Blog 4 Do we like the truth?

Do we like the truth?

I imagine that for most of us it has been difficult to avoid the pantomime of the recent election followed by the farcical comedy of the coalition negotiations.

We all know that politicians have a very loose definition of the truth. The late Alan Clark summed it up perfectly with his phrase “I admit I was economical with the actualité“ in relation to the Matrix Churchill case.

Politicians clearly refrain from telling the truth, and have on occasion admitted as much. They assess that the public don’t want to hear it.

That has caused me to ponder of late, whether we do really want to hear the truth, not from politicians, but from each other. Similarly do we tell the truth all the time?

I am talking about truth and lies in the context of not wanting to deliberately take advantage or exploit someone. I am suggesting we lie or avoid telling the truth to navigate our way through the complexity of relationships and organisations. Whilst at first blush this is “normal” and acceptable I want to suggest that, actually it is harmful to everyone involved, ourselves, the people we are in relationships with, and organisations we interact with.

We tell our children to tell the truth, we tell them they should not lie. At a surprisingly early stage of their development they work out that it is not such a good idea to tell the truth all the time. The payoff for lying is simply better than for telling the truth. All of us who have siblings will have legions of memories of getting away with something by blaming it on our brother or sister and similarly getting blamed for something they had done. Whist writing I can instantly recall a couple, I have no doubt my brother can too!

So as children we learn that lying is expedient we have less interest in longer-term future consequences, because at that age consequences are only foreseen in minutes and hours.

As we progress through childhood towards adulthood, we learn this complicated dance of truth and lies, interwoven with cultural expectation, societal norms and relationship conventions. The outcome being that we, just like politicians, treat telling the truth as something with relativistic qualities, to be weighted against the consequences. As we evaluate these consequences we are making all sorts of calculations and assumptions. Based on past experience, guesswork, the appropriateness to the situation, who we are talking with and so on.

I want to explore the consequences and see if we can determine whether there may be some unhelpful outcomes as a result of our desire/need to subordinate truth to other things that we are valuable to us.

To take a couple of crass examples, they may appear too trivial on first examination but I think they illustrate where this flexible approach to telling the truth can lead us.

For the male readers, we will all have reacted with horror when asked the question “Does my bum look big in this?”

For the female readers, I assume you may on occasion have had a similar reaction to the question “how was that for you?”

Our minds immediately go into overdrive carrying out millions of calculations by the millisecond knowing that if we delay too long, that will be indicative of our real view. We calculate consequences, feedback, energy levels, available time, tiredness….and so on.

I presume only to speak for the men in the following; “You look great!” is our usual response. Remembering to actually look before saying it! I will, of course leave it to the female readers to draft their own version of the answer to their question.

Although these may seem clichéd examples, if we follow through some of the possible consequences they may serve as good examples of unhelpful results.

So if we assume for a moment that her bum does look big. She wants to look good, we know that. We do not need to assume that because we know she takes pride in her appearance. Now suppose she visits the ladies as soon as she arrives she sees herself in a full-length mirror and is horrified. What now…..frustration hurt disappointment on both sides.

Similarly, “How was it for you?” cannot go on for ever, when eventually it is brought up (pardon the pun) it may be met with “why didn’t you say before” and the conversation goes all over the place, as hurt feelings, frustrations, shame, pain and anger all confuse and obscure the source issue.

In so many ways we are acting just like we did when we were children our “consequence horizon” is too short, we can see the immediate consequences, or be more precise we think we can, within the next few minutes, but ignore the longer-term consequences, or perhaps don’t even see them in the moment. In carrying out our rapid calculations we apply a discount factor by reference to time. We are blinded by the immediacy of the issue. Our evolutionary past kicks in. We wouldn’t worry about not having any firewood to cook a meal if we came face to face with a sabre-toothed tiger, we would do whatever it takes to avoid it.

So we lie or fail to tell the whole truth for expediency’s sake, to avoid immediate conflict or in deference to other people’s feelings. All seemingly laudable reasons. They seem laudable because we only evaluate them against a short consequence horizon. What is to be gained by replying with the truth when your mother-in-law asks if you liked her specially prepared cauliflower cheese? Or when a colleague asks you how you are?

I suggest there is a huge amount to be gained by doing so and equally importantly a huge amount is lost every time we fail to do so.

To avoid getting sidetracked on this point, I am going to assume that we each have the skill and vocabulary to share our true feelings and thoughts in a caring and sensitive fashion and that we are not gratuitously offensive. This will ensure that we do not confuse the content of the message with its delivery. I accept that this may not always be the case, but unless we assume that I think it will obscure what we are trying to uncover.

As with most things in human behaviour, Shakespeare has got it covered!

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou cans’t not be false to any man.
—Hamlet.

