When you speak with candour, you are making a commitment to say what is true for you. You are not withholding facts, feelings or things that you know to be true in order to manipulate an outcome.

Practices

1. The next time you make a judgement about someone else’s behaviour that you don’t like, be candid with yourself and ask . . . .

• Have you ever behaved the same way at some point in your life?

• Have you ever judged yourself for behaving that way?

• Why are you requiring this behaviour to change and not accept it as just a judgement?

• Why are you not seeing any value of that behaviour?

Consider a situation where you feel you have been disrespected. Ask yourself the above questions and note any insights that arise from you taking full responsibility for your truth and what created it.

2.  Practice completing these sentences and then use them in situations where more candour is needed.

• We could do a better job if we can share what we really care about and can commit to

• You’re not giving us your thoughts or feelings on this matter

• How could this situation have turned out differently?

• If we had 10% more confidence in each other what more could we have done?

• How could we see more of reality and with greater clarity when making decisions?

• What are we not sharing that is really important to us?

• How can we show that we are really listening to each other?

Support Information

The quality we attribute to candour is our ability to be open and honest.

When you speak with candour, you are making a commitment to say what is true for you. You are not withholding facts, feelings or things that you know to be true in order to manipulate an outcome.

People can value your candour if they feel they can be more open with you and express what they really feel. This is the kind of feedback you always want, but don’t always appreciate. Lying is something you can find unforgivable, but withholding something to respect someone’s feelings, or protect your reputation, is more commonplace. In other words, you are selective with the truth.

Peter Senge referred to this phenomenon as using your “left-hand column”. You say things you want others to hear, not what you really need to say. To lead your life and your businesses more productively, you need candour.

So What does this mean?

We are not speaking candidly when we know we have made a mistake and fail to correct it to avoid being reprimanded. It’s a fact that we have chosen to keep to ourselves.  Often we will keep our thoughts and opinions to ourselves because we do not want to be seen to be “off message”.

Politicians are adept at being careful about what they choose to reveal and conceal.  They are not lying, they are simply avoiding a fact that does not serve their argument or they refuse to think about an issue for which they have no answer.

There are many situations when we don’t feel it is appropriate to show how we truly feel about something or someone. Perhaps we do not want to be perceived as weak or we want to avoid conflict. Even a gut feeling or physical reaction in our body that we suddenly become are aware of will be ignored if we are afraid of acting on it, even though we intuitively know something is not right.  When we feel stuck, we are not being candid with ourselves or can accept the need to face the facts, feelings, thoughts and even the sensations we are experiencing.

The diagram below shows how being truthful represents our own constructed reality. We speak from this position, telling it as we see it. If we don’t, we know we are consciously lying or distorting what we believe to be true.  Others will interpret the same events differently and assert them to be true for them.

When we are being open we can withhold some of what we know when considering any consequences that may not serve our purpose. We may feel we don’t have to be completely “accurate” in our assessment. It’s more about what we don’t say in order to appear open to the needs of the situation.

When we are aware of what can be verified with evidence or is generally accepted as true, we find it easier to reveal our truth and trust out of lovethat we can speak with candour without losing approval, control or support.

When we experience a “breakdown” in the normal flow of daily life we can often create negative assessments, emotions, and concerns. We are blind to what we can see, or to accept what we know to be true. We can become sad, resentful and anxious.

When we feel stuck we often withdraw and negative emotions can stay around as a mood, impacting on our whole Way of Being. We deplete ourselves of inside-out energy as we fail to face facts, connect with new possibilities or embrace the uncertainty we feel. Until we do this, we cannot grow and own our thoughts, feelings and choices.

What Next?

When we conceal or withhold our truth we can never perform to our full potential. Leading for life requires us to fully engage at a human level and not pull back from being open with others or honest with ourselves.

There is always a danger when we make assumptions about others that they become our truth, based on a thought, opinion, judgement or feeling. We then look for evidence to support what we judge someone to be like, which is not necessarily who they are.

It’s important therefore to reveal our assumptions and check them out by grounding them in verifiable facts. A judgement is just an indication or suspicion. It tells us more about ourselves in terms of our own unconscious habits, expectations and beliefs. This is not saying that our assessment will always be wrong, only that it could be wrong and very often is.  

This is because we may not have the whole story or access to the full facts.  As Stephen Covey reminds us, we should seek first to understand before making a judgement. How we go about making an assessment is an important and powerful life leadership skill.

References

The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge. Nicholas Brealey 1994

The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer. Kaley Warner Klemp 2014

Humble Enquiry by Edgar Schein.  Berrett-Koehler 2013

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey.  Simon & Schuster 2004