Think You’re An Honest Person? Think Again!
I’ve been doing this personal branding thing for nearly 18 years now – digging into people’s brains to find out what makes them tick.
When I ask people about their values and what it is that sets their moral compass (a very important aspect of the brand pyramid), there’s one value that’s far and away the most commonly cited:
Honesty
Maybe you’re someone for whom that’d be pretty high on your list too. (Which is a good thing I reckon, what with it being the best policy and all that.) But whilst a shed-load of people know honesty is a key value for them, it’s amazing how few have an firm answer to my follow-up question:
“So what does honesty mean for you?”
After scrabbling around in their head for a response, the vast majority say something along the lines of “It’s what you say” or “It’s how you act”. That’s when I hit them with my next question:
“So do you always speak/act with complete honesty?”
Out of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who have answered that question, only two have ever said “Yes”*. For everybody else, the response tends to come with a caveat:
“Well, it depends on who’s involved.”
“Well, it depends on how the other person might take it.”
“Well, it depends on how big the issue is.”
“Well, it depends on how you say it.”
“Well, it depends on what I’m able to share.”
“Well, it depends on whether it’d be detrimental to me.”
Plus plenty more variations.
If it’s not entirely honest, is it dishonest?
All this begs the question: if someone doesn’t always speak/act with complete honesty, does it mean they’re dishonest?
No. But what it does mean is that, for the majority of us, our moral values – and honesty is just one in a long list of those – aren’t black and white. They usually come with some shades of grey.
That’s important to realise, because if you’re going to include honesty as a central tenet of your brand (or any other moral value for that matter) and expect people to buy into it, you’d better be clear about what you mean. Otherwise people might buy into one thing, then think they’ve been sold a pup.
Here’s what I’m talking about…
Person A works with Person B.
One day, Person A says to Person B, “You know, honesty is really important for me,” and Person B says, “Great, because it’s a value I hold deeply too.”
At that point, Person B decides they’re buying into Person A’s personal brand. They figure they can trust Person A is an honest person, just like they are, and will always tell the truth, just like they do.
Fast forward to a future meeting, where a major problem is being discussed that both Person A and Person B know is due solely to the ineptitude of Person C, who is also in the room.
Because Person B holds the value of honesty which, for them, means always telling the truth, they speak up and list the facts that clearly show Person C is the cause of the problem. Then Person B sits back and waits for Person A to back them up because, after all, they value honesty too.
Only Person A says very little on the matter, because their honesty comes with the caveat that they’ll tell the truth, but always with an eye on the other person’s feelings. And with Person C sitting there, they don’t want to make them uncomfortable.
In Person A’s eyes, they are acting in line with their own value of honesty.
In Person B’s eyes, Person A is acting in a way that’s out of line with their value of honesty – and now can’t be trusted.
Actually, Person A wasn’t being dishonest, they just hadn’t been clear about what honesty meant in that initial discussion. But if the extra clarity had been provided from the outset – maybe they’d added to their initial comment, “Of course, I’d always take into account someone’s feelings” – their subsequent actions would have made total sense to Person B and therefore the trust that had been put in Person A’s brand would remain intact.
Think about it
So if you do consider yourself honest – and want people to buy into that as part of your personal brand – take a minute or two now to ask yourself: so what do I mean by that? And just as importantly: what are the caveats that come with that?
And even if honesty isn’t in your list of personal brand values, which ones are? And do you really know what they mean to you and what caveats they come with?
*For each person, I stress tested their claim to be always honest by giving them various scenarios and asking what their response would be. Turns out, they were right. Interestingly though, it didn’t necessarily make people buy into them more, as sometimes their honesty was seen as too unweilding.
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