Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Honesty Is The Best Policy

Happy Monday Studioe Fans Around The World,

I survived the rainy weekend (ice skating, Planes movie, golf, basketball, playing with cousins, BBQ’s and the dreaded Dave & Busters) with my extremely energetic boys and I am ready to blog it up today.  So the subject of the day is going to be honesty.

In business especially, honesty is the best policy.  I try to instill honesty upon employees and hopefully this is a policy you follow yourself in work and life.  To be one that blurs the truth, is a straight out liar or even a pathological liar is not a good quality at all, but the bigger issue is that it isn’t an easy task to be a liar, unless you are a really good liar.  Not an admirable quality at all unless, of course, you are a career criminal.  Hopefully, I don’t have any blog fans in that category.  The biggest problem of all is that one lie leads to the next lie and the next lie and before you know it, reality and lies start to blur. And then, you get BUSTED! Caught in the act of lying and it is all over for you.  The theory is, once a liar, always a liar and then you are the person that no one trusts again and that most likely proves to be fatal.

Every now and again I get an email or phone call where someone is asking for advice on handling an issue.  When the options are reviewed, the approaches that I am presented with are either, tell the truth, give a white or lie straight out.  When this happens, I ALWAYS say to the person on the other end that honesty is the best policy. When I say that to the other person, I almost always hear back from them shortly thereafter that they took my advice and it resulted in a positive outcome. Imagine that?   Maybe honesty really is the best policy.  Please note that it is never too late to embrace this policy.

Honestly (ha!), I have to go deal with the 40 emails I received over the weekend. Have a great week!  Talk to you next Monday.

Honest Scott