The Truth Serum Question

Many individuals in leadership roles at all kinds of companies complain to me that getting to the truth about what is going on in a business situation can be elusive. If they are in a calm, rational state while complaining, I often ask them my “truth serum” question as we sort through their frustration. This is a tool for realistically understanding the issues that keep you and others (leaders and followers) from simply telling the truth.

Here is the truth serum question: What would happen in your workplace tomorrow if everyone took a very powerful truth serum and said exactly what they thought every minute of the day? No filters, no framing, and no spinning. Imagine if everyone said exactly what they thought about the new project to cut costs on supply chain, your behavior, how they wished they could go home, or mused about how their new pants looked or that you were looking fat. Take two or three minutes and imagine that one. What might your boss do or say? What about the members of your team? Your closest associates? Your romantic partner or family members? What would you be saying or doing under the influence of the truth serum? Aside from the irrelevant, random thoughts, what substantive views or concerns are you holding back on? The vast majority of those same clients who are frustrated with getting the truth out of others are also holding back on something themselves.

After the initial chuckle in response to the truth serum question, clients almost universally add: “Maybe we could get something done for a change.” As Jack Welch says in the epigraph, they perceive that people are coming in every day and spinning them. And my clients are usually right. People are coming in everyday and spinning them. Without skillful, authentic leadership that ferociously seeks the truth, the spinning will continue. You must skillfully seek the truth and understand the forces that keep people from telling you the truth.

After we get the initial responses to the truth serum question out of the way, the conversation goes in some interesting directions. Clients typically react first to the no-filter idea. Most of my senior-level clients will say something like, “I filter myself not because I want to lie, but because I've learned that my first reaction to most things is not in sync with the way I might think or feel an hour later. Those unfiltered first reactions can do a lot of harm.”

We can all relate to that one. Most of us can recall a time when we quickly reacted to something and regretted it within an hour or the next day. E-mail can be dastardly in this way, as it allows us to react quickly and leaves a permanent record. Many careers and relationships have been irreparably damaged by an e-mail that was “truthful in the moment” when it was sent. Of course, many of the judgments that float through our minds about someone gaining weight or looking good in new pants are totally irrelevant and potentially harmful. However, knowing what is and is not relevant regarding complex business issues is not as simple as it sounds for leaders or team members. What comes around goes around. When I talk with team members, they are also often frustrated because they feel their boss forgets to tell them information that could save them time. Then we talk about the practical need at times to put a positive spin on things, not just for the team or organization, but for yourself. Those truth serum conversations become quite interesting and layered.

Where can authentic leaders draw the line without magic truth serum or black-and-white formulas? Is it possible to acknowledge an ugly or inconvenient truth and still see potential in the midst of bad news? Sometimes it is, and sometimes it is not. Leading authentically and ferociously seeking the truth are full of this kind of subtlety, nuance, and the frustrating absence of black-and-white. To be sure, we have all witnessed revolting breaches of ethics that were clearly black. But for the most part, day-to-day realities in business are much more subtle and complicated than felonies.

Back to Ken and Project Turn Key. When exactly did the project team know for sure that they were going to need more money in order to finish by the end of the year? Were they overly optimistic, or were they each focusing on their own silo and losing sight of the whole? As you might have guessed, further investigation of the situation did not yield a conspiracy to make Ken have a heart attack in Brussels! Further investigation did reveal a web of misunderstanding and, paradoxically, decision making that had been made too fast and without fully exploring potential implications and unintended consequences.

To be sure, framing and spinning can be used to hide from reality and avoid inconvenient truths. On the other hand, framing up challenges in a way that is empowering to the team instead of defeatist or pessimistic actually influences reality or the truth of our daily situation. Conversations with clients after the truth serum query point out the inherent complexities of seeking truth over speaking pure facts.

First and foremost, the human brain naturally interprets events and finds relationships between events. We are constantly telling ourselves stories about what is happening around us. This constant interpretation and storytelling in our own heads is so ingrained that it takes effort for us to be aware of the stories we are telling ourselves. Hence, the truth about any situation is usually not one single fact but often a matter of interpretation involving many perspectives—and that applies even in everyday, simple dilemmas like who is supposed to unload the dishwasher tonight, never mind a complex initiative involving hundreds of people collaborating to achieve a tough goal in a compressed amount of time.

