Falling in love with truth
Tell all the truth but tell it slant, success in circuit lies.
Too bright for our infirm delight, the truth’s superb surprise, as lightening to the children eased.
With explanation kind, the truth must dazzle gradually, or every man be blind. – Emily Dickinson
Communications people who are involved either in business or politics work with facts, perception and truth every single day. It’s what advertising, PR and media practitioners do for a living. In fact, “truth in advertising” is marketing communications’ ethical call, while “tell it all, tell it fast, and tell the truth” is PR’s mantra, and “truth to tell” is media’s battle cry. As a professional, you talk almost casually about the truth, but what does it mean?
Truth is supreme. It is sound, flawless, pure and perfect. Truth invites scrutiny. It doesn’t shrink from inquiry. It doesn’t fear tests or trials. Examination or investigation, criticism or condemnation, questions or doubts, feelings or wishful thinking, and acceptance, rejection or denial does not affect it.
Truth is indestructible for it endures forever. It cannot be altered or eliminated. Not by time or chance, and not by words or money. Truth is feared. As you have witnessed, some go to great lengths to conceal, disguise or obscure it. Using deception, dishonesty and omission they turn truth into a lie, substituting it with half-truths, fabrications and fables.
You may never know all facts or intentions but you may know enough to present it truthfully. Cynics though claim there is no truth. As they say, what you hold true as true is an accumulation of perceptions gained from filtered perceptions of events and environment. You can never know all the facts of a situation. Still others insist there is truth, but it might not be recognized immediately. A communications professional who value the moral dimension of the practice believe that accuracy builds credibility, while inaccuracy destroys it. Lies shatter trust and reputations; honesty and truth build confidence and responsibility.
Lanny J. Davis, a special counsel and spin-meister to a former US president once said, “People in media are like everyone else in their commonsense instincts when it comes to what rings true and what doesn’t. They are trained over the years to assume that what they are being sold by politicians is not likely to be true in all respects. Thus, their first reaction to an effort to deny an obvious fact will be to try to disprove the denial, and not stop until they are successful.”
Davis’ observation is not exactly a ringing declaration that “the truth will set us free.” It’s a good piece of advice though to people in the public eye. In most cases, the truth will come out eventually, so you might as well tell it from the start.
Telling the truth implies that the information to be shared is hard to deliver. Most people don’t speak the truth for fear of the dangerous consequences. Telling hard truths almost always means giving bad news. People can get hurt, become angry, lose their esteem, and these emotions are usually directed at the communications messenger. However, based on the “tell the truth” experiences of many political figures, brands and companies that have undergone some form of crises — scandals, sickness, emergencies and the like, the outcomes have turned positive — better relationships and more satisfying work experiences.
“Honesty is the best policy” remains to be a subversive proposition. By telling the truth, you get people to look each other in the eye, share their appreciation, state their resentments, get over them, and move on. To some, these benefits may be questionable, but this is how you can best serve and help each other.
The truth is not a thing to be discovered but a thing to be created, through artful world choices and careful arrangement of appearances. The PR worldview envisions truth as an infinitely malleable, spinable thing. In fact, one of the rules of PR is that spin cannot be a demonstrable lie, a point driven home in every PR textbook. “Never lie to a reporter” has become a standard industry principle.
PR professionals agree that there are three pieces of advice which business professionals and politicians alike can heed to remain truthful to their calling when faced with a crisis:
Tell it all — what is exactly happening, what we plan to do, how we feel, why things are the way they are. In delivering the truth, present the bad news first. The message must be clear and simple, projected without color commentary. Explanations and drama can get in the way of information. Having a list of solutions ready, is vital. You will appear like heroes if we can immediately offer answers to the shared problems. Blaming others for our predicament should be avoided. Finger pointing can look like you’re shirking responsibility.
Tell the truth immediately. It’s not good enough to tell the truth at the start of an assignment or at the end. The best time to express anger or disappointment, for example, is when you’re experiencing the emotion. The hardest thing about anger is getting over it, and the only way to get over it is to tell the truth about it, fast.
Tell the truth repeatedly. Putting this principle in a corporate setting, you can say that “it’s one thing for an individual convert to embrace radical honesty,” but we can, on the other hand ask, “what about the rest of the organization?” At one point in the P&G system for instance, PR consultant Mary Cusack picked up a simple technique for practicing truthfulness. The process is called “Stop, Start and Sustain.” Every six months, members of her group participated in an informal appraisal exercise. Each person selected five to ten peers, subordinates and managers to evaluate them along the three “S” criteria: “What I want you to stop doing,” “This is what I want you to start doing” and “This is what I want you to sustain.” Then the whole group met to discuss the appraisal. At P&G, as Cusack reported, the process became “addictive and very satisfying.”
You shouldn’t be surprised. Telling the truth may be difficult, risky and tricky. But once you get to the truth, you can fall in love with it. Mark Twain declared, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
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