When you have something difficult to say, something that might hurt or embarrass the person you're talking to, how should you say it?
Should you come right out and say it, bluntly and honestly?
Or should you be tactful and indirect?
What values should guide us in these situations?
Is honesty the highest value? Or is kindness?
I want to tackle an age-old problem. Should we be completely honest, bluntly brutally honest, or should we be tactful and diplomatic? Which one is it? Is there a choice? Can we be both?
In my last video, I reviewed this email that Charles Krauthammer, the former columnist for the Washington Post, sent to a friend who had been injured in an accident. It was a beautiful email. Charles Krauthammer died last week, and a lot of people have been posting things about him in social media. So, a famous quotation by Krauthammer was posted on Twitter that said, "You're betraying your whole life if you don't say what you think, and you don't say it honestly and bluntly." This reminds me of Ray Dalio, who says, "We should practice radical honesty, radical transparency."
That's what I want to talk about today. Is that a good idea? Is that good advice for communicators? And the short answer is no. I think this is terrible advice, and for the reasons that I want to explain.
Brutal Honesty vs. Tact and Diplomacy
If you follow the advice of being brutally honest, you are going to harm yourself, you're going to lose relationships, and you're going to suffer negative professional consequences. If you learn tact and diplomacy, this is the essence of social skill. People will trust you. They will want to be around you. It's not like they'll trust you to borrow their car, or they'll trust you to watch their money or their daughter or something like that, but it's that they will trust you that you are a safe person to interact with.
When each of us enters into an interaction, it's an inherently risky proposition. Any of us could be humiliated, embarrassed, ashamed, and lose face in any interaction. So one thing that we evaluate every time we interact with someone is, are they safe to interact with? One of the main bases that we use to decide whether people are safe to interact with is, will they cooperate with us in avoiding humiliation and cooperate with us in saving face?
Someone who is brutally honest, who believes that being honest is the most important thing, that person is not safe to interact with, under most circumstances. They don't care about my feelings. They don't care about me being humiliated or losing face. They don't care about humiliating other people that we might be interacting with. These people are not safe to be around in a personal or professional situation. They lack tact. They lack poised. They lack diplomacy. These things are desirable.
But there's a tension. I'm not denying that there's a tension or that there's value in honesty. Ideally, we want to be honest with people. I think that it's through being honest and vulnerable and “authentic” that we build relationships and intimacy. So I think that honesty is essential for growing relationships and for growing intimacy. I don't want you to hear what I'm saying as saying don't be honest. I'm saying don't be blunt. Don't be brutally honest.
The brutal part is what I'm worried about. The blunt part is what I'm worried about. I'm especially worried that people who may be struggling with their communication skills, who may be just learning to polish their communication skills will hear famous people like Charles Krauthammer, who was this incredibly gifted communicator, say, "Be blunt and be totally honest." Or they'll hear Ray Dalio who's a billionaire, this incredibly successful businessman, say, "Be radically honest, radically transparent," and they'll run around being honest and blunt and radically transparent and brutally honest. They're going to ruin all their relationships.
I don't want that to happen to you. I don't want you to be brutally honest and go out there and ruin your career or ruin your relationships. I think that is a real risk. Bluntness and brutal honesty are not generally looked upon favorably in social interaction. I'm encouraging what? Tact, diplomacy, social skill, which means being able to tell the truth, but being able to do so in a way that doesn't humiliate other people or damage them. I’m encouraging using communication to create psychological safety so that we can say things that are face threatening.
What I'm suggesting is tact, which is the opposite of bluntness. It's not the opposite of honesty. Tact and diplomacy and social skills are not the opposite of honesty. But I think there's a misperception, and some people think that that is the truth. I think some people believe that if we too carefully design the things that we say, if we think too carefully about what to say and how to say it, if we use too much tact and come indirectly to certain topics, that were being disingenuous, or that we're even lying or engaged in manipulation.
I think these are incorrect perceptions, but I really want to hear from you because I think people disagree about stuff like this. Some people believe that any use of indirectness or tact or careful language when we choose our words carefully in order not to hurt other people's feelings or embarrass them publicly or humiliate them or discourage them or dishearten them, that somehow we're being dishonest. I don't believe that's true. I think in many situations, both personally and professionally, they require honesty.
