At work, especially in the project context, we rely on each other's Word. When someone tells you something, you need to know that you're hearing what the speaker believes to be true. We can each help to create a more Truth-Full working environment by telling the Truth ourselves, especially when the prospect of telling the whole truth seems scary.
If you tell the truth
it's harder to gossip.
(This is a good thing.)Mark Twain wrote, "If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything." This is one of many advantages of telling the truth. Here's a list of the advantages of telling the truth over spinning, shading, stretching, misleading, or even lying.
Telling the truth requires less creativity because you don't have to make anything up.
Telling the truth reduces medical expenses by keeping your blood pressure in the normal range.
If you tell the truth you don't have to worry whether what you're saying now is consistent enough — or too consistent — with what you've said in the past.
If you tell the truth it's less likely (though not impossible) that anyone will accuse you of not telling the truth.
If you tell the truth you have to do much less record-keeping — it's easier to remember what you told to whom and when.
You hardly ever feel guilty about telling the truth.
If you tell the truth you don't have to worry as much about whether what you're saying is working.
If you tell the truth you don't have to worry about what to say when you get caught.
If you tell the truth you don't have to learn any fancy ambiguous words to mislead people.
The plain truth is usually shorter than anything else.
If you tell the truth you get practice telling the truth, which can pay off when telling the truth is really hard.
If you tell the truth it's more likely (though not certain) that others will tell you the truth.
If you tell the truth your nose won't grow much beyond its current length.
If you tell the truth it's harder to gossip. (This is a good thing.)
If you tell the truth you don't have to worry about keeping a straight face.
If you tell the truth you have less need to explain to yourself — or your kids — why it's sometimes OK not to tell the truth.
If you tell the truth, people have a chance to find out about problems while there's still time to do something about them.
If you tell the truth it's easier to sleep at night.
If you're known as a straight shooter, fewer people will ask you to shoot crooked.
If you tell the truth often enough, when you say something, people are more likely to actually believe you.
I'm sure you can add a few more of your own. If you wonder what they are, you can find out. Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Ethics at Work:
- When Others Curry Favor
- When peers curry favor with the boss, many of us feel contempt, an urge for revenge, anger, or worse.
Trying to stop those who curry favor probably isn't an effective strategy. What is?
- Dubious Dealings
- Negotiating contracts with outsourcing suppliers can present ethical dilemmas, even when we try to be
as fair as possible. The negotiation itself can present conflicts of interest. What are those conflicts?
- Virtual Termination with Real Respect
- When we have to terminate someone who works at a remote site, sometimes there's a temptation to avoid
travel — to use email, phone, fax, or something else. They're all bad ideas. Terminating people
in person is not only a gesture of respect. It's good business.
- Personnel-Sensitive Risks: I
- Some risks and the plans for managing them are personnel-sensitive in the sense that disclosure can
harm the enterprise or its people. Since most risk management plans are available to a broad internal
audience, personnel-sensitive risks cannot be managed in the customary way. Why not?
- Vendor Mismanagement
- When we outsource knowledge work to vendors, we expect to achieve the desired result with less risk
and uncertainty than if we did the work ourselves. But mission creep, mission retrenchment and employee
capture can lead to less welcome results.
See also Ethics at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming March 20: Top Ten Ways to Make Meetings More Effective
- Meetings are just about everybody's least favorite part of working in organizations. We can do much better if only we take a few simple steps to improve them. The big one: publish the agenda in advance. Here are nine other steps to improve meetings. Available here and by RSS on March 20.
- And on March 27: Allocating Action Items
- From time to time in meetings we discover tasks that need doing. We call them "action items." And we use our list of open action items as a guide for tracking the work of the group. How we decide who gets what action item can sometimes affect our success. Available here and by RSS on March 27.
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