In an earlier post, brutal honesty was briefly mentioned. It was mentioned when discussing things with coworkers, clients, designers, subs, craft workers and anyone else on the construction supply chain. While it is important to be honest at all times when discussing things with other people, we also need to be brutally honest with ourselves. We don’t do ourselves any favors when we hide from reality or make up stories in our heads of a different reality that doesn’t quite exist.
Being brutally honest with others can be scary but, in my experience, it can be downright terrifying when I am brutally honest with myself. I think the reason is that since I know myself better than anyone else and know everything that I am thinking and doing, I am unable to hide from reality and the truth. Any issues are my doing and my duty to figure out and fix. Only I know if I am doing things right in life and if I am honest with myself, I know when I am at my best or less than my best.
Slightly less terrifying, but still scary, is being brutally honest with others. What happens if I tell someone on my team they need to improve their performance? What happens if we disagree with or correct a client? What happens if I tell my boss about project successes AND struggles? In my experience and based on the experience of have had when being brutally honest, it usually works well over time. Being honest from the start builds rapport through trust, and eventually leads to high levels of collaboration and shared values. Interestingly, some construction focused research on building relationships exists that points us in the right direction. It is actually via social network analysis and shared by Paul Chinowsky. He finds that high performance teams and relationships start with basic communication, then grow to where information exchange takes place and eventually reach knowledge exchange while fostering reliance, trust and eventually shared values amongst project team members.
Honesty with our teams will help our teams collaborate and share values to achieve high levels of success for everyone on the project. Honesty with ourselves will enable us to be better team members and achieve personal success while we help our teams collaborate, share values and meet project goals.
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