How much do you trust your colleagues? How well do you understand your leaders? Do you feel that you can express yourself freely in your work?
We tend to believe that the success of companies is based on solid planning structures, strategies, rules and budgets, but all of us who work know that what really determines the success or failure of an organization are the human relationsboth internal and external.
We live in a world of relationships because we are social beings. The problem is that not all of us are competent when it comes to speaking and understanding. Just as we can be good by nature, we are also vitiated by the pursuit of power, insecurity, instability and conflict in general. We are used to keeping secrets, creating stories and seeing our benefit before that of others. Many of us have not contacted our emotions fully, so we don’t know what triggers our reactions or what is the real need hidden behind our expressions.
We are a gray scale, we can give the best or the worst of ourselves given the circumstances, and that is where the possibility lies. Frankl said that “between the stimulus and the response there is a space. In this space lies our power to choose the answer. And in our response rests our freedom and our ability to grow as people.”
We may not be able to change our past, we can’t change our upbringing, but we spend most of our active lives at work, so the culture we live in there will determine a good part of our perspective on the world. There is an enormous moral responsibility on the part of companies to create conscious and positive spaces with people. It is important that we question what type of communication we are nurturing in our work environments, it is usually very superficial or technical and we rarely stop to think about what things we say to nurture relationships and what consequences it has when we do not do it well.
In order to have a high performance culture in business, we have to start by telling each other the truth as quickly as possible; be radically honest, caring for the well-being of the people with whom we live. Being transparent and upfront about what we expect from people is the best way to achieve trust and understanding in any social environment.
We all benefit from knowing what drives our growth and what doesn’t. The best way to fix the errors it is communicating our different perspectives and learning from each other.
Given a stable level of mental health, human beings are always ready to learn and grow, so we appreciate opportunities to better understand our behaviors and make a better impression on others. A culture of radically honest communication, as long as it is friendly and focused, is tremendously useful for us to approach that end as a community.
Telling us the truth about the problems we see in a timely manner and preferably face to face, is the most effective way to solve problems and be able to evolve to better versions of the business.”
The radical honesty it builds trust and respect, but it must be practiced at all levels, taking care by all means that it does not become a violent, aggressive or unpleasant form of expression. Radical honesty always seeks to build.
How to move towards radical honesty?
The deepest and most lasting changes ideally start with the leaders, creating feedback spaces in which we understand the behaviors, habits and attitudes that can be improved for the benefit of all, although it is not always possible.
To achieve a honest culture, it is important to keep in mind the care of people and the evolutionary well-being of the business. We must free the ties of secrets and involve employees in understanding the challenges we face and the perspectives or strategies to overcome them. It is impressive how a well-informed collaborator can transform things through their motivation and proactivity.
If we want everyone to wear the shirt, then let’s talk about things as they are. We can all deal with the truth and in many ways we desperately seek it: Let’s talk head-on about what isn’t working well, share opposing views and release the tensions of silence so we can work better.
Utopia? I already believe it, living this culture is not easy, it is created through a lot of experimentation and openness, but it is enough to generate and sustain spaces of honest feedbackdeliver opinion tools to people, empower them to say what they see that can work better and offer transparency of the entire process.
Let’s talk about errors openly, let people express their disagreement publicly and let them argue your prospectslet’s make everyone involved understand the challenges faced in the company, make them feel part of the success and responsible for the results on a small and large scale.
Today more than ever we need to improve the culture in our jobs, let’s do our best. It’s time for the kind and radical honesty. This is a change that has to happen transversally, we cannot wait for it to happen from above, we have to create it from the place where we are, with the people around us and with what we have at hand. Remember, it is about expressing yourself openly with kindness and with the firm intention of generating spaces for growth and evolution.