Intangibles

Honesty - Ron Carucci 059

2021-07-26 · 19:21 UTC ·Intangibles ·41 min read

Brief

This podcast explores a comprehensive framework for understanding and practicing honesty in leadership and personal life. Carucci's research reveals that dishonesty isn't random - people have predictable patterns of when and why they compromise their integrity, often triggered by feeling wronged, excluded, or facing consequences they want to avoid. The conversation delves into practical mechanisms: how environmental pressures (like Wells Fargo's sales culture) can gradually erode ethical standards through social proof and normalization of bad behavior. Carucci emphasizes that honesty requires intellectual rigor - actively seeking opposing viewpoints and testing one's own assumptions rather than operating in echo chambers. The discussion addresses nuanced scenarios like withholding hurtful information (which isn't dishonesty if it serves no constructive purpose) versus remaining silent when speaking up could create positive change. A key insight is that honesty operates differently across contexts - while political dishonesty faces diminishing consequences, workplace and personal dishonesty now carries higher penalties than ever. The framework provides actionable guidance: examining your last 15 dishonest moments to identify patterns, asking whose interests your silence serves, and recognizing that self-interest isn't inherently bad if balanced with genuine care for others. Carucci's research demonstrates that contrary to common assumptions, honest leadership and business practices consistently outperform dishonest alternatives across health, profitability, loyalty, and competitive metrics.

Why it matters

Ron Carucci discusses his 15-year study of 3,200+ leaders examining conditions that predict honesty versus dishonesty:

Key details

  • [framework] Honesty redefined as three intersecting components: truth, justice, and purpose - not just avoiding lies
  • [methodology] Used AI technology to analyze leadership data and identify environmental factors that corrupt or support integrity
  • [findings] Brain science shows humans are naturally wired for honesty, but environmental conditions can override this default
  • [practical] West Point's honor code includes three diagnostic questions: Does this deceive? Does this create unearned advantage? Would I be satisfied receiving this treatment?
  • [performance] Data shows honest, purpose-driven individuals and companies significantly outperform dishonest counterparts across all metrics
Source evidence

title: Honesty - Ron Carucci 059
author: Intangibles
contenttype: podcast
publication: Intangibles
published: 2021-07-26T19:21:08
sourceurl: http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1094526517-intangibles-honesty-ron-carucci-059.mp3

word_count: 9256

Welcome to Intangible's podcast. I'm Steve Berg, your host. Success is driven by how, as much as by what? How we communicate, how we lead, how we relate to our environment, are all vitally important. Intangible is a podcast that explores the underlying traits, qualities, and behaviors that improve the how. This is accomplished by finding the people who have studied and been successful practice in these soft skills and having informed conversations with them to get into what is learnable. Let's begin. If you search for tenderness, it isn't hard to find. You can have a love you need to live. But if you look for truthfulness, you might just as well be blind. It always seems to be so hard to give. Honesty is such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue. Honesty is hardly ever heard and mostly what I need from you. That, of course, is Billy Joel. His point, I believe, is universally understood. Honesty is hard. And most people don't do as good a job of it as they should. It is a subject that people shy away from because it takes real commitment. Today, I want to take a closer look at honesty because it has a real payoff. Joining me in conversation is Ron Karuchi. Ron is the best selling author of nine books, including to be honest, which will be referencing today. Ron is the co-founder and managing partner of Nevolent, a consultancy that works with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change in their organization. Ron is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review and Forbes. His work has been featured in Fortune, CEO Magazine, Inc, Business Insider, MSNBC, Business Week, and Smart Business. He's a two-time TEDx speaker. Welcome, Ron. Great to talk to you. Steve, thanks so much for having me. It's great to do with you. So why don't we start by having you fill in any blanks about your background that I may have neglected? Actually, we're pretty thorough in there, Steve. I'm a father of two grandchildren who are also dear friends of mine and married to a wonderful wife and we live in, you know, just moved back from the west coast to the east coast, which actually should require a passport. The cultures are so different. When I'm not working with clients at my firm, Navlin, or when I'm not writing, I'm on a bike biking or on playing tennis, or I'm hopefully trying to just chill out and relax. But that's not always my easiest game. You don't seem like a chill out relaxed type of guy. Anybody who's written nine books doesn't chill out and relax. It's a, yeah, good. It's either my, my hidden, my hidden sadomasochism or my, you know, going for punishment, I don't know what it is. Okay, let's, let's dive into this thing. All right, let's start out by defining honesty, at least in your view. And we're going to, we're going to talk about the components that make up honesty if that's okay with you. So, you know, just as a little bit of background, the book came as a result of a 15 year longitudinal study with more than 3200 leaders that I interviewed. We used some really cool sophisticated AI technology to examine the data and quantify. But my goal was to see it, could we predict under what conditions people would tell the truth and behave fairly? And what conditions would they lie and be self interested? And if we could predict those conditions, then could we, you know, shape them in organizations or could we avoid the ones that cause us to go to the dark side. And so what we found, both in the data we examined in our own research and also neuroscientifically in our brains. Truth telling is closely associated with justice or behavior and feeling treating up as well. And purpose working with a sense of meaning. So honesty in the book is defined as truth, justice, and purpose. It's no longer enough to just not lie. To be labeled as honest, you