How To Bring Honesty To The Office?
Sadly, we are living in the corporate world, where honesty is almost always absent from work environments.
It sometimes seems like honesty just hit snooze with the morning alarm each day and then wakes up in the middle of the day just to call in sick. Is it, because our honesty is pushed away by fear and angst? And honesty — is probably the only team really productive player in the office. I mean the real team player. All those good “team players” are hiding behind masks of various needs and insecurities. Overcompensation is one of the ways. So how do we bring honesty back to the office?
Talk openly about wages
The bigger the company, the more it is not in the corporate interest that people share what they earn with their colleagues. Even though, it is very much in Your personal interest. Because it will cost more to any business if people talk about their wages openly with others, more demands will come and raises will be expected. Raises that You would not require if You wouldn’t know what baselines exist in the company.
That’s why it’s just kept an overly dogmatic theme among all of us, that feels like way much bigger taboo than sex or personal life in almost any office, or any other kind of job, whatsoever. I have even met hippies, that run against the crooked system that still fall for this one. Most of us do. Their face turns white when they hear the simplest question from the colleague. They feel threatened. What for?
I have been always someone who asks questions till they get all the answers they need… And trust me when I tell You, anything that starts to feel like a hidden secret inside a company when the management starts avoiding the questions or staff don’t feel like talking about it… Usually, when it stinks it stinks for a reason. And whenever it stinks, if You get to the bottom of it — there are usually some big issues at the end of it all.
Share Your ideas for free
I feel exactly the same towards people who keep their ideas for themselves. And they hide them. Annoyingly. They feel inside like they have this one idea that will change everything. What they usually don’t know is that ideas are cheap and most of them are shit. Ideas are thousand for a dime. Execution is what actually matters.
If You keep Your petty ideas for Yourself, You never receive feedback and never grow. That’s why You have that one idea and You keep clinging to it even more. You feel like it’s precious. At first, I felt, that the problem is that not all of us have their heads buzzing with ideas… I was wrong. The problem is that not all of us understand how it all works. You get ideas when learning, You get ideas when researching and most importantly You get them when receiving feedback.
The idea is like a ball that gets bigger whenever You toss it to someone and he or she tosses the ball back to You. And it grows bigger and bigger with each and every interaction. Until one of two inevitable outcomes happens… Either somebody holds the idea and simply demolishes it. That means the idea came to the point where it was clear it’s a shitty idea. Or the second outcome — the idea becomes heavy enough to be worth of implementation. To be tested.
Most of the ideas we have always fall into the first category. The sooner we release those ideas to the world, the faster we know if it’s any good.
Give honest feedback
Whenever teams test stuff, You can see the different opinion values that are brought to the table according to the status in the company. It would be a mistake for management to rely on the big decision on janitor's personal opinion, but it would be wrong if management would not listen carefully to what everybody has to say. And then act accordingly.
So many businesses nowadays, where owners don’t know what actually is happening inside. They have a vague perception and base their firm reforms on their personal opinion. Just as it might be dangerous to base it all on what janitor thinks, it is also dangerous to base it on what a manager thinks.
Because managers are usually deceived. As lower staff usually has some sort of fear toward upper levels in the company. Because they feel like their life is in their hands, their job relies on obedience. And critique is not obedient.
That’s where everybody loses. Employers feel shitty because things are shitty and the changes that come are irrelevant to actual problems they face daily. And management feels shitty because their ideas don’t work as they don’t have actual honest feedback on what actually is happening.
Weird hierarchal chimps we are, aren’t we?
Facts are closer to belief than actual truth
The craziest belief system I have ever stumbled upon was that there was a very hot and dense point of everything and then suddenly it just banged, thus expanding forever since. And it will continue on doing so until there is nothing left.
Is it based on facts we know and can prove scientifically? Yes. Is it actually true? We can’t know and will never actually will. Because it’s too big and we’re too small. It’s just an empirical educated guess. A terminal societal attempt at having a unifying scientific belief system that unites us all, and maybe, just maybe will at least end the war in the name of different gods.
When You think about it… All of us are just smaller versions of google, walking around and collecting their own sets of “facts”. And making personal algorithmic conceptual decisions based on that. So by this logic…
Assume You don’t know something
We are always first to tell everyone what to think. You would think that’s good, but it’s one of the shittiest traits all of us carry with us.
“Wise people say something because they have to say something, not because they want to say something.” — Plato
If You want to be honest, start to work on Your listening skills first. One of the best advice on listening I can give You comes from Dr. Jordan Peterson. He says You should continue on responding to an argument only after You restate Your opponent's opinion so that he or she agrees to Your reinstatement.
What does that do? Well, it does a couple of good things, actually. First You spend the whole time trying to understand the opinion deeply instead of thinking what to say. Most of us never listen, we just space out and think about what we will say next. So if You focus on rephrasing Your opponent's point of view in Your words, as correctly as possible — but in a way that the opponent confirms this is exactly what he or she meant… Well, You just spend the whole time really listening to what kind of point he or she has been trying to make.
The advanced technique would be to even reinforce their argument before You try to fight it back. Make Your enemy stronger, and only then try to defeat it. That is if You want to grow.
And only after Your reformulated argument has been approved by the opponent, You can only then try to debate it with Your challenging opinions, facts, and points of view.
According to the Journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 60 percent of people lied at least once during a 10-minute conversation and told an average of two to three lies…
We are soo good at lying, most importantly — we are amazing at lying to ourselves. Remember that…
