "join the crowd and start singing 'Kumbaya'." This pressure may be real, as it was with the engineer we mentioned whose company was so team oriented that disagreement was actively discouraged. In most cases, however, the pressure is internally generated. We "go along to get along" because it's easier, it's safer, or we just don't want to risk being at odds with others. We hate to be considered the "wet blanket."

Christina is the head of payroll and finance for a small manufacturing company. She's been on the job for four weeks. She described this dilemma to us:

During her first week, Dick, the head of sales, mentioned at a meeting of the management team (of which Christina is a member) that a substantial order from a large client had closed that day. Until the previous day Jack, a sales rep Dick disliked, had handled the account. Jack had resigned to work for another company in a different industry. Dick was glad to see Jack go and had replaced him with Dana, an up-and-coming rep for whom Dick had great hopes. Technically, the commission for the sale, which was substantial, should have gone to Jack, but Dick had decided to give it to Dana instead. Everyone at the meeting, including the owner of the company, shrugged in agreement, and they continued with other business.

Christina was in a quandary. She thought that the company would be at legal risk if Dick pursued his plan. She also felt that it was just plain wrong. On the other hand, she was new to the position, and she didn't want to draw negative attention to herself. She told us that she sat through the rest of the meeting churning inside, wondering what to do. After a sleepless night, she went to Dick and explained how she could understand why he didn't want to pay Jack the commission, but after thinking about it, she felt that the company would be at risk and that he might want to reconsider. He thought a moment and said she was probably right and that he would have the commission check sent to Jack, even though it galled him to do so. Since then, Dick and Christina have become friends.

Of course, not all endings are so happy, and you do risk offending others when you tell them truths they do not want to hear. You can lower that risk in a number of ways; here are three steps you can take:

Lower the emotional temperature. When Christina talked to Dick, she described the effect his action would have on the company. She delayed expressing her own personal feelings about its rightness or wrongness. This tactic lowered the "emotional temperature" of the conversation so Dick would not feel personally attacked or feel the need to defend his own values.
Give the other person an out. Christina very wisely did this by explaining that she had been thinking about it overnight, and it had occurred to her that not paying Jack the commission could cause a problem. It was as if this was something that was easy to miss during the meeting. This allowed Dick to back out gracefully by saying, "Gee, I hadn't thought about that either."
Do it in private. Confrontations, and that's what this was, usually go better when conducted without an audience. Neither party has to worry about the embarrassment of appearing wrong or losing a battle in front of others.

Fear of Losing Support

Sally, a veteran accounting manager, worked for a progressive software company located in the northeast United States for fifteen years before moving to the Sunbelt to get away from cold winters. Unable to find a position in the private sector, she took a job managing a division of the tax department of a large municipal government. She soon noticed that the work of one of her direct reports, Jim, was extremely substandard. She started asking Jim to redo his work, which he would do but would frequently repeat the same mistakes. He also missed deadlines, spent too much time away from the office on noncity business, and tended to have a sour disposition that led to citizen complaints.

Jim's personnel record showed that his reviews from past supervisors had all been rated "above average," which puzzled Sally. Had this fellow performed well for others but not her? Was she the problem? She suspected this wasn't the case when she noticed that, during his twelve-year tenure with the city, Jim had held fourteen different positions, all lateral moves.

A little investigation proved her suspicions correct. Jim's performance had always been substandard, but no previous manager had been brave enough to give him the feedback he needed to change or to take the initiative to dismiss him. He was simply shuffled from one department to the next like a bad penny.

Since it was time for Jim's annual review, Sally decided to give him a less-than-satisfactory rating and to deny his annual salary increase. Jim, of course, filed a grievance with the city's personnel board, which ended up supporting him rather than her. The board's position was that if no one had been honest with him about his performance for twelve years, it was unfair to expect him to change overnight. They accompanied this absurd rationale with an insistence that Sally change Jim's rating to "satisfactory" and approve his raise.

Sally now understood why Jim's previous supervisors had chosen to pass him along rather than deal with him. If they had to fight this kind of bureaucratic lunacy, their best option was to pass him to some other unsuspecting department. To this day, Jim remains at the city, still doing substandard work. Sally left to find a job in a small company where she wouldn't have to fight bureaucracy to effectively manage her operations.

You may be asking, "What could these previous managers have done, given the obstacles they faced?" But our question is this: Is it not a manager's job to do what's best for the organization? Did their passing Jim from one department to another not make the organization worse?

Additionally, what kind of example did they set for their subordinates to emulate? By virtue of their position, managers are always in the spotlight, watched by an audience of subordinates who are very perceptive. Employees always know who among their colleagues performs well and who doesn't. Imagine the effect each manager's passivity had on Jim's coworkers as they watched their manager do nothing about his incompetence. Even if it meant fighting a losing battle with a misguided HR department, the mere attempt to do something would have set a positive model for their subordinates to witness.

Of course, that would have been hard, but as the coach in A League of Their Own said, that's why it's worth doing.

Fear of Paying the Price

When Congress questioned former executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling about their roles in Enron's collapse, they both claimed their Fifth Amendment rights to not incriminate themselves. They had that right, but what a shame that they chose to invoke it. If Enron had not defrauded its investors by hiding losses in shady partnerships and illegal activities, Lay and Skilling would have had nothing to take the Fifth about. It reminds us of the adage: "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."