have to say the right thing, do the right thing and say and do the right thing for the right reading. Truth, justice and purpose. So when we talk about honesty in the book, we're talking about all three. So purpose, purpose is what you stand for, right? It's what you live for. It's what you strive for. It's what you want your life to embody. It's the impact and fingerprint you want to leave on the world. It's what you get you out of bed in the morning, excited to be out of bed. The reason I ask is it seems like it's not all that easy actually unless you spend a little time thinking about it to know what one's higher purpose is, what one stands for. And it's a big question. How would you recommend that we determine or decide kind of what our purpose literally just shot this video four minutes ago. So I've got a great answer. You know, so it's a lifelong pursuit, right? You know, the old adage, it's awfully miss attributed to Mark Twain says the two most important days in our life of the day were born and the day we find out why. He actually didn't say it, but it's still a good adage. The reality is we spend our whole life looking for that why it's never it's a journey. It's not a destination. But you can get some great clues. If you think about, you know, if I asked you to think over the last year of your life, about four or five of your record setting moments, the moments where you're at your most joyful, the moments where you're at your best, the moment when you felt like that's the moment I want to, it's like oxygen for me. Where are the places where you knew you met a difference, where you couldn't get enough of what you done. And who you're serving because it clearly what would probably not have been your own interests would have been others. If you can look back and see the patterns of those clues, that will give you a sense for what what makes your heartbeat faster, what brings you to life. That will give you a sense for what purpose you were born to live. The question is, how much does your structures of your life to career your job, your family, allow you to have as many of those moments as possible. You may have a deconstructed a life that actually discourages those moments from happening. And then you're going to live in a lot of tension stress. Yeah, I mean, is your answering that question? I was thinking to myself, you know, sometimes those things happen to you and you're grateful, but that's not necessarily the things that you would pursue to ultimately make you happy. So it's, you know, it's hard. So what I read the book, there was something that resonated with me. Ten gentle to this. Can you give us color on the West Point honesty checklist. So I got the incredible privilege of, so to be honest is a book of heroes. I didn't want to write the villain stories that I'm going to write about Theronos and most far go. I wanted to write about the people we'd love to emulate the people we'd love to follow. I got the incredible privilege of curating the stories and the wisdom of dozens of heroes. One of them was Bernard Banks. He's a Brigadier General and he ran the Leadership Development Program at West Point before becoming professor at Northwest University. And the honor code at every cadet is taught, you will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do. It's blanketed. And when I was talking to Bernie about what's cannot be taught, can it be learned? And he said you have to teach it. People don't complete a supposed answer to do it. And there are three sub questions every cadet has to ask themself below that ten of, I will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do. What is, does this action attempt to deceive anyone or allow anyone to be deceived? Does this action allow a gain or advance to which this person is not entitled? Would I be satisfied by this action if I were on the receiving end of it? And if you can get past, the one that I always left to ask is, would you tell your mother? You know, because if you struggle, if you hesitate for even a minute in the ask to those questions, that's your barometer telling you, much out here. Yeah. And I think we all have the great news we found out in the brain science, Steve, is that our natural previous position is for honesty. Our brains are wired to thrive in honesty. But what we also know about our brains is that if you put us into conditions where the environment around us does not support that, we will succumb. Unfortunately, I'm not going to try devices that have a restore factory settings button on them. Our brains don't. And so we have slippery slopes. We don't have slippery the sense. Yeah, I mean, I looked at that and I just went, oh, that's the golden rule with granularity. You know, like I appreciate that granularity, right? Because you can get to, there's a, you know, yes, honesty is black and white. And there's, you know, in that opening quote, there's degrees of sincerity, right? And that allows you to really kind of get to the degree of sincerity that makes it. Yeah, I want to empower people. I get, so people was now presumed that I've parted myself as self-proclaimed expert honesty. I'm not. I'm showing out a model of it either. But I'm often puzzled when people ask me things like, well, what about, you know, getting somebody really blunt feedback that could hurt their feelings. Or, you know, when you get asked that, is this just not going to look fat question? Or the, you know, the question that says, isn't it that it would hold some information if it's going to break somebody's heart? And all those examples of honesty, dishonesty. Well, those are distinctions without differences. The reality is honesty should never be cruel. You know, sometimes the truth does hurt. It doesn't have to be mean, right? You can still, if the truth has the pinch, it means you probably have watered it for a long time. But it can also be told with compassion and empathy and care. I'll tease some of those things out of you, I think, in a little while. I know those have struck me too. I don't, you don't go me wrong. I wanted to ask you those types of questions. You should. Well, but I think it's always nuanced. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's, I think that's right. So, you know, what other questions should we ask ourselves back to the sincerity thing to gauge our sincerity of our own honesty, right? How do you know that you're kind of beyond reproach when it comes to this? Well, I think the first question you have to ask yourself is, are my energies and words match you? You know, we all, we all proclaim whether we do it verbally or not a set of values, right? You may say you value compassion, but if the first question that you ask after your car spin hit is how much damage was there? Your actions are worth it and match. And so you have to ask yourself, how have others decoded my values? What have I shown to others that other principles I live by? And are they ones that actually intend to proclaim? And if they are, are my actions aligned to those? If I, if, if, if my child would have followed me or if somebody would have followed me around with the video camera all day long and a normal course of my day, would I be proud to show that video to my children to train them? So, so are you who you say you were? How transparent are you with information? How much do you couch? How much do you position? How much do you withhold? How much do you spin? How straightforward are you? How much do you slack self silence in the name of political safety? You know, how you show up to other people in everyday situations? And how are you calculating power differentials? How are you calculating wins and losses? And if your sense of honesty, truth, justice, purpose, fluctuates greatly, you should be worried. Because that's telling you that you're at risk to compromise. Yeah, well, I mean, honest honesty requires consistency, right? You can't be honest part of the time, not honest part of the time, and still see your honest. You're not. Right. Just the way that University of Massachusetts data would suggest, and plenty of studies correlate this, corroborate this, that we all lie on average twice a day, at least. So my question is, do you lie? That's a silly question. My question to people is, why do you lie? What brings you to your dishonesty? If I were to ask you to examine the last 15 choices you made that were less than honest, meaning you mistreated somebody poorly or disrespectfully, you were unwelcoming, you embellished information or accomplishments, you spun something, whatever it was. Guaranteeing you that if you were to examine closely, and honestly, those 15 most recent choices, you will see a pattern. Your dishonesty is not your dishonesty is not random. There are certain conditions, certain people, certain things that bring you to your version of dishonesty. If you want to change it, you have to find out what those are. I know you're going to discuss some generalities with me that you can then find specifics within those generalities. I want to do that. I want to do that also. Yeah, there's just so much here. Yeah. So it's honesty, you know, if it's if you know, consistency is will is honesty a matter of will because it seems like it should be to me. Is it a capability and I know cries work every day, but isn't it as simple as just deciding to be honest and then being honest? Oh, steeper than it were that easy. I think there are certainly a group of sociopaths who wake up every day, intentionally deceitful. I think most of us are more self deceived while thinking that we're being honest. I don't think even people most people set out to intentionally be dishonest. I just think in the moment of truth, when it arrives, the moment is too painful to face the truth. So it is it is a capability that needs to be it's a muscle. It's like going to the gym. You have to work it and practice. It's, you know, you're not going to go to the gym for the first time in five years and make about 300 pounds. Right. Right. And so waiting for the moment to tell a hard truth. As your first active honesty, you know, if you've accumulated a bunch of little dishonest, you know, what you thought were inconsequential moments, probably not preparing you well for that moment. Yeah. So I was paying attention. Again, that West Point thing really struck a chord with me. And he talks about time under code. And what he means is the more time a person spends being honorable, the more likely it is that their behavior can be sustained. So you kind of got to hit, you got to get like up the curve. And once you're up the curve, then you're, you're, you know, you've got a reasonable time under code. The consistency becomes more natural. And now he also assures it and says, and the social research bears us out. If you leave that environment where everybody's under the code and go someplace where that is the norms contradict that. If you stay too long eventually, you will succumb. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You'll justify it with, you know, I think the road, the entrance to every slippery slope has the words paved on it. Well, at least I'm not as bad as. Right. Right. Yeah. Relative expectations killed the cat. So I was talking was quite some time ago actually now to Angela Duckworth. And she told me about her running. She's like, you know, I was running every day. I wasn't getting any better. So I went and I talked to an expert and he said, all right, great. Yeah. What's your plan? What are you measuring? What's your goal? And she went, oh, and then she realized in that moment, why she wasn't getting any better? Right. So I'm kind of like with that in mind, what should be the goal? And what should we try to measure when we make a commitment to being honest? The first thing I would measure and it's, it's incredible. It's somewhat eligible, but it's, you know, moments of joy, moments of self self satisfaction, moments of peace, moments of impact. You know, well, if you could listen to them, people are telling stories about their experience of you as their colleague or leader at home at night. My goal would be to make sure that tell as many stories as possible about your integrity. About the example you said. And if you don't know the stories they're telling, then you should be worried. Yeah. I mean, the big picture is to live a. Yeah, the, the big goal, I guess, is to live a life worth emulating, right, or worth talking about. Well, I mean, I put my ass here, so you can say, yes, but you should still be honest with everybody's watching, right? Even if people couldn't see you for the sake of your own soul, for the sake of your own well-being, don't live below your design constraints, right? Right. Right. Right. Okay. So you touched, you told me about the Venn diagram of honesty, which are purpose, justice and truth, right? And they all intersect. What are the specific initial steps that an individual, and I've been really focusing this on the individual. I know you've done work on both individual and the organization. But if I'm looking at an individual, what is the individual, because I'm assuming that, you know, it's not organizations, per se, listening. What do they need to do in order to kind of establish the basis for being honest? Well, I think certainly the ultimate outcome is