Authentic leaders are committed to actively seeking the truth with an awareness that the truth in many real-life and work situations is not permanent, straightforward, or simple. Regardless of your current role, understanding the dynamics of telling the truth—or not—is useful. If you are in an earlier stage of your career, you don't necessarily want to just emulate what you see around you without thinking. People in your work environment may be playing it overly safe. People are likely emotionally defensive, scared, and playing it safe, but as we learned in Chapter 10, organizational cultures vary a lot. People may be reckless with facts and other people's feelings in your work environment. As Robert Terry's epigraph indicates, leading a team off a cliff in the pursuit of authenticity and truth accomplishes nothing. Regardless of the culture, find your own way to be who you are with full awareness and respect for the overall culture. Think for yourself and figure out how you can seek the truth and have a positive impact on the business situation and the people around you.

This last chapter is about the pursuit of truth. As we all know, we tend to end speeches, meetings, articles, and books with ideas that really matter and should be prioritized over other ideas when you have to choose, and this closing chapter is no exception. Nothing matters more in the process of becoming a more authentic leader and human being than the ferocious pursuit of truth.

All of us naturally link the notion of authenticity with seeking and telling the truth instinctively, and scholars in psychology and philosophy do the same. In this chapter, we will use the science of psychology to shed light on practical situations, such as why my client was not warned that Project Turn Key was behind. We will also bring relevant insights from positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship to the task of attending to the deeper, more complex dimensions of truly becoming a more authentic leader. How do you craft who you are and your character so that you are a leader who seeks and speaks the truth and helps others do the same? Intentionally cultivating the deeper, more virtuous aspects of your character sets up conditions where you are more likely to get the truth from key direct reports, peers, and even your boss.

First, let's look at the practical dynamics that cause people to “spin,” as Jack Welch termed it in the epigraph, as opposed to telling leaders the truth.

The Trust Meter Is Always Running

Here is the practical reality about leading, truth, and trust. If you are the leader, you must prove you are trustworthy. The burden of proof is on you, the leader. You are assumed dangerous until proven otherwise. And you are being observed and tested every day and moving up or down on the trustworthiness meter of every individual on your team. The general factors that compose workplace trust are judgments of integrity, ability, and benevolence. Integrity is about whether you as the leader are being honest or dishonest. Ability is about whether your people perceive you to be competent in your particular technical area and as a leader. Benevolence is about whether you as a leader really care about your people or whether you see them as essentially resources like money or computers.⁴

You don't get an automatic pass on integrity, ability, or benevolence. If you want your followers to trust you, you have to prove yourself over and over. Unfortunately, it only takes one action or behavior—particularly in a high-pressure situation—to cancel out months of perceived trustworthiness. If you are currently leading a team, arm yourself right now with the insight that the trust meter is always running, and don't forget it.

You must look out for your people when things are going well for them and when they are struggling to produce desired results. The way you choose to react and respond when people make mistakes or fall short on goals always matters, so choose carefully.

I know what you are thinking: “Of course I am trustworthy. I have never done anything to person X to prove otherwise.” That's just it. You have to realize it is human nature to play it safe. Decades of research in social psychology and common sense have proven over and over again that it is human nature to play it safe if you are a lower-status person interacting with a higher-status person. Everyone has a boss unless you are the chairman of the board and CEO in a public company. (Many people in the position of chairman and CEO would tell you that they would rather have one identifiable boss, but you get my point.) Think of how you behave with your boss as opposed to your direct reports or peers. Unless you have a highly unusual relationship, you are more careful and more guarded when you interact with your boss as well as other people in the organization who rank higher than you. People who are higher ranking have the power to hurt those of lower rank, and that is just the way it is. As noted in Chapter 10, we humans are still tribal in many ways.

It is up to you as the leader to create conditions in which people feel safe enough to tell the truth. If you can learn how to create those conditions, your chances of being furious and learning bad news late in the game go down exponentially. That is not to say you will not have isolated incidents in which individuals on your team lie to you, even if you work to create the right conditions. Dealing with that stuff is part of being a leader and you may have to step up and remove individuals from your team if they just can't live up to telling the truth. Most work occurs in teams now, so this process of shaping norms of behavior is even more powerful than it would have been 20 years ago. Your job as the leader is to behave in a way that creates norms involving telling the truth and facing reality. How do you create those norms?

