Honesty is the first and foremost value that supports individual and
organizational change and learning.
Honesty is an ability to listen to how your heart responds to events and
then work out why you felt that way. Learning is then modified action from
the insight gained from turning your reaction into new truths. This is
positive change, i.e. improvement- you avoid feeling that way again if it
was a bad feeling and repeat it if it struck you to be true. You have to
ask yourself why you did it that way and why you felt the way you did
about it.
You can only achieve true learning if you listen to your heart- otherwise
you suppress your inner feelings and end up perpetuating received wisdom,
assumed modes of action, keeping up appearances and so on i.e. stagnating
rather than facing up to the need to change. You cannot assume that
because something felt true the last time you did it, it will still be so
now. In a transient world, truth can change- if we are honest enough to
recognize those changes, we can learn and improved.
Honesty is being true to yourself. As such, being honest takes a certain
amount of integrity, self-confidence and courage. It is far easier to see
things as you wish them to be, or remember past times that were
successful- selective recall and partial honesty are the enemies of
learning- they may not be lies but neither are they the whole truth and
nothing but the truth. They are not completely honest.
Honesty is the best policy because these days you are much more likely to
be found out- you are likely to be heard, found, detected and that
dishonesty can be communicated quickly and widely. I saw a program on
television recently about "Lenins secret files". These days, we could not
lock our diaries and notes up in secret vaults build to withstand nuclear
explosions. We had better make sure that we are willing to later (or
sooner) defend, justify or apologize for everything we do or say now.
It pays to be honest because such honesty creates a virtuous positive
reinforcement cycle. Being true to yourself now means that you be true to
yourself later. You do not have to compromise on honesty now because of
past dishonesty.
Be honest and true to yourself and have a great 98!
regards sincerely Simon Buckingham
http://www.unorg.com
Major new content coming in January
--Simon Buckingham <go57@dial.pipex.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>