Honesty still works…

( A story of my Corporate Life — 4 Minutes easy reading )

I had a manager who, I guessed, liked me.

He knew that I was trustworthy and sincere, and I put my best into my work.

However, he subtly gave me feedback that I was too honest to lead a complex business function or a big team or a large customer engagement that involved diplomacy.

His strong belief systems made him think that you need to be shrewd, politically savvy, and even manipulative to be effective.

Honesty in the corporate world is almost like a vice rather than a virtue.

It's a nativity.

Yes, we all live in an incredibly complex and maybe even cruel world.

So, conventional wisdom suggests that you need to be shrewd, diplomatic, and manipulative to survive in such a ruthless world.

This is such lazy thinking.

Remember that story of Mowgli; Mowgli did not survive because of his diplomacy and shrewd nature.

He survived because he was authentic, honest, and fearless even in a dangerous animal world.

You may say that's a story with good fictional value, but the real world is different.

Now, given a choice in your own life, who would you like to deal with ? a cryptic, complex, manipulative person or someone authentic, honest, and who always speaks his mind and is not manipulative.

I am sure you would like to choose the second type.

Then why do you think your team member, colleagues, and customers would like the first type?

Most of the time, people hide their true selves because they are unsure whether others will value them.

So, people will show up as someone who will conform to the stereotype of societies rather than their authentic selves.

Many people with their lazy thinking take that as an intelligent survival strategy.

In the process, they live a life of duality, and every time they need to reconcile two different selves of theirs, that makes life almost like hell.

While my manager must have thought that I am an honest person, I know I am not a pious soul who has descended from a high moral place.

I have my challenges, and I also have many facades that may work behind the veil of my perceived personality.

We all have our dark sides as well.

I am constantly trying to shed off all my facades and live an authentic life to liberate myself from living a rehearsed life.

Let me admit that honesty never goes out of fashion.

Today, it has become a more significant novelty.

I can cite two examples that taught me the lesson the hard way.

Way back in 1995, I was responsible for the receivable collection of my business apart from my company's sales functions.

I was expecting a payment, and I was very sure of collecting it, so I told my manager that the money had been collected.

In my review, that was the last day of the month and the quarter, and we had to close the books.

Unfortunately, the customer who was supposed to pay by the end of the day did not pay.

So, I was in a fix.

I could not go back to my manager and say that I lied and payment was not collected.

First, I lied; secondly, I had to cover up the lie as I did not have the guts.

So, I borrowed money in cash from one of my colleagues and put my own money to clear off the payment.

Thankfully, the amount was manageable, and we could recover the payment from the customer; back then, we mainly transacted in cash.

So, the lesson learned.

If I had been bold and honest and said to my manager in the first place itself that I had not been able to collect the payment, then I wouldn't have created such a mess.

I had a sleepless night until I closed the entire transaction.

Second incent was even graver .

A couple of years back, I was handling a Sales Leadership role, and we got an order from a customer for INR One Million for some supplies.

Looking at the customer's credit history, we did not want to execute the order without the full advance payment.

Much later, we learned that the order was forged by the salesperson of a company with whom we had a partnership.

The incident was getting murkier, and the person who forged the order silently made a Bank Draft of INR One Million and paid, or else he would have faced a corporate inquiry and lost his job.

Again, the big lesson is that had that guy not forged the document, he wouldn't have gone through such an ordeal, lost so much of his hard-earned money, and jeopardized his job.

However uncomfortable the truth may be, facing it with courage and honesty pays in the long run.

The problem is that many people mistake honesty for lack of diplomacy.

Diplomacy is not about faking things.

Diplomacy is the art of telling the truth objectively without hurting the other person's ego.

So honesty and diplomacy can go even hand in hand, and honesty need not be a handicap in a complex, cruel world.

It can be a prized virtue because honesty always wins in the end.