On a specific level, you as the leader must embody the behaviors you wish to see in your team. Let's go back to Ken in Brussels and the Project Turn Key debacle for a moment. When I asked Ken what he wished had happened instead, he said he wished the team would have called a live meeting with him and told him this news face-to-face. Therefore, we decided he would call a live face-to-face meeting to discuss the situation. One could argue it was mean of Ken to not respond right away, as he knew the team would be stewing. We decided it was more important for him to embody the desired behavior. Ken and I also made use of the research conducted by Amy Edmondson⁵ of Harvard Business School on ways to cultivate psychological safety as we carefully navigated this learning moment with the Project Turn Key team. The following factors from Edmondson's work were relevant to Ken's situation and are relevant in general for creating psychological safety in teams:

• Be accessible and approachable.
• Display your own fallibility.
• Highlight failures as learning opportunities.
• Hold people accountable for transgressions.
• Clarify boundaries and expectations.

Being accessible and approachable sounds easy enough until you look at the actual number of meetings on most of my clients' calendars. If you are in any kind of professional position in a modern organization, the demands on your time are extreme. The process of ruthless prioritization comes into play here. If you as a leader want to cultivate psychological safety, you have to make time to spend with your people either on the phone or in person. You must respond to e-mails quickly or set an expectation that you will respond within a specific period of time.

There is no substitute for putting in the time to build the relationships. Jane Dutton (2003)⁶ of the University of Michigan has articulated the value of what she terms “high-quality connections.” Central to the idea of high-quality connections is being really present when you spend time with your team as a group or as individuals. This means no iPhone swiping, e-mailing, texting, or taking phone calls in meetings with your people. Many clients of mine have transformed their relationships with teams and individuals by simply putting away all distractions during the time they have to be with people both on the phone and in person. If you can't get rid of some meetings and make more time, you can make the time you do have of a higher quality. Doing both is a good idea. A lot of my clients grimace when discussing making time to spend with people. Don't overestimate what that means in terms of quantity. The vast majority of people understand the value of their boss's time, and just 15 focused, tuned-in minutes can really make a difference, particularly face-to-face.

When I bring up displaying your own fallibility to most of my leader clients, they usually groan or acknowledge that, yes, it makes sense, but avoid doing it anyway, at least initially. We are not talking about revealing your deepest, darkest secrets and insecurities here. Remember, the truth of the situation is you are fallible. Being authentic is about being truthful. You can acknowledge your own fallibility by asking questions. You can talk about mistakes you have made in the past. Find your own way of acknowledging that you don't have all the answers, and communicate this both verbally and nonverbally. Status differences influence the way people see each other. This is easy to forget, particularly if you have more status. Lower-status people often overestimate the power of higher-status people.

Let's go back to the case of Ken and Project Turn Key. When Ken did meet with the project team live and in person, he told them directly that his boss was likely to refuse “the ask” for another $2 million. He related experiences in the past in which he had asked her for more funding without any warning like this one. Every time, she had told him absolutely not and to “go figure it out.” By sharing this with his team, Ken was openly acknowledging his fallibility. When he and I debriefed his live meeting with the team, he said every single team member was openly shocked that his boss was likely to say “absolutely not” to him. The team had overestimated Ken's power. It blew their minds to think that he too had a boss who could simply say no to him. Ken told the absolute truth and acknowledged his fallibility in two sentences.

Highlighting failures as learning opportunities and holding people accountable for transgressions may seem mutually exclusive on first blush. They are not. One without the other will contribute to your lack of success. The truth is not usually one-dimensional once you get more than one person working on a project or in an organization.

An event in the life of a team can be both a failure and an opportunity for learning. The skill of framing events as both learning opportunities and failures is important for authentic leaders to develop. First, you must openly acknowledge the failure. In Ken's situation, he and the team actually walked through the negative implications of the project not being finished by the end of the calendar year. That made the failure very real. Then, Ken said, “We are not likely to get the extra $2 million or to finish by the end of the year as we promised.” Toward the close of that very long and exhausting meeting, Ken asked, “What have we as a team learned from this?” They wrote down the lessons and circulated them via e-mail. One team member took the initiative and created a poster of three critical lessons for each team member to keep in their space. The whole experience brought the team much closer. I caught up with a member of that team two years later who recounted to me how that experience was deeply meaningful to her.