Our guess is that Lay and Skilling have never thought of themselves as crooks. Competitive businessmen? Yes. Common criminals? Never. But where do you draw the line? In a survey commissioned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts, 82 percent of 401 high-ranking corporate executives admit to routinely cheating at golf. The author of the study attributes this high percentage to the competitive nature of executives. But if they will cheat at golf, how many would cheat in their business practices as well? Let's hope not many. We certainly don't mean to beat up CEOs and business executives; in our experience the overwhelming majority of the many we've worked with are honest and ethical. But for those caught in the 2002 Crisis of Ethics in Business USA, cheating at golf, we suspect, would be just one small indicator of a much larger pattern.

More accurately, perhaps, it would be one small step down a very dark path. In his treatise on the nature of evil, People of the Lie, psychiatrist and author M. Scott Peck makes the point that people are seldom born evil or become so all at once. More often it is a gradual journey where one step toward darkness is followed by another until there is no turning back.

It would not be surprising to learn that Lay and Skilling, along with many of the 2002 gang of CEOs who were accused of wrongdoing, had slipped down similar slopes. The question for all of us to ask ourselves is, "Am I on any kind of slope that would lead me to want to claim my Fifth Amendment rights?"

Fear of Losing Competitive Advantage

In business, there are many reasons to keep secrets, such as the desire to keep competitors from learning the details of your upcoming marketing plan or the design of your newest product. Companies that aren't careful to guard such information can face a huge disadvantage in the marketplace. A bit of paranoia can be healthy.

On the other hand, many executives and managers carry this paranoia too far, fearing that if they share anything about the business with their employees, the information will leak to competitors or be used by the employees themselves against the company. Ironically, the opposite is often true.

Harley-Davidson Motor Company is a case in point. Its partnering philosophy encourages collaboration and joint decision making between the company and its unions. At its Kansas City Plant, for example, the president of the union and the plant manager share an office. Many key decisions are made jointly regarding anything from production to budgeting or from staffing to overtime. The plant manager will usually consult with the union president before making the decision.

The same principle applies at the department level. Shop stewards and department managers share workspaces and will often collaborate on decisions relevant to their departments. Additionally, every employee is on a team that gets a daily update on the production numbers and financials of the plant. Quarterly, the plant manager and the union president present the quarter's results to all the employees in a plant-wide general meeting, where they entertain suggestions and questions in a fashion similar to the Work-Out meetings at General Electric.

Harley-Davidson exemplifies a growing movement among American companies to openly share pertinent information with employees. Those companies are discovering that telling the truth actually empowers people, which helps create a competitive advantage quite the opposite of what many leaders fear.

Fear of Losing Face

We all have a need to appear competent, responsible, and successful to others, to have others think we are okay. To that degree, we worry about what other people think of us. When this worry becomes too great, it can keep us from telling the truth or cause us to lie in order to save face and appear competent. The costs can be high.

The president of an accounting firm told us about Tammy, one of her auditors. Tammy had made a mistake on a due diligence report for a client after the audit had been submitted to an institutional investor. Instead of admitting her mistake when she discovered it, which would have involved contacting the investor and making the correction—embarrassing but not the end of the world—she pulled the original documents and altered them. Later, an unrelated problem with the audit caused the investor to request another copy, which was made from the original document. The client noticed the disparity and questioned the accuracy of the entire audit. The client ended up losing the investor, the firm ended up losing the client, and Tammy ended up losing her job. Tammy's desire to save face produced disastrous consequences, especially considering how easily the entire thing could have been fixed.

According to a study by Professor Stella Ting-Toomey of Simon Fraser University, cultural differences can exacerbate the issue of saving face, especially when those of European descent work with those of Asian descent.

Bob confirmed Ting-Toomey's findings when he was vice president of human resources for Tektronix. Bob was involved in offering the Tektronix country manager in Taiwan, Mr. Wong, a significant promotion to a regional manager's position that included more than a 50 percent increase in his total compensation package. After some consideration, Mr. Wong called Bob to say that he had decided to not accept the position and that he would be leaving the company.

Shocked, Bob asked him, "Why?"

Mr. Wong replied that although the new position was a good position, if the company did not have enough faith in him to do his current job, he would lose face with his customers and employees and he would be unable to perform effectively in the new role. He would rather leave the company than suffer the embarrassment caused by his lack of effectiveness.

It seems to us that this was carrying modesty and a concern for appearances to absurd extremes, but with names like Johnson and Phillips, you can guess that we are not of Asian decent, so we probably, at times, lack sufficient sensitivity to understand Mr. Wong's position. Additionally, Mr. Wong may have misinterpreted the offer as being a subtle demotion rather than a promotion, since it would take him farther from the action of dealing with customers and being involved in the business. Also, Mr. Wong himself may not have chosen to take the position for fear of failing with the increased job responsibilities.

Whatever the real reason for Mr. Wong's behavior, it serves any manager well to be alert to the fact that the possibility of losing face can be a powerful reason people shy away from expressing themselves openly or telling the truth. If doing so will place them in an unflattering light, don't expect them to leap into center stage.