trustworthy, right? It's that ultimately people will come to rely on you and see you at your user, what consistent and predictable. I think, you know, the question actually is that about justice is, how am I treating people more differently? How welcoming am I to points of view that I don't agree with? How do I show up around, how inhospitable am I to people that I find to be annoying? Because your measure of justice isn't just how you treat people who are like you. The measure of justice is treating people even who don't think or believefully you do. How often do you actually pursue learning about the differences of others? And being respectful and hospitable, even if you don't change your mind. How often do you other somebody versus welcome them? And if those camps are pretty clear, that's telling you that your justice Brahminist is way too flexible. I was talking to someone today and she totally caught me off guard. She said, Oh, I know this person, he's my work accountability partner. And I was like, a work accountability partner. That's pretty amazing. And she, you know, went on to describe that it's not like, Hey, look, I said I would do this and I, you know, it's not that it's not that much of a fourth way thing. But there was an accountability part was the thing, right? And I kind of think about that as well, right? I mean, there's within our little firm, you know, we think there's one person that has a very strong moral compass, not that we're not moral ourselves, but it's clear. But we, you know, we talk and I think that in talking about, you know, how does that feel to you? Does that seem right that accountability seems like a significant thing as well. And again, caveat with it has to be has to include justice and dignity to offer our category processes are demeaning into moralism. And they're and they're shame based and they're scorekeeping based. And they're, they're not dignified. So I think accountability has to be defined. It has to be the yard suits that we hold up to others. And I will also be actually up to ourselves have to have a measure of truth for us to them. So we can't, you know, right? That to soften the blood will we fall short, but they also have to have a degree of dignity and compassion and empathy in them. Yeah. And you were talking about say do before, right? Like what you say and what you do, I recall reading that you want that you want that to be as close to one to one or 100% as you possibly can get. I think our, you know, I think we often confuse our say do ratio with our say think ratio. Meaning, meaning I want to create my good intentions. I, you know, I gave, I gave feedback to a client that I cooked it from interviews with his team and said, you know, your team finds you intimidating. And he got really defensive. He said, I work hard to appreciate them. I listen to their ideas. I give them resources. What about me is dignity? I said, well, apparently in some meetings where you lose your patience, you become sarcastic or even a little occurred. Or you sort of cut people off and they got on too long. He goes, well, we all have bad days, but it isn't intimidating. I said, it's not yours to design. You know, no one's saying you intended to be a committee. That's the affect you have, whether you intend for it to be a nod. So if you want to be not perceived as intimidating, change those behaviors. It's okay for you to feel impatient. It's okay for you to not like somebody's work. It's not okay for you to encode that, that discontent in those behaviors. If you want people to see you as trustworthy, because intimidation reduces trust. Right. Right. Right. Right. I mean, that's me. The point that you're making about whose eyes. Right. You know, through your own eyes. Hey, I'm a perfectly normal person. I'm a perfectly honest person through the eyes of others is what really ultimately matters. And we have to accept that we don't control those those evaluations, but we do control the leading indicators that lead to them. We just have to recognize and begin to learn to sort of have a third eye and view how are those experiences through their eye. And not conclude that, well, they're misinterpreting me. Well, don't be misinterpretable. And they won't misinterpret you. Yes. So yes, self-awareness is part of it. But it's not all of it, even. So I think what you're saying, you know, that's to me, that's a really important point. And if you're dispirency or you're discussing that briefly, just some quick, just some quick things off the top of your head about kind of foundational behaviors for transparent. I think self-disclosure is important. People, you don't want people guessing about what you believe or think. Even the littleest things like talking about your family or talking about a personal struggle or talking about making yourself human, making yourself accessible to people. So many people wonder, you know, what are you thinking or what does he really feel? Make sure people don't have to decode you and then do it wrong. Be open. Be vulnerable. Be be candid. Let people have a glimpse into how you think so that they can actually eventually decode it without having to ask. Give people a sense of your sixth of a sixth sense of you. That would put them at ease. And that will actually raise your trustworthiness in their eye. And by the way, if you are truly honest, you won't really have a big problem with that. If you're not truly honest, that might be difficult for you. It will certainly be difficult for you, but even honest people who are introverted or shy or socially anxious may not realize the reach to which they come across as close. They're not unapproachable or distant. And so you can be honest and cold. It's just definitely help people see you as trustworthy. And so you have to warm the road, especially if there's a differential in power or a differential in rank. And so, you know, treat people as if they are guessing your home. You know, no matter what you're doing, I tell people when you go on job interviews, treat your interviewer as if they've just arrived for cocktails at your home. And just, you know, when you've been to somebody's home, and they're an incredibly gracious host, and everybody in the room feels like they're the only person there and feel special. Make people feel like that around you, because they know if they belong. And when they feel they belong, they will farmer like way to trust you and trust your motives. If you're across this cold and distant, then they have to wonder why. Right. By the way, that is not easy, at least for some. Alright, let's, so we've talked a little bit about honesty and you hinted at this. Let's