Finally, clarify boundaries and expectations. This is simple but not easy. Create ground rules for the team. Include specific rules, such as “admit your mistakes quickly” or “relate bad news in person.” Creating the rules is easy. Keeping them top of mind and living them out is the tough part. Environments in which the rules are clear feel much safer than environments in which the rules are not articulated clearly. This is just as true for adults as it is for kids. You also need to create “accountability guardrails” for the team. What happens when someone violates the rules? How will it be addressed? What is the procedure? This accountability process, or clarifying the guardrails, is critical for making the ground rules real.

Next, we move from the practical aspects of cultivating conditions for truth telling as an authentic leader and into the broader territory of human virtue and character.

In Search of a Virtue Buzz

I want to challenge your notion of virtue, character, and good behavior for its own sake. You may have recoiled at the very mention of the word virtue or character and wondered if Karissa was going to get preachy. Our U.S. culture, at least, has been heavily influenced by puritanical notions, and most people look beleaguered and/or somber at the very mention of words like character, virtue, or moral education in the abstract. The psychological research, however, draws a stark contrast to those somber states when we examine what really happens when we see human virtue in action compared with talking about it. Let's look at how this works in real life.

It was 6:30 in the morning and my “to do list” was calling me loudly while I stood in line at the local Panera Bread, looking forward to the hazelnut coffee and the egg white, spinach, and avocado breakfast power sandwich. I was telling myself that a project was going to be totally derailed if I could not get a client to return my call today. I counted 15 people in front of me as my mind moved into the present situation and, unfortunately, into a state of mild panic and irritation. A haze of frustration and negativity pervaded the line, which was moving at an agonizingly slow pace. We all groaned as we heard the cashier instruct a new employee how to key in a latte. Now we knew what was going on here. We were going to be here for a while. Was I going to have a caffeine-deprivation headache before I got through this line? Needless to say, based on what we learned in Chapter 11, I was not in a state of authentic leadership as I was not “other focused” at all!

Then, something extraordinary happened. A woman six people ahead of me in line said to the person in front of her, “hold my place for a second.” Then she left the line to help an older gentleman whose hands were shaky get his coffee to his table. A hush fell over the entire line, as we were all transfixed by her virtuous behavior. I personally felt a rush of warmth in my chest and a lump in my throat as I watched this woman demonstrate virtue somewhere around 6:40 AM in the slow coffee line. The frustration hum emanating from all 15 of us subsided for a moment, and you could feel the uplift of energy in the quiet. I felt a positive buzz as I watched this ordinary woman simply help this older gentleman get his coffee and settle at his table. I noticed the buzz and intentionally savored it for a while before my inner critic kicked in and asked, “Why didn't you think to do that?” and then just as quickly reassured me that it really wasn't that big of a deal.

But it was a big deal. Psychologists have a name for the buzz or positive state that I experienced in the coffee line. I experienced a state of elevation in a very ordinary human situation. The state of elevation is an emotional response that happens when we witness a virtuous act of kindness that someone else does for the benefit of another human being. We are lifted up higher and into a more positive frame of mind psychologically.

This is what I call a virtue buzz. In order to enjoy it more and have an even more positive experience, slow down and savor it before your mind just moves on. For evolutionary purposes, our brains are wired so that negative emotions are intense and capture our full attention. Think about the well-known fight-or-flight stress response you experienced the last time you had a close call while driving, or thought you were going to get pulled over for speeding. However, these more subtle virtue buzzes—and positive emotions in general—are easy to miss and dismiss.

We experience this state of elevation as a result of witnessing the best of human nature or virtue in action. We are simply noticing other people doing good things. The state of elevation was described by Jonathan Haidt and Sara Algoe⁷ in a series of rigorous studies with college students from the University of Virginia. Some of the actual prompts they used are listed below.

