Chapter 3

Truth or Consequences

Honesty Is Moral but Truth Is Pragmatic

Third, the language of the truth: There may be “lies and damn lies” but there is, more critically “truth and real truth.” “Honesty” connotes a moral position, but truth denotes an empirical reality, which is owed to our employees, customers, investors, suppliers, families, and ourselves. Unfortunate choices of language can turn truths into lies and undermine honest communication.

Honesty Is Usually Subjective

Is a myth true or false? Is it honest or dishonest? Suppose I told you that a myth is a kernel of truth wrapped in a teaching lesson. Would that change your mind?

Is it honest to withhold information? Is the absence of the truth (versus an out and out lie or misrepresentation) being dishonest?

When we speak of honesty, we’re speaking in highly subjective terms. We’re dishonest about the existence of Santa Claus because we want our children to enjoy the thrill and excitement. It’s the same with the tooth fairy. In a more serious vein, the Japanese seldom talk of cancer to family members, with the complicity of doctors, preferring to pretend the patient’s illness is treatable.

Simon Cowell, the infamous judge of American Idol in the UK and United States, would preface critical remarks with, “If I’m really being honest …,” which implies that we often aren’t when we’re giving feedback. One of the greatest coaching issues among executives is helping them to provide honest feedback to subordinates during evaluation sessions (as well as all year long). In job interviews, the interviewer is often as afraid of rejection as the interviewee, creating hesitancy and less than full disclosure by both parties.

That’s one of the reasons that hiring is more of a crapshoot than a science.

We make judgments all the time about what circumstance requires honesty and what requires a bit of dissembling. We see examples in sports—short of the actual cheats, steroid users, and so forth—where injuries are faked and bad calls accepted. (There is more acting in soccer games than in Hollywood.) People cheat and lie and ignore convenient truths, on the playing field, in their homes, and in their businesses.

But they don’t see it as lying or fibbing or prevaricating because they rationalize the need, just as myths are used to convey values and lessons across generations, and need to be somewhat embellished to be effective. As a keynote speaker, I’ve often edited the facts in some of my stories to make the lessons more powerful. However, I’ve also had the wisdom to do this only when performing on a stage and not on my résumé!

Brian Williams, the once exalted and then disgraced anchor on the NBC evening news was dishonest about his exploits in covering foreign battles, and perhaps elsewhere. What would have been acceptable at a small party over drinks was a cause for removal on the airways. He told his dishonest, embellished stories so often to so many that I’m convinced he actually began to believe them.

Honesty is usually subjective. Dishonesty is equally subjective (contrary to popular belief, it’s not an absolute either). Consider the following common phrases that are all too familiar:

• “He did the only right and honest thing.”
• “She made an honest mistake.”
• “I haven’t been totally honest with you about how I feel.”

Honesty connotes sincerity, morality, decency, respectability, and virtuousness. While any and all of those may be desirable attributes, they are each subjective in nature and are based on perception and perspective.

Perception is how we understand or interpret something. (We’re all familiar with the phrase “perception is reality.”) Perspective is a particular attitude toward that understanding or interpretation. The very nature of differing perceptions and perspectives creates differing realities, and honesty.

Truth, however, is objective. Truth signifies an empirical reality. It is the heart of the scientific method.

In his initial reporting of the incident in 2003, Brian Williams recounted the combat story accurately and truthfully. In reports later that year, the story began to morph. By 2007, Williams recounted that he witnessed the chopper in front of him being hit, which was untrue. (The chopper ahead of him was hit, but William’s chopper was 30 minutes behind, so it was impossible for him to have witnessed the hit.) In 2013, William now claimed the actual chopper he was riding in was hit (an even larger untruth).

Interestingly, Williams didn’t manufacture the story from the beginning. It evolved and morphed as time went on. Each time he told the story, he made the circumstances more dangerous and became more of a survivor. He started with the truth and altered the course of his career (along with his credibility) with a lie that he continued to promote over a decade.

You may remember a similar story by Hillary Clinton while running for President in 2008. Clinton claimed she landed in Bosnia under sniper fire in1996 and had to run for cover with her head down. This was untrue (as documented by video) and she later rescinded the story. Even though it was media fodder at the time, the story quickly dissipated. Why the difference in outcomes in the two stories? Politicians are known for such stories. Journalists are expected to accurately (factually and truthfully) report the news.

How and why do these distinctions apply to leaders and the language of success? Why is truth imperative for leaders, whether it’s finding it or communicating it? How do leaders capture and disseminate empirical reality?

Should we hold some to higher standards (reporters) than others (politicians)? How important is it to have the right language and methods to pursue the actual truth? I think it’s vital in any business, any family, any community, and any relationship.

