Sometimes truthful and integrous life can cause serious unbearable personal and relational pain, ranging from personal isolation, stagnation, bankruptcy, ruined relationships to depression. While acknowledging the seriousness of such problems, their occurrence is often temporary, though it may feel as though years went by when experiencing them.
I do not think those lying their way or trampling on the rights and welfare of others to their advancement enjoy a blissful life in the long run. I want to believe they do not sustainably enjoy peace of mind. Publicly, they may seem to be living a good and peaceful life, but if they were to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, they would admit experiencing longer-term pain in other aspects of their lives, whether directly or indirectly through something or others they care more about.
We need to weigh what matters to us the most, “choose our poison” and stick to it. If it were up to me, I would want everyone choosing life based on truth always and not deceit and pursuit of instant success at the expense of goodness. By Nimroth Gwetsa, 30 September 2020.
When your professional life can be described as integrous, team player, completer–finisher, resourceful, keen learner, and balanced, among other attributes, you can resist the temptation to do wrong. You should not be threatened by prospects of loss. Yours is a timing issue to gaining success than about fearing failure from pending loss. Competition and alternative views should not threaten but spur you to improve on your abilities.
Some egotistic, proud, heroically minded people feel threatened by divergent opinions and hide their weaknesses by bullying or ingratiating themselves with decision-makers. They take advantage of the busyness of decision-makers preferring snippets of details and substantiated conclusion for their decision-making, by telling them “what they want to hear” instead of being more helpful to them by being truthful, objective and admitting mistakes if enlightened by later knowledge.
We should resist the temptation to want to hold “monopoly” on ideas. We should encourage diversity of thoughts while enforcing adherence to and application of well-conceived principles, insisting on having ideas for and counter-arguments expressed explicitly and holistically argued by diverse set of people. The diversity should not only be from those always agreeable to your ideas, but critics too. Failing which, business risks making important and potentially financially intensive decisions emotionally and with insufficient investigation.
Making an important binding decision based on an idea you are unfamiliar in, especially when it is not explicitly described and well argued, is bound to cause failures.
In a multi-discipline environment with division of labour, it becomes easy for heroism and factionalism and their ills to emerge.
Sometimes we do not know what we do not know, and it is understandable to decide based on what was well-known at the time. Nothing wrong with making decisions based on what was known at the time and not just on “what is well communicated”. Furthermore, seek to increase knowledge in the issue to be decided on to enable you to make well-informed decisions than relying on anecdotal promises others make aimed at gaining your trust and securing your approval. Failure to familiarise yourself with important details of the issues affecting your decisions will make you beholden to those with more knowledge.
Understandably, we do not have to know everything to its elementary detail to make a decision, but “just enough” and should insist on seeing proof of the investigation and consultations conducted.
Many unwisely make binding decisions based on promotions by marketers and salespeople, forgetting that marketing aims to attract and not necessarily tell the truth.
Others may argue that there is no such thing as objectivity, as one’s thoughts are also framed by one’s exposure, experience, and preferences, among others. But like justice, objectivity should be seen to have been maintained.
Sometimes increasing knowledge in a particular issue is not always possible, as there may be more technically inclined people responsible for resolving the details. But one cannot argue against those pledging their prized resources as collateral for the approval they seek. Decision-makers may readily support such a request for approval than one enthusiastically made and laced with colourful promises, yet no risk against delivery failures being shared.
Though one cannot guarantee future events, business should consider insisting on shared delivery risk just as rewards for success are usually equally shared.
Underpinning such engagement model is the need for the appointment of a strong delivery and people leader supported by an effective governance structure for early detection of performance failures and decisiveness in rulings about corrective steps to be taken.
Since the fall of “man”, life was never going to be easy. But beyond difficulties lies great success if hindrances are overcome.
We need not become victims of our reluctance to get involved in the details. If we can avoid becoming egotistic but pursue truthfulness always, increasing our knowledge and bravely acknowledging our weaknesses, there should be little unsettling us.
Denying the truth, bullying, self-centredness, and hard-headedness is unhelpful.
May discernment increase so right decisions can be made always.