Let's give you a flavor of the experiment. Take three minutes and write a brief response to each of the prompts below. Don't rush through here. You could miss something important that will really revolutionize the way you think about being an authentic leader, or better yet, a virtue buzz.

1. Please think of a specific time when you saw someone demonstrating humanity's higher or better nature. Please pick a situation in which you were not the beneficiary, that is, you saw someone doing something good, honorable, or charitable for someone else.
2. Please think of a specific time when someone did something really good for you. Please pick a situation in which you benefited because of someone else's kindness, helpfulness, or generosity.
3. Please think of a specific time when you witnessed someone overcoming adversity. Please pick a situation in which someone else successfully overcame an obstacle or handicap.

How did each of the prompts impact you? What were the differences between your responses to the three? In my coaching practice, I use such prompts and pay attention to my clients without ever directly asking “how do you feel?” In fact, the best way to kill a virtue buzz in the work setting is to directly ask how someone feels. Maybe you can get by with it, but I am a psychologist, and the minute I ask how anyone feels, I know I can expect jokes and defenses. But I have other methods.

The researchers were attempting to understand how what they called “other praising” emotions worked. Other praising simply means positive feelings about another human being. The three other praising emotions identified were elevation, gratitude, and admiration. Of the prompts above, the first one is designed to provoke elevation—perhaps we could call it “the Panera prompt.” The second prompt above was used to provoke gratitude, and the third prompt was used to provoke feelings of admiration.

The research psychologists were also too smart to ask directly how the participants were feeling, but instead constructed a sophisticated questionnaire, which measured physiological details such as a lump in the throat or a tightening of the chest. Physiological details allowed researchers to record emotional responses without the results becoming totally contaminated by rationalization and thinking. Their hypothesis, that seeing others doing virtuous things elicited positive emotions, was subjected to rigorous scientific analysis. The conclusion was clear: Seeing others behave in ways that are morally virtuous, kind, or admirable provokes the positive emotions of elevation, gratitude, and admiration.

As we all know, emotions make us want to take action. Haidt and Algoe identified specific action tendencies generated by the three different states. The emotion of elevation makes us want to do things for the good of the team or the collective. Gratitude provokes us to improve the relationship with the person who did something kind for us. And admiration provokes a desire to be a better version of ourselves. Yes, you read that right: Seeing someone else be excellent makes the individuals simply watching want to improve and be excellent, too. Such positive emotions have been clearly linked more generally to what renowned positive psychology researcher Barbara Frederickson⁸ has termed a broaden and build mind-set. Just like it sounds, in the broaden and build mind-set, people see a wider range of options for behavior and are much more open to possibility. In other words, you don't have to be cynical or irritated while standing in a long line. This mind-set is clearly connected to a wide range of positive emotions including elevation, gratitude, and admiration.

What does all of this have to do with authentic leadership? If you as a leader demonstrate virtuous or good behavior in ordinary ways, do nice things for the members of your team, and demonstrate competence and excellence, you are likely provoking this broaden and build state in your followers.

Think about that for a minute. Demonstrating your competence or doing your job with excellence along with being a good example literally provokes people into an emotional state in which they want to get better. That motivation to get better is a precursor to high performance in any field.

But you can't fake it and do this stuff in a check-it-off-the-list manner. You have to slow down enough to notice that someone needs help getting to the table with their coffee. You have to notice that someone on your team is having a rough time. One of my clients keeps his entire organization of 5,000 people in a constant moderate gratitude buzz through his innovative and funny digital birthday cards. These cards are a genuine, authentic expression of him as the quirky, funny, and utterly unique human being that he is. He is also a master of his functional area and stays on top of every development in his fast-changing field of expertise.

The idea of being in a generally positive emotional state at work is something we would all sign up for. Emotions are more contagious than the common cold. Think about a toxic coworker who is always negative, and you'll know what I mean by contagious. You need emotional Purell^TM after interacting with some individuals. The good news is that positive emotions are contagious, too. Having people want to improve, look out for the team, and develop strong relationships are powerful levers for creating great places to work. An act of virtue need not be grand, heroic, or big. An act of virtue can be as simple as saying “how are you?” and really listening to the answer, or holding the door open for someone. Creating a generally positive work environment in which people have quality relationships actually sets up the conditions for people to become more authentic instead of squelching themselves and just getting through the day. The most interesting thing about the virtue buzz is that it lifts the spirits of everyone involved. The person who commits the act of kindness or virtue may actually benefit the most from it in terms of an overall emotional mood improvement. Doing good literally makes us feel better. Cheers to regular virtue buzzes!