Each time we fail to truly say what we feel or believe we chip away at our own sense of self we lessen our presence in the world, and undermine our sense of self worth. I appreciate that this may sound all a bit too grand and touchy-feely new age nonsense but… indulge me for a moment.

As we get into the habit of consequence prediction we also begin to try to manage other people’s reactions and feelings. We do this under the pretence that we are managing our own feelings and taking care of ourselves. Eg “I don’t like conflict so I will say this rather than the truth” Yes we may well avoid the conflict with the other person, but we have not avoided the conflict, we have simply moved it to ourselves. We have said one thing, presented one thing as a truth about us to the world and yet have another opposing truth within us. A cognitive dissonance of sorts. We have chosen to keep the conflict within ourselves rather than share it with someone else.
It is this conflict that is bad for us, not only is it stress inducing, it also chips away at our sense of self. We have all had those moments when we have failed to say how we feel or what we think at work to come home feeling stressed and angry, precisely because we have the conflict within us. We endeavour to dissolve by post rationalisation, but we know it doesn’t work, we can feel the conflict within us. The intensity may diminish over the next few days. But it remains ready to be re-awoken at the hint of a similar situation.

Now, I do of course appreciate that I may be stretching it to say this sort of stress and conflict could arise as a result of willingly eating your third helping of your mother-in-law’s cauliflower cheese! I agree, what possible harm can it do to smile and say “oh yes please”? Other than the knowledge that you will have to do eat it on every visit for the rest of her life, or yours, which may well be shorter as a result of the diet.

The problem arises because it is habit forming, it is a slippery slop, which once we are on it is very hard to prevent ourselves from sliding to the bottom.

When does the failure to tell the truth move from potentially being harmless, to potentially being harmful? Impossible to determine I think.

We can best illustrate the corrosive effect of not telling the truth by looking at what happens in the work place. Telling the truth has been sacrificed on the alter of avoiding conflict.

How many of us have gone through a whole year being told we are doing a great job, only to arrive at a year-end assessment to be told we are average? The consequences of this are obviously no good for anyone and yet it is done year after year after year.

The rollout of a new strategy or operational structure is fraught with difficulty if people fail to tell the truth. The proposed impact is nuanced here, adjusted there, spun somewhere else so as to avoid conflict, As if avoiding conflict was the corporation’s mission statement! Are we really saying we are only prepared to make these radically important changes if we can do it without conflict?

The cumulative impact of Chinese whispers on an organisation can be devastating. By the time the message reaches only the third person the minor compromise proposed to accommodate a specific circumstance has become an opt out clause for all.

Leaders simply have to tell the truth. Again it is the “consequence horizon” problem. Avoiding conflict and putting a positive spin on things can seem entirely appropriate. However the longer-term consequences of this are potentially horrific, involving a quite phenomenal waste of time, energy and effort. Leaving aside the hidden costs of stress, absence and health.
By promoting truth telling as an option, leaders promote and sub consciously encourage their managers to do the same. The cascaded impact of this breeds confusion and fear and a culture that can easily move to one where people begin to believe that being truthful is detrimental to their careers. The organisation then becomes a toxic place to be. Every day people will be in internal conflict, permanent cognitive dissonance, creating underperformance, stress and ill heath. So the leaders get precisely what they were seeking to avoid in the first place. If you cannot tell the truth, you cannot be who you are, and if you cannot be who you are, you will not perform to your best.

A leader’s responsibility is simply to create an environment where people can be the best they can be. She will not achieve that unless she is married to the truth and committed to telling it all of the time.

Will Schulz suggested that over 80% of organisations problems are rooted in not telling the truth.


Think I am exaggerating? What is office politics if it is not playing around with the truth? Some of it may be deliberately vindictive which is outside the scope of our discussion here, but a lot of it is considered the norm, gossip and just human nature.

It’s human nature; you can’t do anything about that! I hear people cry. Is that really true? Is human nature the same as it was in the middle ages? Do we drown people we believe to be witches? Do we execute people for stealing bread for their hungry children? No we don’t. So why should we accept the human nature defence for this or for that matter anything.

So to re-cap we have shown that a failure to tell the truth will

1. Create a harmful internal conflict
2. Lead to a deterioration of a sense of self
3. Be corrosive to an organisation and the people who work within it.


Two areas I will explore in a further note. Firstly to examine the deterioration of the sense of self in more detail. Secondly to examine the impact on our personal relationships.

Finally, I invite you to choose a day next week during which you note down the times you don’t tell the truth. Try to keep a piece of paper with you all day and jot them down. Maybe expanding on them later if you have the time, and reflecting on why

The next thought, is the obvious one, a whole day of telling the truth. I propose to choose a day next week to do just that, and will share how it felt with you afterwards. Naturally if any of you would like to do the same it would be great to hear about your experiences.