Last week I started off the new year by sharing my thoughts as expressed in the South African proverb “Good Behavior Must Come From The Top.” I must have struck a chord since I received a number of quite nice responses. As I read the notes and thought about what I had written it occurred to me that it was a bit too dismissive about the power of words compared to the impact of action.
Not that I don’t think ultimately it’s the behavior that people believe rather than the words but rather that the words so set the tone that surrounds the behavior. Too often the tone is obfuscation rather than clarity.
Obfuscation to hide failure, incompetence, lack of vision, fear, hatred, and the panoply of other less than stellar behaviors. Clarity on the other hand, leaves you no place to hide.
My thinking about this crystallized when I noticed that airline industry speak for a crash is “hull loss”, clearly an attempt to sanitize and downplay a horrible event. Wouldn’t you trust someone much more who was willing to just state that “our airplance crashed”?
After all, everyone who hears “hull loss” immediately pictures a fiery crash. And then immediately thinks how insulting the executive was to treat the public like children lacking comprehension and the strength to hear the truth.
Such speaking allows us to commit horrendous acts and feel no remorse. Think “collateral damage” for “we killed a bunch of civilians by accident” or “therapeutic misadventure” for when a doctor kills a patient through poor treatment.
What does this say about you…and your listeners…when you are unable or unwilling to clearly tell the truth about what’s going on or what happened? No wonder we have such disrespect and disgust at so many in positions of authority or power.
I think there is an even more insidious affect of euphemisms. It weakens our minds and leads us to become unwilling to hear the truth and so leads to poor thinking and less than the best results. We become fearful of speaking the truth about uncomfortable things and so are unable to address and thus solve these issues.
All suffer for our fear. We become lessor people than we could be.
Shine the light of facts and truth, address issues squarely. Bring transparency and clarity to all you do and expect the same from others. Be the person others look up to and respect for your strength of character and willingness to be open and honest…and for your willingness to accept the consequences.
Be a true leader.
“The first thing is to be honest with yourself.”
Nelson Mandela