How to Distill the Truth

In Chapter 2, we stated, “It’s not always about having the right answer. It’s about asking the right question at the right time.” (You’ll notice it’s a reoccurring theme throughout the book!) When it comes to distilling the truth, that guideline applies here as well. What questions need to be explored in order to determine empirical evidence?

Every journalist and investigator is taught the basics of “The Five Ws and How:” who, what, when, where, why, and how. From a journalistic and investigative perspective, these questions are usually posed in the past tense to determine circumstances and factual information:

• Who did that?
• What happened?
• When did it take place?
• Where did it take place?
• Why did that happen?
• How did it happen?

Whether posed as past, present, or future tense, none of these questions can be answered with a simple yes or no. The very nature of these questions positions the respondent to offer information that will lead to evidence in the environment, also known as “the truth.”

Even though you ask the right questions, the respondents may not directly answer the question you asked. This can occur because they don’t understand what you’ve asked, they misinterpret what you asked, or they are offering information that is a tangent to what you’ve asked. They may offer more or less information than what you need. And, they may have a private agenda that colors their facts.

When seeking the truth, be cautious of responses that focus on blame, opinions, or disguised solutions, instead of factual information. The following are examples of each:

• Q: “What are the current annual sales numbers compared to quota?”
• A1: “Sales are below quota because the new product isn’t well received by our customers” (blame and opinion)
• A2: “We need to do additional training on the new products to get the sales numbers up” (disguised solution)
• A3: “We’re currently at 78 percent of quota for YTD sales” ( factual )

Compare: Do you love me?

• How could I not love you? (evasive)
• As much as I know what love is? (conditional)
• Why do you ask me that now? (avoidance)
• Yes (but doesn’t act it—dissonant)
• Yes (and acts it—factual)

In distilling the truth (mining for factual information), leaders need to:

1. Ask the right questions at the right time.
2. Assess and interpret the answers for fact, blame, opinion, and disguised solutions.
3. In the absence of factual information, continue to probe (restate or paraphrase) until the facts are offered.

There are times when you want factual information and there are times to ask people for their opinions. It may be to explore their ideas or suggestions to include them in determining the cause of a problem or looking for proposed solutions. We’ll discuss these specific questioning techniques and language skills in Chapters 4, 5, and 6.

In some situations, distilling the truth is a matter of observation with an acute awareness and little or no conversation required. As a consultant and an executive coach, I routinely shadow my clients to observe them in action—conference calls, internal meetings, presentations, client interactions, and evaluation sessions. I also observe and listen to communications, interactions, and processes within and throughout a team, a department, or an entire organization.

What does one look for in regard to observed behavior in the environment? Whether in the role of a consultant or that of a leader, we’re looking for the same empirical reality, the same truth through observation. To understand the value of empirical evidence, let’s look at three very common ways leaders attempt to distill the truth:

1. A Priori: Relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge that is determined from theoretical deduction instead of from observation or experience. There must be a force that causes all things dropped to head toward the surface and not toward the sky (and we know that force as gravity).
2. Self-Reported Behavior: A report of one’s behavior provided by the subject who is demonstrating the behavior, such as “I never seem able to give someone what I consider negative feedback because I perceive that I am hurting, not helping them.”
3. Empirical Evidence: Relying on or derived from observation or rather than theory. “Our customers are complaining that they cannot reach live service agents on the phone.”

Of the three, empirical evidence via observation is the best means to truly determine the truth. Let’s look at a simple scenario for the purpose of example:

Situation 1: Are employees following the newly defined and implemented procedures?

1. A Priori: Most employees typically follow every new process we implement. We have no reason to expect that behavior to change now. So, we conclude that they are following the new procedure.
2. Self-Reported Behavior: The employees say they are following the new procedures, so they must be.
3. Empirical Evidence: What do you actually observe? What are you seeing and hearing?

Observed behavior is the most reliable, with one significant caveat—that the observer is doing so through an unbiased lens. Your personal and professional biases can influence how you process the observed behavior and the conclusions you draw from those observations. (Note: We discussed biases in Chapter 2 and they apply here as well.)

What do you focus on during these observations? Depending on the circumstances, observations can be based on quantitative or qualitative behaviors. Examples include:

• Are most people doing this most of the time?
• Is it being done as described or in some other manner?
• Are we obtaining the results we anticipated?

Throughout these observations, you become aware of patterns, trends, and one-off behaviors (based on circumstances and variables). As a consultant and coach, I process this information constantly. As a leader, you can learn to do the same.

In the same way that big data focuses on predictive analytics, we can draw a parallel regarding observed behavior. We can predict the expected future behavior based on patterns of past performance and similar future scenarios. It’s not an exact science to bank on, but it is worth projecting and speculating. “What got you here won’t get you there” isn’t always true.

