No it’s gone…
No hang on … here it is ……
It was about being brutally honest.
My point is – I think – that tempering the “brutal” part of being honest is important. But if you can’t successfully deliver your message by “beating about the bush” then generally a bit of “brutal” is OK (and sometimes more effective).
But at least be honest!
I had to tell an employee once that se stank…
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, this is how I would do it.
I would ask him/her (ser) whether she/he (se) had a skin condition; and that would lead me on to body odour and how it was the issue of the conversation. etc etc.,
In fact what I did, being the poor unfortunate selected for a task that no one else wanted to do, and with lots of other more pressing stuff to do, was sit ser down and leap right in by telling ser that se stank.
I thought se was going to punch me.
Se didn’t. The problem abated.
But I also told a dear friend that se had bad breath not so long ago and this turned out to be something that the dentist could and did sort out.
I wish I’d known that teeth were the issue as I could have led in with “have you been having toothache recently”.
The tooth was sorted. Se thanked me for being honest. Problem solved.
So, my point today is that if you don’t have the hindsight or intellect (I don’t obviously) to work out what the cause of someone’s problem is, at least be honest, and sometimes this can be brutal.
But being brutally honest is still caring.
[And if you stink and have bad breath and no one tells you this … then no one really cares for you … that started out as a bad joke … but the irony/philosophy is not lost on me; a bit sad.]
