Saying it as it is

Though I generally prefer to think and talk in affirmative language rather than the language of don’ts, I believe this post to be a useful exception. When confronted with difficult interpersonal situations that involve critique, confrontation or other ingredients that likely create tensions, we often revert to response patterns such as avoidance, denial and sugarcoating. That’s why this post focuses on what to avoid and why.

1. Don’t sugar coat or downplay what happened - this leaves room for more positive interpretations and conclusions than are warranted. It’s misleading and once the person discovers what you really meant, trust is harmed. It results in confusion about where you stand and what you expect. It is dishonest, ineffective, and interferes with timely performance management.

2. Even worse, don’t ignore and avoid the situation all together or underestimate the severity - this would make you an accomplice to the situation, an enabler, since you allow it to happen or at least continue. In the absence of accountability, you open the door for others to behave similarly thinking that it will have no consequences. At the same time, ignoring and underestimating a situation can be seen as cowardly and as a sign of incompetence.  

3. Don't resort to corporate speak - this creates a distance between you and others, and it's generally perceived as inauthentic. It portrays you as disconnected, as if operating from an ivory tower. Corporate speak can be interpreted as an attempt to abdicate responsibility with an air of blaming and hiding. 

4. Don't solely focus on emotions - this can feed into escalations and direct attention away from critical thinking and problem solving. If you focus on emotions too strongly you may needlessly emphasize personal sensitivities and interpersonal dislikes. This hampers logic and crisis management. Emotions absolutely need to be acknowledged and taken into account, just be careful when to attend to them and in what manner. Know when to focus on facts, when on emotions. 

5. Don't use overly positive phrases such as "We are really lucky to be handed this learning opportunity" or vague phrases such as "A mistake was made" - this too creates confusion and communicates a lack of accountability. Such phrases are generally not credible thereby eroding trust and engagement. Instead, be clear: "We delivered this project passed the deadline because we misjudged the length it would take to accomplish step 3 and 4. We will now take the following action ..."

Say it as it is, pretty or not. Do it respectfully and expect the person to find it difficult to deal with such candor. For more information on this topic:

http://caromoors.blogspot.com/2014/01/candor.html

http://caromoors.blogspot.com/2013/11/straight-talk-from-stress-and-struggle.html

http://caromoors.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-step-by-step-framework-for-candid.html

Do you … really?

Do you speak out, when no one else does?

Do you really?

Do you lead, even when no one is following?

Do you really?

Do you give without expecting to get in return?

Do you really?

Do you know when you are deceiving yourself?

Do you really?

Do you put honesty above your need to be liked?

Do you really?

Do you listen to inconvenient, dissenting opinions?

Do you really?

Do you work hard to deliver results when making excuses is easier? 
Do you really?

Do you really admit fault, which is different from a ‘show-time apology’?
Do you really?

I sure don't always do these things – there is plenty of room for improvement.

Candor

Candor

Is not a goal in itself

Candor has meaning and purpose

Written all over it

Candor

Is not just a tool or technique

It’s a way of life, if you want it to be

With ‘genuine’ in the lead role

Practiced with purpose, care, and skill

Candor will

Deepen

Disclose

Enhance

Speed up

Shake up

Supplement

Facilitate

Enrich

That’s my belief

That’s my promise 

To my clients, to you

A Maasai Take on Candor?

Candor and directness play a central role in my life and in my work with businesses. Call me too impatient to tolerate beating around the bush and delaying the inevitable – there’s certainly some truth to that. There is more, however.  It is my strong belief that numerous misunderstandings, mistakes, and conflicts can be prevented if only you and I were clear, direct, and candid in our conversations. This, of course, starts with being candid with yourself instead of being seduced by the often attractive trap of self-deception, immediately followed by a solid foundation of respect and trust. When all this is in order, an honest ‘say-it-straight’ approach increases transparency and improves communication, collaboration, and effectiveness in the workplace and anywhere else? Or does it?  

For anyone who has heard one of my recent presentations in the Twin Cities or who has received leadership or other coaching from me, you know how I operate. I leave no question unasked and no observation un-shared just because it might hurt the person’s feelings or because ‘it’s not-done here’.

Please keep the above in mind while I take you 17 flight hours and about 8.250 miles from Minneapolis to Northern Tanzania. 

After an adventurous road trip from Nairobi to Arusha, a few days in this 516.000 people city, and a most spectacular 9-day tent safari in five different parks, we were ending our vacation in a Maasai village. Not one of those settlements that you see along the road, where cars with tourists stop for an hour to see a dance and buy handmade bracelets. This can be fun I’m sure, but I had arranged a real introduction to Maasai living. So our safari guide Rafael dropped us off along the main ‘road’ and handed us to someone called Ole. All we knew beforehand is that he is the doctor of his village and responsible for 47 additional ‘hospitals’ in an area the size of our home country The Netherlands. Oh, and one more thing, I was warned by the Dutch team planning our trip and this Maasai visit: “Be careful not to express discontent because the Maasai take this personal and wonder what went wrong.” We were surprised, discussed this with our three children (ages 13-16) and were good to go.