Self-Defining Moments

Authentic leaders are committed to the pursuit of the truth about their businesses, themselves, and other people. A virtue like pursuing the truth is not a skill-based strength like communicating clearly or having a good mind for math. Virtue goes deeper than skill. Sometimes authentic leaders practice virtues like telling the truth for the sake of telling the truth. Such times serve as self-defining moments in the journey toward becoming more authentic.

Now for one final tale from my extraordinary clientele. I was working with a client, Len, in a stretch role. Stretch roles are usually pressure-filled, hard, and highly visible. They are essentially designed to test people. Len was not doing well in such a role. Things were going so badly that his boss, Bryan, did not see another promotion in my client's future at this company. (Don't feel too sorry for Len, as he was already at a very high level.) Bryan called me one day with a dilemma. Should he tell this high-flying, highly ambitious person, my client, the truth that he was not likely to be promoted past his current level? Bryan explained to me that he would need Len's technical skill and expertise in order to complete several transactions key to the future of the business within the next year. If Bryan told him this truth, Len had a great résumé and could very well leave. Len's departure would make the next year more difficult for the entire team, and potentially negatively impact the results.

What would you do? Bryan told my client the truth within a month. He took the risk that Len would leave. The essence of being an authentic leader as Bryan defined it meant looking out for his people was more important to him than the personal costs of figuring out how to do the work in his absence. That being said, Bryan was prudent and had a plan B ready in the event that Len left abruptly. The plan B would require much more of Bryan's time and attention and additional people he did not know well, but he was prepared for the worst.

This particular story has a happy ending. Len did not leave the company and he has a great deal of respect for his former boss who gave him the horrible news. In fact, the news prompted Len to take stock and reevaluate what he wanted out of his life and career. After the shock wore off, Len realized that actually, he didn't really want to be in a higher-level role. He wanted to invest more time and energy with his two teenage children, as he felt he had missed a lot of time with them through the years. Not hustling for his next promotion would grant him that time. In this case, the boss's authenticity impacted my client and he became more honest about what he really wanted out of his whole life, not just his work life.

Alas, this final client tale and many others are far more complicated than a simple virtue buzz. However, watching all of this transpire was inspiring for me at a deep level and obviously, for my client. That is the impact of such truth telling and authenticity, particularly when it is so carefully chosen and carries personal risk for a person of power who could so easily make another choice without anyone knowing. It requires practicing virtue when you simply need to slow down and notice what is going on around you. You should also practice virtues that are part of who you are, such as truth-telling when it is more difficult and challenging.

The Workouts

• As you may remember, Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson completed an ambitious work designed to organize human virtue and character that culminated in a list of 24 character strengths: creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, perspective, bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest, love, kindness, social intelligence, teamwork, fairness, leadership, forgiveness, humility, prudence, self-regulation, appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, and spirituality.

1. Pick one and practice as you go about your daily routine for one week.

• Understanding more about the dynamics of trust is helpful for everyone. Part of that is becoming more aware of how you decide whom to trust and whom not to trust. That will help you understand how others make similar calculations. We learned that trust consists of integrity, ability, and benevolence. Think about a person you really trust. How would you rate him/her on integrity, ability, and benevolence? What evidence do you have to support your view?
• In this chapter we learned about five leadership behaviors that contribute to psychological safety. Those included being approachable and accessible, displaying your own fallibility, highlighting failures as learning opportunities, holding people accountable, and clarifying expectations. How have you as a leader practiced those behaviors within the last month? Look for ways to practice all of them as part of your daily routine. Are you better at one of them than the others? Which one do you try to avoid doing? You know what that means: You need to do that one!

Conclusion

Being an authentic leader is about determining who you are in your own way and making the contributions only you can make. The process does involve tough choices, hard work, and struggle. Remember to have fun, though, and savor those virtue buzzes along the way. In the immortal words of Dr. Seuss:⁹

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is more Youer than You.