"BRUTAL" AND "HONESTY" ARE A BAD COUPLE

• After six hours of “brutally honest” conversations between quarterback Brett Favre and Green Bay Packers management, they parted ways.
• Jim Collins, who authored From Good to Great, says one of the key differences between good companies and great ones is their ability to “confront the brutally honest facts.”
• One company uses “brutal” in its statement of values:We believe in "brutal conversations"; the ability to be honest, direct and challenging with each other while always being professional. We will never tell yo u "what you want to hear", but we will tell you what you need to hear.

What does the word “brutal” add to that statement? And how do you square “being professional” with being brutal? Let’s look behind the cliché and see it for what it is.

Merriam-Webster defines brutal like this: Befitting a brute: as a: grossly ruthless or unfeeling b: cruel, cold-blooded c: harsh, severe d: unpleasantly accurate and incisive.

Why would honesty have to be brutal to be effective? Does the truth have to leave us bloodied and reeling in order for it to have an impact? Truth can be hard to hear even when delivered with kindness and goodwill. When people held up a mirror for me, and I often didn’t find the reflection particularly attractive. But that was about me, not the honesty of the reflection.

In my experience, the times the truth became brutal – whether delivered or received – had to do with a desire to land a punch. The intention was to hurt, or to exercise authority, or deliver bad news in a cruel way.

Honesty? By all means. Brutal? You'd need to build a strong case to convince me that's necessary. Perhaps we could start thinking about “compassionately honest conversations.”

Or better yet, we could wish for the day when “conversations” wouldn’t need to be modified by the word “honest.”

WINNING v. COLLABORATING

The headline Business Weekgot my attention: “Winning the tough conversations at work.” The column lists four steps to follow in an uncomfortable conversation with someone at work (the example used is a manager talking to a subordinate.)

It is typical of advice offered as “good management techniques” that in reality are subtle manipulative techniques to get others to do something you want without revealing your intentions. Our bias is that this undermines trust, accountability and true collaboration. 

The first red flag in the Business Week column was the headline. Collaboration and “winning” are mutually exclusive.

Step 1 tells managers to talk about commitment to the relationship because “people are more inclined to change their behavior when they appreciate just how much you care about the relationship.” 

How can a relationship be authentic when people use the relationship to instigate a change in behavior? An authentic conversation means being direct about the business reasons for changing the behavior. 

Techniques like “filling their emotional tanks” and “replace ‘you’ with ‘we’” also have manipulation at their core. You can see it in the suggested conversation:

• “John, you are one of the most creative designers I have ever met.”


• “Let’s talk about we can get all the tasks completed on time” (emphasis added).

Using praise to “soften” a request/demand for behavior change, or talking about “we” when clearly it is “you” who is being asked to change – well, you get the point. And it’s likely the employee does too. 

An alternative would be to have an authentic conversation by:

• Raising the difficult issue with goodwill (“When a client's project is delivered late, it puts this business at risk.”)
• Acknowledge your own contribution to the situation (“I didn’t stay on top of things the way I should have, and this seems to have contributed to the missed deadline.”)
• Frame choices for the future (“I have some thoughts on how this could be avoided, and I’d like to hear your ideas on what could be done differently in the future.”)

Direct, adult-to-adult conversations are a fundamental to creating a culture where people take accountability for their own performance.