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People are multifaceted. But increasingly, from my observations, the business world isn’t allowing people to be the nuanced beings that they are.
In business and in our personal lives, we tend to throw each other away when the facade of perfection cracks. Say one wrong thing, such as questioning a business practice, and suddenly, you’re at risk of being on the chopping block. According to a 2023 YouGov survey, 68% of Americans “have decided to end a friendship and followed through with it, while 24% say they have not.” Granted, we don’t know the reasons for those friendships ending. Some situations absolutely warrant ending a friendship or business relationship. But in my view, people can be too quick to sever ties, and this practice extends to the business world.
Moving forward, I urge us to embrace the fact that people are nuanced — and to not be so quick to terminate our professional and personal relationships.
Complexity Is a Reality that We Must Acknowledge
Previously, I wrote about how everyone is hypocritical on some level, and we must change how we handle hypocrisy in the business world. We have an inability to face the hypocrisies in ourselves and others.
But we must acknowledge the reality that people are complex — and give them and ourselves space to be nuanced. We also need to recognize that circumstances can cause people to act out of character. For instance, instead of balking when an employee criticizes the company’s culture and jumping to the conclusion that the employee must hate working there, an executive could take a step back and say, “Criticizing the culture doesn’t necessarily mean this person doesn’t like working here. It could mean that they care enough to stay and want to fix things.” Instead of ending a business partnership because the other person’s views don’t align with yours, you could accept that you don’t have to think the exact same way to have a successful working relationship.
By Not Acknowledging Complexity, We Stifle the Truth
In business and life, people tend to only want partial relationships — instead of with the whole house, just with part of it (such as the kitchen). But when we only want to see the sides of people that we agree with, when we don’t acknowledge the complexity in ourselves and others, we stifle the truth. People who think they have to present themselves a certain way will become afraid to be nuanced and, in turn, less likely to speak up. That can have devastating consequences.
Consider what happened at Boeing. According to an article in the Harvard Business Review, in “the aftermath of the two fatal accidents of Boeing 737 Max jets,” evidence pointed to workers who were “pushed to maintain an overly ambitious production schedule and fearful of losing their jobs if they raised concerns. This is a textbook case of how the absence of psychological safety — the assurance that one can speak up, offer ideas, point out problems, or deliver bad news without fear of retribution — can lead to disastrous results.” If those workers had had psychological safety and if they’d felt safe to say something, perhaps those accidents wouldn’t have happened.
The Rolling Stone Culture Council is an invitation-only community for Influencers, Innovators and Creatives. Do I qualify?
We can innovate all we want. But if people don’t feel empowered to speak up, those innovations aren’t likely to succeed — and we’ll continue to be far apart from each other.
Creating Spaces Where People Can Tell the Truth
I believe that business leaders need to first accept that people are complex and change how they handle the hypocrisies in themselves and others. Then they need to create spaces where employees and other stakeholders can tell the truth.
These spaces can be digital — such as in the form of anonymous surveys that can’t be traced back to individual respondents. Or they can be in-person spaces, such as company town halls where people can voice their thoughts. The key here is that leaders shouldn’t reprimand people for telling the truth; they need to be ready to hear it. Leaders shouldn’t punish people for showing that they are not one-dimensional.
Creating these spaces is how we can start solving the problem of people being afraid to tell the truth. If we don’t solve this problem, we risk a bleak future. It’s when we are receptive to the truth that we can truly make strides in bettering the world.
