Can Being Direct, Honest Co-Exist With Kindness And Being Nice?

At work, we recently did an icebreaker question - ‘What is the one thing that people can count on you for?’ It was interesting to hear different perspectives, like peer-to-peer vs leader-to-peer, and it was also good to see what others thought of you and how it matched with what you thought.

For me, the theme that came up was - ‘You know where you stand with her all the time. You can count on her to raise the bar every time.’ And one person also tied it to my personal vision of ‘Being a better version of myself every day and inspiring others to do the same.’ For me, the keyword that jumps out in all this is Integrity. To be honest is to be kind - and that kind of honesty helps each other be aware, which is the first step to any change.

I have a very different approach to coaching or mentoring. I usually work with the person as a whole, not just their work self, because I do not believe that you become a completely different person the minute you step into work. My feedback is holistic, rather than saying, “If you wrote the email this way, it would be easier to read.” “I do provide that as well when needed. Still, the real nugget is realising insights such as the other party having unrealistic expectations, wanting to be perfect, or being too focused on relationships… Because it is here that real change happens - and each of us has one of these patterns that are recurring. And if we can change one of these patterns, then we will see a wholesale change in all aspects of our lives, not just work.

And when we work on ourselves, the ripples go out, slowly impacting the teams we work with, then spreading further through the organisation and the world. This is the real work - see at the end of the day, all of us are working on ourselves. In fact, if you think about it, the only person we can work on is ourselves. We cannot change other people. Each of us has our own lessons to learn, and the sooner we learn them, the sooner we are presented with new ones. It is like peeling layers of an onion - and soon we get into the habit of peeling the layers. Which layer we are peeling does not matter - any new change, like a job or a role you take, you will start to see the layers that need to be peeled off. Maybe those peels served us really well until now, but are no longer needed.

Before we get to this stage, some of us need a mentor or a guide to point out which peels are rotting, or not in use and need to be removed. The work has to be done by each of us at the end of the day, but honest feedback does help. It does have to be honest - we are doing others and ourselves a disservice if we do not share the true feedback. Your true feedback might be a part of the picture, but sometimes even a sliver of the truth helps the other party understand the whole picture bit by bit. In the shadow of being nice, some people avoid these conversations, which are necessary for all of us to move forward in our lives.

What is your preferred style?