Creating a Reliance on Evidence

There is a classic teaching device used in law school in the first year (I attended one week before deciding that the law was the equivalent of the rules of golf in its contradictions but not as reliant on honor) where a room of 100 students is suddenly confronted with an intruder rushing in from a side entrance. The intruder hits the professor and runs out the other side of the room.

The eyewitness accounts vary extremely among the class in terms of height, coloring, weight, and sometimes even gender. The point, of course, is that the vaunted eyewitness testimony is not all that reliant. (Think of how many eyewitness news teams there are branding themselves as such across the country.)

Evidence must be provable, validated, reliable, and, if possible, replicable. This is most probably when you have a pattern, which can be traced and expected to repeat. It’s most difficult when you have only random occurrences. Serial killers are often caught because the advertently or inadvertently create a pattern, but many deliberately try to create seemingly random crimes.

There are honest differences in perspective even among highly respected, honest, experienced people. Those differences can emanate from position, culture, gender, experiences, suppositions, agendas, and expectations—you get the idea. Thus, the he said–she said phenomenon, while cute in books and television comedies, must be avoided in business and important social contexts.

Another obstacle is wordplay. If we return to the law for a moment, there is a famous axiom: “When you have the merits, argue the merits. When you don’t have the merits, argue the law.” Many cases are won and lost not on truth, but on technicalities and verbal gymnastics. At meetings, we’ve all experienced someone who carries the day through volume, or humor, or visual aids, or bluster, but not through the truth. Afterward, people wonder how they arrived at such a dreadful course of action.

There are also the people who willfully ignore evidence because it is inconvenient. Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was implausible on the face of it—overly dramatic returns in a poor economy. But so long as some people received early money, everyone convinced themselves that it was okay, despite defying reality. And note that some very experienced and sophisticated investors were self-duped by this. Bernie was a con man, but he needed a very susceptible and not too scrutinizing a victim.

The following are the questions that will help determine whether you have evidence to rely on:

• Have I observed and replicated cause and effect? (The stock market tends to rise and fall with the results of some NFL Super Bowl conference winners, but that’s like determining that the economy usually improves when it rains.) When we deliver something by truck is it usually damaged, and by rail usually never damaged?
• Do independent sources validate the phenomenon? Our impression is that our customers are happy with us and that our 8 percent attrition rate is below average for our industry, but what would an independent agency or consultant find? (In a famous study, advertising agencies found that their clients thought more highly of their work than they, themselves, did, which adversely affected pricing and profit.)
• Am I observing an accident, coincidence, or trend? Too many people adjust their businesses, their lives, and their results based on one-off feedback. (I always have someone unhappy with room temperature in conferences, but I’m not making a change when 200 other people are happy.) A pattern generally is occurring after three independent occurrences. Ignore anything short of that in terms of reliable evidence (or feedback).
• Is there a personal agenda that influences what I’m hearing and seeing? Defense lawyers don’t pursue the truth, they pursue the acquittal of their client. (They call them courts of law not courts of justice.) Am I listening to a terribly sincere person who is zealous about a personal matter, not an organizational one? Is someone generalizing from a specific: “Mary didn’t make the sale yesterday, hence, she needs more sales training,” thus said the training director.

We’ve seen some lost airplanes over the past couple of years, and the causes are most reliably explained by examining the black box objective data, and turning it into useful information, and then knowledge of the crash conditions. We are then wiser about prevention in the future. (Air speed indicators can ice up and give false readings, creating stall conditions if the pilots are merely relying on autopilot alone.)

Businesses don’t have black boxes, so we have to replicate objective information through the questions we ask and the weight we give to the answers. No one says, “We think the plane ran out of fuel, so let’s increase the size of fuel tanks on the planes.” Yet, we see some of this nonevidentiary, expensive behavior in many places. A nightclub fire in Rhode Island forced all small businesses to spend millions on different safety standards, yet the cause of the fire and lost life was negligence of the nightclub owners in not following existing standards. We continue to tighten drunk driving tolerances and arrests, yet the evidence is that a small minority of chronic offenders—usually with no insurance and no licenses in violation of existing laws—cause more of the accidents because they aren’t held for a long term in prison and are consistent repeat offenders.

Discipline yourself to focus on evidence and ask the right questions to discover it. Recognize subterfuge and distraction, whether deliberate or accidental, and check your own behavior to ensure that you aren’t inadvertently withholding or distorting evidence for others. Strong personal beliefs have a way of altering perspective.

Trust but Verify

This phrase was popularized by President Reagan during a time when the Berlin Wall fell and the Iron Curtain was removed. It implies that we should give the benefit of the doubt, but also doubt some of the benefits we’re hearing.

In business and personal dealings, we’re apt to trust without question those who are closer to us and those who have a track record of success:

• Family
• Trusted subordinates and aides
• Respected experts and authorities
• Those who others we trust in turn trust

The problem with these automatic trust sources is that when they let us down it’s more than a disappointment, it’s a catastrophe. We all have felt the devastation of a child who has lied in critical circumstances, or the accountant who embezzled funds from an account we never thought we had to audit, or a doctor who didn’t pay close enough attention and prescribed the wrong course of action.