talk a little bit about dishonesty. What is it that erodes or corrupts honesty? Well, you know, I think it's, it's other than if, you know, if you're psychologically damaged human being, for the most part, it's usually gradual. And I think, you know, being around conditions, if you feel wronged. Right. So for many people, if you feel excited, if you feel excluded, if you feel unfairly treated, if you thought you didn't get an opportunity, someone else got that you deserved. Any of those moments, and they happen every day in organizations, when people feel wrong, they feel entitled to take. Right. So once they, once they feel like you, you owe me, I'm going to get my pound of flesh. They're on the slippery slope. They don't justify it, but the reality is the minute they're going to make you pay for their pain, that you may have caused them. We're, we're now slipping toward a dark place. What about the everybody's doing it? Yeah, common, common reasoning. I mean, that's Wells Fargo, right? 5,000 people didn't wake up at Wells Fargo all the same day and say, hey, here's an idea. All of a sudden, everybody's getting their sales numbers met or exceeded because they're opening up these fake accounts. I'm like, well, nobody's saying anything. So I guess it's okay to do it. There was no training manual, but said, he was talking about a fake account. It just became practice because it became widespread and nobody stopped it. Yeah. And by the way, there's probably very few, I mean, there will be ultimately some holdouts that are just like, look, I can't do that. But most people won't, most people will, you know, the dishonesty will wear down their earnestness. And the unfortunate thing is, especially this cohort, if there's peer pressure to inform. But the reality is, most people don't, if they would just listen to their gut, there's always a barometer. There's always a little, you know, alarm system that goes off that says, don't do this, really don't do this. And if people would just trust and listen to that moment and not fear the isolation or the estrangement or the rejection, they presume will be there. If they do so, they will be so much more true to themselves, but you can't be true to yourself, if you're not going to be true about yourself. And that moment becomes the first step. And then once you've moved the line, you know, Daniela calls it the, what the hell effect, right? It's the, well, I've done this so far. What the hell am I supposed to keep going? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a little water in the tub. Might as well put a little more in. What's the harm now? Or you tell yourself, he says, let's get hurt in this. I mean, this is a face, this is a faceless crime. It's not anybody being hurt by this. What's the, what's the harm? Yeah. So you're, again, we're talking about deception and lies. And I know that there's generally reasons that people lie and there's specifically reasons that people lie. Should we work our way up or work our way down? You pick. All right. So let's talk about generally what's the emotions that cause people to lie. Usually the first, the first one is fear. It's, it's, it's the, there's a, it's almost always a self protective choice. Right. And so I'm, I'm avoiding. I'm fearful of some consequence of a loss of face or loss of relationship or loss of status or judgment. Right. So there's some avoidant consequence that I fear that I believe, although you almost always wrong, but you believe that this twist of the truth of this subtle and acknowledgement of data or this omission of an important fact will somehow get me that outcome and protect me. Yeah. You know, what both people don't ever go back and do is their worst warning on the data to actually work. Yeah. You know, it's so funny. Steve, whenever I speak to audiences, I always ask them, how many of you feel like you have phenomenal BS parameters? Like you just know the minute someone is blowing something you, oh, three quarters of the rooms has blow, right. But then I ask, so how come you don't think everybody else's BS parameters are working as well when you're doing it? Because when we're blowing the smoke, we're, we're so convinced others are convinced. And maybe not, maybe they're not in their heads. And sometimes some people may in fact believe you. But over time, you're unlikely to sustain that confidence because at some point, sometimes we'll be like, wait a minute here. Some is a little fishy here. Yeah. So whatever, you know, like I said before, what I want people to do is ask themselves, what brings you to your dishonesty? What brings you to the moment where you decided this is the only choice I have? And what need do you believe you're serving? What outcome do you believe you're achieving by doing so? And ask yourself, honestly, is that really what's happening? Right. Right. So fear is one. I would assume that pride is one. Pride, you know, I don't want to lose space. Obligation guilt. Yeah. You know, there's always some deterrent. It's always typically what was that avoidance? I'm trying to sidestep a consequence. I don't want to experience. Shame, shame is a huge one. And probably, hey, this person lied to me. I'm lying to them for some processing. Yeah, of engines, right? It's a, I mean, I can't trust you. So I can't trust you with the truth. Right versus saying, you know, hey, I'm having a hard time grappling with what you told me yesterday. Can we go over it again? Just calling the question. I mean, I think the reason why it's so good to go over the general ideas is because you can see what motivations in people might be. And you can see how in that you could fall into a trap. And if you're aware enough to say, oh my gosh, you know, this, this pride or this, this, this guilt or this fear is the thing that's driving this, I need to step back. Right. Then you, you, you, you can find little triggers or little switches to stop you from, from doing something that you, the key Steven is to be reflected was to go back. And I said, it's a great exercise. I've had groups do this. Go back and, and privately, so it's not going to put this on the internet anywhere, but privately examine, think about the last three or four days in moments where you were not honest, you know, whether it was high treated somebody or information you did or didn't share or some value compromised. And look for the pattern, you know, was it always around your boss? Was it always around your spouse? Was it always around some, some moment of consequence where you felt like you would lose something? Where it was, you know, where, where your will or your, your desired outcome was being