During my work career as a manager and leader I saw the biggest mistake ordinary done by the young people:
After a mistake, they try to hide it or lie to me.
Doing that, they are breaking the most important fundamental thing of any relationship including work:
Trust is a fundamental thing which makes things work.
Let me provide some arguments if it’s not clear:
- In management you cannot do all things by yourself, as a result, you need to delegate. Not all things can be checked – you need just to trust. No trust – no delegation and probably no management. Maybe guillotine on the backyard can fix it 😉
- Any kind of work processes or any relationships is based on agreements and rules. Most of them are not built-in or automated. You need just to trust people to make these processes work. No trust – no work processes. It works for coding as well.
- Human is really emotional and unstable by nature. The only indicator which says that you can work with a person or build any relationships is a reputation based on trust of other people. No trust – no reputation. No reputation – no trust and relationships. It’s a cycle which makes things work.
What I see: young people don’t understand that if they’ve created a problem in some technical or organizational area their liying pushes the problem to the new level and breaks any relationships.
The consequences of lying often outweigh the cost of mistake. They become irreversible.
As a result, let me share the message with all young people to make them avoid the worst behavioral pattern there are planning to use:
Don’t lie even in small things. Be brave to admit your mistakes and take responsibility for them.
Don’t be afraid to entrust yourself to people and they will trust you.
Follow these rule even in front of a tough manager or leader. It will show your strength twice.
Once you will lie – your reputation will be hard to restore.
Be careful with that.
SB's 