There is a continuum for trust that might look like the following:

Both extremes are dangerous in daily dealings (we’re exempting religious beliefs; however, the great preponderance of clergy we’ve interviewed has stated that doubt is a key element of faith). We subscribe to the notion that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And Woody Allen wryly commented that “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that no one is following you.”

Suspicion is best left to detectives and benefit of the doubt to those who have consistently performed up to expectations and beyond. But the difference between trust and trust but verify is immense.

Thousands of institutional and private investors trusted people who trusted Bernie Madoff and his hidden Ponzi scheme investment strategy. The returns were absurd, but the very people who were screaming to recover their funds after the fraud was exposed were the same ones in the private clubs in Palm Beach screaming that he accept them as investors. They verified nothing.

In fact, the federal oversight agencies verified nothing. They had been suspicious of Madoff’s operation, but never delved into his actual accounts, accepting instead false summaries and obfuscation. Most of the media were the same way, writing exposés only after the house of cards collapsed publicly.

Trust lost is harder to recover than gaining trust in the first place. When someone has lied or fudged the facts or even passed along bad information they thought was correct, they usually sacrifice all future credibility. While we tend to be forgiving and rehabilitate public figures (politicians, athletes, entertainers, and so on), even that isn’t always the case. Lance Armstrong, who lied for years about his illegal doping regimen to win cycling tournaments, isn’t about to be the spokesperson for any major product or cause. Tiger Woods was not only reviled after his scandalous womanizing became known, but his golf game also collapsed, and while once considered the person to overtake Jack Nicklaus’s major victories, he now seems as if he will never win another.

The Catholic Church lost millions of its faithful and tens of millions of dollars when the ultimate bastion of trust—priests and the hierarchy of prelates—was embroiled with pedophilia and cover-ups. (And consider this: Less than 5 percent of the Catholic clergy was ultimately involved, which is a smaller percentage than public school teachers found guilty of child pornography and pedophilia.)

This is why we favor trust but verify on our continuum for major issues (and, perhaps, even minor ones). The following is some language to consider to employ this tactic:

• How can I easily verify whether I’m hearing facts or opinion? What is the source? What is the evidence? What is the observed behavior?

  Note that, increasingly, we see an insidious admixture of fact and opinion in the newspapers, on talk radio, and on television. People with their own agenda peddle facts which suit them but do not suit empirical reality.

• What are the chances that a sincere source has, himself or herself, blindly trusted others? Am I watching a herd movement, a surrender to normative pressure? Am I being asked to be one of the in crowd without sufficient analysis of the crowd’s motive or direction?

  There is huge, unprecedented normative pressure delivered on social media platforms, from YouTube to Facebook, Twitter to LinkedIn, and the yearning for conformance leads to the viral extension not only of unsupported positions but even of pure myth. You can constantly find advertisements posing as a third-party opinion on these platforms.

• Am I viewing the mixed media effect? Is a trusted expert providing expertise in another area, using his or her repute but not factual support?

  Marshall McLuhan first reported this in his seminal work Understanding Media and his phrase the medium is the message. (He anticipated the world wide web by 30 years.) We have a tendency to attribute expertise in all fields to those who actually excel in one field. Hence, the reaction to singer Barbra Streisand’s strident political commentaries by her critics with shut up and sing.

I’ve been involved in projects where I simply assume what the next step is, but when it goes wrong and I turn to the next page on the instructions, I find that I assumed incorrectly. I hadn’t verified my own belief. This doesn’t matter so much when you can pull apart some boards or rewire a lamp, but it matters a great deal when you might choose the wrong college, new car, or investment vehicle.

Have you ever gone on a vacation based on brochures, or web video tours, or even the recommendations from people you don’t know well? Quite often, this doesn’t turn out well. That’s partly because any property will put its best face on, including airbrushing that face or even lying about it. But it’s also because people whose taste you’re unfamiliar with may love rustic while you love luxury, or you may have a different idea of luxury. I’ve gone to restaurants people have raved about where I’ve realized the recommenders have actually never tasted food that I’d consider excellent.

Beachfront can be 20 yards or two blocks. You need to verify the distance. Thousands of happy guests can overlook tens of thousands of unhappy guests (this kind of subterfuge is common in book reviews—Grossly unfunny is reprinted simply as funny).

In an Internet age, you can usually find a surfeit of reviews to help you verify products and services. But the best solution is the same you should use for literary critics: Find a couple with whom you constantly agree or disagree and use them as a barometer, following the former and ignoring the latter.

Let’s look more closely now at the tactics for critical questioning.