contested. Right. So yeah. So I think you're, you're, you're, you're dragging us or pulling us. You know, purposely towards some of the specific reasons, right? You know, you, hey, I lied because I, I thought you might be disappointed. Okay. And if, you know, if disappointing people or losing a steam in their eye or not pleasing people as a real driver for you, you have to go back and examine that need, examine how you learned that pleasing people at all costs was good. Because until you're honest about where you learned that narrative, you can't script the narrative or something else. Like pleasing people with boundaries is, is better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so I'm going to give an example. Like, hey, I lied to protect you from harm. Not good. Still not good. Right. Well, what harm did you think? I mean, what harm did you tell yourself was going to become me? I thought my feelings were going to be heard. That people would know what I, what they believe that I would know people who they thought of me. Yeah. And now you know, if, if you're a parent and you better pick up your child from school. And you see a bunch of kids making fun of your child, but your child doesn't see it. Do you say you're kicking them up? Because making fun of you? You mean like, like, or you know, this, this is closing back to your child really in the interest of honesty. I guess the question is, who's really getting hurt? Who's really getting hurt and who's interest are you serving, right? I think that some people withhold it to protect themselves or some people share it to feel braver, right? Yeah, I'm going to crush you kind of thing. I don't think withholding information from somebody in the service of not crushing their spirit is dishonesty. Are you don't? Okay, that's big. If I'm preventing you from growing, if I'm preventing you from evolving, if I'm preventing you from maturing, then it's cruel. So I have to ask myself, what's the real reason I'm choosing to tell you? And if I really have examined it and no good can come from this information other than you feeling bad or sad or hurt, then there's something there's nothing to share. Right. Right. At least one should be thoughtful enough to understand that. Right. Okay. I knew it. It's not easy, but. Yeah. No, no, not easy. But there's a lot here, if you're, I mean, at least, yeah, I was paying attention and this is all still incredibly helpful. So all right. Once you've been proven untrustworthy, essentially, it's supposed to harm your ability to be influential. Right. You should be undermined. Right. People can no longer believe it. Intellectually, that seems accurate to me. However, I, you know, certainly in today's environment, I've seen politicians, they've seen executives, they've seen media people, be untrustworthy, be untrustworthy consistently without really the commensurate penalty of their credibility. Can you tell me what is happening? Because it may seem as though the cost of dishonesty is diminishing over time. So it's a, it's a, it's a packet. So here's, first of all, let's, let's talk about the political arena, right? Because I think that's a, that's a very specific context. We, for some reason, are, are monthly drawn to confident leaders, more so than we are in competence. A leader saying, I don't know. In many settings, it's more credible, but for some reason, the political arena, we don't want leaders who don't sell it, they know. So pretending like you know something you don't, is the norm in politics. If you actually ask people, Steve, how many of you trust your politicians, the scores would be very low, right? I think we've just come to accept such a low bar in terms of, well, of course, they all lie. That's what politics means. And look at the job. All the job is with that campaigning for fund to get reelected. It's not actually any real work to do. They don't have time to do it, because the work is campaigning. So my question is, why have we come to accept that as the norm? So that context is very particular to a certain type of branded deceit that we've just all colluded together to assume that's as high as the bargains. Now take out of that context and in organizations or in our community life. I actually, in the consequences, these days are much higher for lying. I think people are almost ruthlessly unforgiving, if you've been caught. Even if you apologize today, I think our experience of dishonesty has grown so strong. Our experience of honesty is very freefall, that our urics have almost become too high. And so when somebody in our immediate circle that we actually know, a boss, a peer, a colleague, director, a neighbor, has been discovered to be untruthful, we're almost, we flexibly should have anywhere. Like there's no recovery from that anymore, which I think is also, you know, excessively mindless tolerance of politicians is not good. But completely ruthless unforgiving of people in our life is also unhelpful, right? Neither of those get us to a sound coherent, you know, healthy, vibrant community, because we're all going to fuck up part of my French. So the question is not, you know, oh my gosh, somebody was cruelty or oh my gosh, somebody lied to you. The question is, who will you be in that moment? And the harder question I would ask you is, who would you want them to be when you're caught? Yes. Yes. So, all right. So if I'm paraphrasing that answer, the diminishing cost of dishonesty is asymmetrical. In some places, it seems like it is, in fact, going down in other places, it is not going down and it's still very, very high. So, you're a treasure fourth at your own peril. I think in your immediate life, it's almost too high. Not that that's an excuse, but we've got to step back and ask ourselves how we can allow us to, the more grace we show each other, the more likely we would ally, right? But we're also busy hiding. We're also busy putting on these personas and images of ourselves to keep up with an illusion of a lack of humanity. Of course, at some point, our humanity isn't a leak out. Yeah. So, if you can, learn to give a little quarter. Okay. So, look, this is a one that you were, you were good about setting the table for a lot of these questions. And one of these ones that you were talking about before is silence, right? Silence on an issue, not equaling honesty versus radical candor on an issue. So, let's dig into that a little bit more. I think the question you have to ask yourself is, who is your silence serving? Right? Is it you, if it's fear, if it's fear of retaliation or retribution, or being mocked or being dismissed or disregarded, then your silence is not justified. The