Within ten minutes into our ride from the main road to this remote village, the friendly and freely talking Ole, who later turned out to be our host and ‘guide’ for the two days, asked us to comply with a request. While navigating a sandy, stony path Ole said, with a serious look on his otherwise friendly face: “If you see or hear something that you like, please tell me. If you see or hear something that you don’t like, don’t tell me. Can you do that for me?” I am sure you can imagine the ‘unusuality’ of this request and the forces pulling on my natural response-style (keep in mind: psychologist, well-traveled, curious, candid, direct …). So I tamed my urge to fire a dozen questions and to enquire about the ‘why’ of the request and heard myself agree. Can you believe it?

Our two day stay at this Maasai village, without any tourist shows and without the otherwise so persistent pleas to buy their jewelry, were the most impactful of our trip, for me at least. Not the most spectacular, because it’s immensely hard to beat a group of ten lions passing your car with three cubs playing 4 feet away from you and the whole group hanging around for fifteen minutes. It’s pretty tough to beat numerous close encounters with elephants, giraffes, different kinds of monkeys and deer, exotic and strange looking birds, agama lizards, hyena’s, and wildebeests. Or zebras, baboons and buffalos passing our tents…. Yes, it was overwhelmingly spectacular and I am tempted to share all we’ve learned about Tanzania’s history, the amazing wildlife, it’s people, economy, values, customs, and struggles. I will resist that temptation and stick to the topic of candor and the Maasai. And I can be brief and tell you, that we understand so little of each other’s worlds, values, and ways of believing, thinking and communicating. So in all honesty, I can’t tell you to what extent and in what way the Maasai appreciate candor and directness or how they would define it, if the concept of candor exists at all.

On the surface it seems that candor isn’t much appreciated, but we really don’t know. Simply because we don’t exactly know how to interpret many of the interactions and responses that we experienced. I do know that our relationship with Ole grew deeper and stronger with every meal we spent together, and during our 5am walk to two villages in the pitch dark through brush lands and hills, open to all the wildlife that surrounds Ole’s territority. I quickly learned that I increased my chances of getting an immediate response to my question if I asked ‘permission’ to ask a question. I learned that repeatedly verbalizing our gratitude (which we of course felt deeply) for all his time spent with us, for taking us on his ‘working morning’ and for all the information he shared with us seemed greatly appreciated. It deepened our conversations and gradually made them more two-way. I learned that all the laughing that took place between Ole and village elders upon him translating our answers to his questions, could have so many different meanings. Yes, it felt unfriendly and even insulting at first, but what do we know? Little. Very little. And it goes beyond western ‘knowing’ of course.

We do know that the Maasai that we met, loved to laugh. What we don’t know is the function of laughing in Maasai culture. Could it be to show respect towards us? Might it be a demonstration of hierarchy and leadership? Is it possible that we witnessed a candid sign of surprise about the content of our responses? There are of course so many more possible theories. Belief me, we (or should I say ‘I’) asked as many questions about drives, values and customs as seemed appropriate and some provided a response to these questions. It still left us with more questions than answers, how beautiful is that?

Ole regularly verbalized black-and-white and what we consider negative notions of customs of  ‘you Mzungos’ (white people). Without knowing how to interpret literal words and without knowing his sources, how should we read this? We learned that the Maasai view men and women very differently than most of us do, and that they are treated very differently. To us it felt as if Ole’s preconceived notions about ‘the West’ were accepted criticism while we were asked not to criticize nor show discontent. But were we reading this correctly, and what is ‘correct’ anyway? From whose perspective?

Something I really do know is that we were fortunate to be invited into the Maasai world – their world, to stay for two days. We got the impression that not all visits by Mzungos had been positive experiences for the Maasai, and that Ole now only accepted visitors through our guy. We learned we were the third party in eight months to visit Ole’s village, and the first one with children. I wouldn’t be surprised if western directness (which is generally less than my directness) might have been much too direct, too quick, too judgmental, and too much of a “we know better what’s best for you so let us help you (i.e. tell you)” – mentality.

In short, there was so much to this visit and to all the conversations with Ole. There was so much to all the walking, visiting the hospital and school, throwing ball with the children and to all the customs such as tea drinking in the cow pen just after daybreak. So much more than we can understand and grasp let alone interpret ‘the right way’. I can easily state that this is one of the biggest experiential lessons in my life and that there is a whole new meaning to not judging a Maasai until you’ve really walked their shoes (which we of course haven’t).

Things aren’t always what they seem. They often are not. Maybe we were asked not to criticize while being criticized by our host and his leaders, or were they merely showing their interest and were they honestly telling us what they know of us Mzungos? One such example: “I hear you Mzungos watch TV for four hours a day and don’t have family meals anymore…” Knowing that our family spent three years without a TV when our children were 7, 10 and 10 and that we highly value family time at the dinner table with stories and home made meals, this one was difficult to digest and, of course, I gave Ole our version of TV and the social function of meals. Either way, without knowing the unwritten rules when conversing with such a high-placed Maasai leader, without knowing the exact etiquette as a guest to the Maasai, without knowing whether ‘you Mzungos’ really refers to all us Westerners, without knowing how long ‘establishing trust’ takes and what it exactly entails in this culture, it is hard to really say anything about the role of candor in Maasai culture, and about how to interpret some of the unexpected and unusual responses and encounters we experienced. What I do know is that we often mistakenly think that we know how to read and interpret people, I do know that we always have so much to learn, listen, and wonder (in a non-judgmental way, please), wherever we go, with whomever we converse. And I do know that my family and I greatly appreciate Ole’s hospitality, his precious time and the valuable ‘food for thought’ he provided us with.