Truth-Telling Revisited

Earlier this month I presented a seminar at an international gathering of Christian business leaders in Toronto, Ontario. The subject was “Truth-telling: The Hidden Profit Booster”. Attendees varied from the retired founder of a large family business to college students still planning for their careers. As usual I had fun preparing and presenting what I am learning about this challenging topic. Regular readers of my blog may remember an earlier journal entry in March about this important leadership principle.

I chose to address truth telling again because of the conversations that took place during and after my presentation. It became obvious during the seminar that not everyone shared my line of reasoning that telling the truth is good for business. I’m not suggesting there was widespread support for lying, just a sense from some participants that business practices have plenty of gray areas and this makes truth telling hard to carry out in the face of competitive pressures. No one disagreed with my assertions that people, including employees, customers, vendors, and even leaders tell lies. They seemed resigned to this inevitability. What they struggled to accept was my challenge that telling the truth has the potential to improve the bottom line.

When the topic of product labeling and advertising was used as evidence of ways we cheapen or devalue the truth, some wondered how a company could acknowledge a smaller portion or clarify the fine print and stay in business. Do consumers really care about these practices? Isn’t there a built in expectation that a capitalist, free market economic system will require choices between good and better, not just good and evil?

This minimalist thinking creates a challenge for leaders. How can we open a dialogue about truth telling if we don’t believe it is possible or practical to implement in our company culture, marketing, and product development? Must Christian leaders, in particular, compromise their faith values to protect jobs and ensure profits? Is truth telling, in fact, incongruent with business theory and practice?

I will be the first to acknowledge that telling the truth is hard. Notice I didn’t say complicated or esoteric. The basic principles of truth telling are simple and straightforward. They don’t require special training or innate skills. Simple but not easy…that is the challenge leaders face when called upon to tell the truth.

If you are like me the choice between easy and hard becomes painfully obvious. When confronted with the facts it is easy to gloss over them or dismiss them entirely. If challenged by another’s aberrant behavior it is easier to overlook or justify it. Avoiding or stretching the truth becomes second nature; a habit developed when we allow cynicism and ego to crush our spirits.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Our inner spirit, the place where God resides, is full of truth and love, enough to go around. It will require a commitment to vulnerability that may seem foreign to us, especially if we have suppressed our authentic selves through years of scrambling to get ahead or be accepted. Confession may be required, personal and corporate, before this new commitment to telling the truth can take root and flourish.

The idea that business and leadership will profit from a greater level of truth telling has immense appeal to me. I doubt that I am alone. What do you think?