reality is, the flip side is being a blunt instrument or being a freight train with your truth. I think today in our world, we have sadly conflated speaking your truth with speaking the truth. And so, people today have learned that on the other assume of silence is, if I just adopt a posture of an angry lab middle finger in my tone and in my voice, then I go on social media and rant. That's cool. That's allowed. That isn't even radical candor, it's barely honesty. And we actually have interesting neuroscience data that shows how you're almost prone to more anxiety and stress by doing that, right? It's like, if somebody's poking you really hard in the chest and you go to them and say to them, hey, who that really hurts, I would appreciate if you stopped. You're probably going to get the outcome that you want. If you're going to streets and yell out in the streets, people will poke suck. And everybody else in the window says, yeah, yeah, poke is a readiness. Well, which is what we do on social media, right? You're getting poked. So you have to ask yourself in whose interest is your bluntness and whose interest is your truth. Because if it's only about blurting and declaring and being heard as an angry rant, nothing will change. It may make you feel cathartic for the moment, but it's no more honest than your assignments. So there's a calibration involved is what you're saying that that ultimately makes it honesty on either side of that continuum. It's not necessarily honesty. Absolutely. The question you have to ask yourself is what is it you want the outcome to be and who's needed your serving? Do you want to be right? Or do you want to have change? So what about being honest about a thing and also being wrong? So here's an example, right? Someone believes very strongly that climate change isn't real, right? As a consequence, they act in an earnest way to protect the jobs of those they love that happen to work in the coal industry. What do you make of that? If they really believe that their data, their research, their version of science tells them that it's not his honesty, it might be ignorance, but it's not his honesty. Okay. So honesty does not depend on correctness. That's what I think that's what you're saying. No, because if someone comes in this room and tells me, Steve Berks believes on fire, and I believe it, and I call you and say, Steve, it believes on fire. I'm not lying to you because I believe it to be true. If I knew it to be false, but I tell you anyway, that's lying. Yeah. Again, sometimes the distinction between lying and dishonesty is that it's essentially without a difference. But the reality is, what did you know to be true at the time you did or said what you did? Now, I'm polarizing issues like climate change or political issues or immigration, pick any of the big ones, right? I think we all have a moral imperative to not be intellectually honest, not be intellectually lazy. Right? So if you're an echo chamber, has only reinforced the points of view you know, so this goes to the justice portion of the definition. If you've only surrounded yourself with people who think like you and you've not welcomed different points of view, so if you're a climate change dissentant, you just will be with true. Who have you engaged and not have either radicals, but who scientifically, incredibly, have you engaged to read the facts of the dueling facts? What have you done to educate yourself on the opposing point of view, not to change your mind, but to show it to show that you can respect and appreciate why they think that way? Because they think yours aren't a bunch as you think they are. Right? That's never going to change anything. So I think we all owe it to our own convictions to check out and learn about the convictions about this that we don't agree with. Right. So could I then go as far as to say critical thinking is important to the honesty process, right? That you can't necessarily go around calling yourself honest if you haven't engaged in real critical thinking. And what I would call Steve intellectual honesty, yeah, intellectual honesty. And testing your own assumptions, validating your own convictions. If you're someone who just rants or pounds a table or is so rigid and so wed to your own points of view, what's your signaling to others? So forget about the moral imperative here. Just know that what you've told other people is that you're not open to having your mind changed, which means at some point when you need to have your mind changed, someone's not going to try. And if they see you head off that cliff under the conditions of your own beliefs, why would you have told them you've trained them up into that point to not try and stop you. So be very careful. I tell my my second clients all the time, the more certain you are or something, the more I'm going to test you. And the more certain you feel about something, the more you ought to ask for dueling fact back faces, fact bases, the more you should ask for dissenting views, the more you should have people come in and say, tell me why I'm full of crap. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yes. If belief is your justification, then you're not working hard enough. Well, even if it's facts, right? You know, I had one client that I use an amazing executive CEO of a very big fortune, you know, wanted a company, and he would intentionally ask for his new team, and they're going to be making a very complicated decision of consequence. He would ask for a dueling fact basis from the room, right? So because he know otherwise, if he didn't, they're going to debate themselves in the hallway. And so he would simply invite them into the room and say, okay, you give me your facts to give me your facts that were few in his facts. And we'll, and almost always the outcome was a much higher audit decision, everybody could lie around. There's no problem in the world, no problem in the world for which only two options exist to solve. So if any time, any debate you've gotten down to is too, too pitted points of view, you've already lost. And the most quality answer is you've already passed it. Because now it's no longer about solving a problem, it's not proving each other wrong. Right. We, we, in our particular group again, we, we do often make sure that that is the case because, you know, if you get to be a good arguer, right, then it gets to be about, hey, I'm a good arguer. I went arguments. Right. Not awful. No, not, not what is the best possible outcome here. Okay. So I want to ask, I'm going to get one more thing and then we'll wind it down here. And that has to do with honesty being purely