Avoiding the “dishonesty tax”
If you’re reading this email right now, there is probably at least one thing about your team or organization that you want to change, but the thought of making that change is scary. Maybe it’s a staffing decision or someone’s behavior that doesn’t feel right. In your gut, or in your heart of hearts, you know what you need to do.
But you haven’t done anything yet. Perhaps because acting on that feeling could mean making scary decisions or having hard conversations where feelings might get hurt.
One of the most natural things we can do as leaders is to take those feelings of fear and then go to our heads where we strategize a way forward that helps us get what we want while avoiding painful decisions and scary conversations. The moment we hatch our “win-win” plan, we might feel a little better. But we’ve just unknowingly accrued a dishonesty tax. We made the decision to turn away from what we know in our gut or in our heart. And devise a plan in our heads, instead.
For now, we have the illusion of a “win-win,” but down the road the tax bill is going to come. And we might have to pay those debts with interest.
Some common ways we end up paying a dishonesty tax:
Someone on your team is not working out but they have strong connections to other teammates. Instead of making a hard decision, you come up with a creative new role or structure you believe will isolate them or the organization from the current challenges they’re presenting. But in a few months the person feels more isolated (because they are) and is more unhappy (and troublesome) than ever. And the creative role you designed for them doesn’t really make sense when you take them out of the picture - which is creating other problems you didn’t anticipate.
Or maybe it’s the star on your team who wants to leave to make more money or have more flexibility, etc. Paying more money or allowing more flexible hours seems like a reasonable way to avoid the fear of being without that person. Until the day you realize those flexible arrangements have become untenable, or there are some alarming inequities of pay on your team when viewed by race or gender. Suddenly, instead of dealing with the challenge of losing one person, you’re addressing an organization-wide issue in which lots of people may feel aggreived.
Sometimes it’s not a clever plan or strategy, but simple wishful thinking. We experience someone behaving in a way that feels wrong on some level but we fear the consequences of engaging them about it directly. “Maybe it will change on its own – or someone else will say something.” But when we don’t say anything, we’re giving implicit approval. The behavior gets worse and - having let it go in the past - it feels even harder to say something now.
Here’s the good news. As challenging as the “dishonesty tax” can be, the flip side is true when we can find the courage to listen to what we feel in our heart and know in our gut. Every time we slow down, get honest with ourselves, and make the tough decision or have the hard conversation, we are making an honesty investment. And here’s the beautiful thing about the investment: as hard as those decisions and conversations are, they will start paying off SOON, and then only continue to pay dividends.
That person who probably shouldn’t have been on the team in the first place? They are likely to end up in a better situation, and every day that goes by, your current team adjusts and moves on.
The person who was asking for money might be gone, but their time with you was limited anyways, and every other conversation about salaries will be easier when you’re sticking to a consistent scale.
And the person with the troublesome behavior that you spoke directly with? The conversation was hard but you actually learned something new about why the behavior was happening. It’s not long before you feel like your relationship with them is better than it was before.
Take 30 seconds to ask yourself: what do you already know in your heart or in your gut that you want / need to do? Now visualize yourself doing it, and imagine how good or proud you will feel when it’s done. As hard as it was to do it, imagine the peace you might feel knowing you’ve made a tax-free honesty investment and now you get to see it grow. Leading is hard, and at times, we will suffer no matter what we do. But suffering now for a stronger team and a greater sense of peace is a lot better than a fleeting (and artificial) sense of peace now and a whole lot of suffering later.