altruistic, right, because can we be okay knowing that part of the reason that we seek to be honest is because there's value to be captured from being honest. Absolutely. Is that okay? I don't, I don't think it's, I don't think self interest is it on itself bad. Obsessive self interest at the expense of others is a problem and over time is going to erode your trustworthiness. But caring about your agenda, Steve, doesn't mean I don't care about mine. Right. So I think, well, sometimes we fool ourselves and think I'm more humble and I'm more gracious if I, if I suppress my own interests, so my own desires, that, that's self deceit. To not, I mean, I would like to have you own your desires and put them on the table. This is what I want from this conversation. This is what I want from this relationship. I want to have you, I could say no. But if you're trying to protect me from your desires or protect me from your aspirations, first of all, the relationship is honest. And second of all, you're not being honest. Right. But I mean, so there's that. So there's that. And that's certainly helpful. But I, but I guess what I'm saying is I think a lot of people would, if they really had to, you know, in a monk-like way, disassociate themselves from their feelings and say, look, the reason that I'm doing this is purely altruistic. That would be nearly impossible as well. Nobody would believe you. I mean, nobody would believe you. So are there moments or things where we all choose to make a sacrifice and do something purely for the service of somebody else? Of course there are. There should be. But is that everything you do? No. Nobody's going to believe that. And so, you know, when you're selling to somebody, when you're trying to get somebody to sign a new contract or hire you as your consulting firm, you know, they know you want that business, trying to deny that it's all about them. Now, there's an order of battle, right? So whenever I'm selling new work, my theory is always help first sell later, right? But is that purely altruistic? No. I want you to know what you're getting something to. So I'm going to give you a taste of what it's going to like to work with me by helping you right now, because if that's not how you take your health, we know we don't have a match. But if you feel at the end of our conversation, if you're meeting me, why that was really helpful? Am I good? Let's keep talking. Eventually, I'm going to put a paper in front of you that says, here's a number. I'm going to suck the meter. But I'm doing that in the interest of helping you and getting a sale. And you know that. And so I think people who try to fain the appearance of generosity or kindness, when there's more to the story than that, that's just his honesty is deceit. Okay. Okay. So that was the last prepared question. Let me give you a little op-ed time here. Something about the topic that you'd like to discuss that I didn't really address. You know, the thing I want people to know, and I hope people will buy the book and read it and celebrate it, and enjoy it and buy a copy of their boss for Christmas. It's called To Be Honest. To be honest, leading with the power of truth, justice and purpose is, you don't have to look around too far to see how bad we're doing in this field, right? The world is starved for doing better. And we can all do better, right? You can start tomorrow and live a greater life of integrity. And you know, if you, the great news is, you know, if you're worried that this is not going to sacrifice performance or sacrifice some of you want, the whole first chapter will give you all the data. Those companies, those individuals who are more honest, far outperform, outlive, out enjoy, out compete, they're dishonest kind of parts. Any metric you want to find, we search for them all. Health, wellness, profitability, low-custom loyalty, brand loyalty, we'll pick it. And the more honest, purpose-driven people, brands, products, companies did far better. So do you want to be the best version of yourself? Because the best version of yourself, the most gratifying version of yourself, is the most honest one. And so do it for that reason. Pretty great point. All right. So someone who's listened to this now and says, oh, man, I got to work with Ron. Where do they go? Visit us at our website, navelentnavaint.com. You'll find all kinds of white papers and videos and cool e-books for your startup, for your entrepreneurial, for your want to be a better leader. If you want to learn more about the book and the research, we have a TV series called Moments of Truth. You can come to tobehonest.net and you get to meet all the heroes backstage, right? So, Ubergely and Rob Ballot from Doc Waters and Tiffany Jana and Bernard Banks. So there's 15 episodes. And you get to see the interviews I did when I gave them for the book. And so you get to also meet a bunch of other people because I have a Khalil Smith from the Neural Leadership Institute and Jared Chappelle. Also do interviews. So you get a 30-minute episode of really rich conversations with some amazing people who will inspire you. Check that all out at tobehonest.net. Also, if you want to fill out the assessment, how on us is my team? And find out are you getting the real scoop or not? Tobehonest.net slash assessment, you can download that assessment and find out tonight. All right. So I guess that means this is the end. Thank you very much. Yeah. Look, this is a challenging topic. There's no doubt about it. I think you do a really good job of cutting through. I also think that this is a topic that hopefully after listening to this, some people will do some soul searching. And that's my hope to you. And I'm grateful that you're covering a whole broader issue of trusting your podcast because we have to get better at it. We have to get better at trustworthyness. I have actually, if you want to put a link in your show notes, I get the HPR article on the book called Build your Repetition as a Trustworthy Leader. Oh, based on the research, hundreds of thousands worth of viral. Because I think people are hungry. We all want to do better, but no one's teaching us how. So hopefully, people will do that soul searching you mentioned. We will add that to the show notes. Sir, I appreciate your thoughts and guidance. Thank you. Steve, a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. This has been Intangibles. You can find this podcast on iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud, and many other podcast platforms. You can also find it at its home on the web, which is www.intangiblespodcast.com. I'm Steve Bird. Thank you. Keep an eye out for the next episode.