Bluntness in Personal and Professional Relationships
We can't achieve important goals in business and in personal relationships unless we can be honest with one another. Sometimes, the things we have to say to one another are difficult. They are intrinsically face threatening, meaning the content of what we have to say if you understand it correctly is hurtful. I have to criticize you. I have to call into question your competence or your attractiveness or something that you value deeply about your personality, your skill or your talent. Sometimes, especially in a professional setting, we have to offer criticism to people that we work with. It's very challenging to do because the truthful content that we have to get across is intrinsically threatening to someone else's self-image or face or pride or self-esteem.
What I think Dalio and even Krauthammer are saying in some respect is, we can't be so indirect or care so much about people's feelings that we don't tell them the truth about how we feel or about their own performance. So I'm saying, yes, tell the truth, but I'm saying don't do so bluntly. To do so bluntly disregards the reality of people's feelings, the reality of embarrassment, the reality of shame, of humiliation. These things are very real. Every social interaction that we enter, we run the risk of humiliation, of being ashamed, of being embarrassed, of losing face, of damaging our reputation. That's why so many of us are anxious about social situations because we perceive this risk.
We're not wrong to perceive this risk. This risk is real. The only way we feel comfortable going into social interactions is if we know other people have tact, have some sense of diplomacy, that they have a moral commitment not to allow us to be humiliated, not to intentionally humiliate us.
That moral commitment is reciprocal. I have that moral commitment to the other people that I interact with and I expect them to have that commitment to me. I call it a moral commitment because there's so much at stake. This commitment is really deeply personal and important. Humiliation, shame, embarrassment, loss of reputation, these are deeply significant things to us as human beings. We're so emotionally attached to the face that we present to the world, that if we lose face, we become ashamed. It's a grievous thing.
The commitment not to shame other people, not to embarrass them, not to humiliate them in public, even in a one-on-one situation is a moral commitment. Someone who is committed to being bluntly honest or brutally honest has abandoned that moral commitment, and I don't think that's something we want to do. I think that's a commitment that as moral people, we want to uphold. If you want to be trusted as someone who is safe to interact with, someone that other people want to be around, then you must not be brutally honest.
Where Brutal Honesty Fails Us
So, how do we then say the difficult things that we have to say? We use tact. We learn to use language to create psychological safety. Let me just give you a couple of examples of where brutal honesty I think is totally inappropriate.
Example #1 – Medical Settings
Let's imagine that a doctor has to break bad news to a patient. The classic form of bad news is a doctor having to tell a patient that they've been diagnosed with cancer or some other fatal disease. Let's just take cancer.
Let’s say we listen to Ray Dalio or Charles Krauthammer who says, "You're betraying your whole life if you don't say what you think and you don't say it honestly and bluntly." If a doctor thinks of Charles Krauthammer as their hero, they come in to see that patient, they close the door, they sit down and they say, "You've got cancer. The tumor's huge. We cannot operate on it. In fact, me and the radiologist, we gasped when we saw how big that tumor was. You're finished. The prognosis is terrible. You'll be lucky if you live six weeks. We agreed this is one of the biggest tumors we've ever seen." That's all blunt and brutally honest.
They may actually think those things. The radiologist and the oncologist may have sat in the room together thinking, "Oh my God, this guy is toast." But what if the doctor then comes in and because he's honest, tells you, "You're toast. That tumor is huge. We were scared to death. I'm glad it's you and not me. That's the first thing I thought when I looked at that X-ray. I'm glad it's you and not me!” These are all thoughts we're thinking. To follow Ray Dalio or Charles Krauthammer, we should just say them because we're thinking them and we want to be true to ourselves so we just say bluntly what we're thinking. This is horrible advice. Really, the worst communicators follow this kind of advice.
So, what do you want to do in that sort of situation? You do need to tell the person that they have cancer. That's your obligation as a doctor. If you leave that interaction with the patient and you haven't told them that they have cancer because you're too afraid to hurt their feelings, you've abandoned another commitment, which is your commitment to tell them the truth about their condition.
What you have to do is use tact. Create psychological safety. Maybe give them a shout across the bow or a warning and say something, "We've looked at your X-rays and I'm afraid we have terrible news. This is going to be a very, very difficult to hear. I hate to be the one who has to break it to you, but the radiologist and I both agree that what we see on the image is that you have cancer, and it's a very serious cancer. The diagnosis is very grave." This is just as truthful, but it's not blunt. It's not brutal.
We can be honest and still care about people's feelings. But in order to do that, we have to use language to create the psychological safety, to communicate the other things that, "We care about you." If you're a doctor and a patient, "We're going to continue to take the best care of you that we can. We're going to keep you comfortable. We're going to do everything we can to help you. We're going to be here for you to experience the fear and uncertainty that accompanies this diagnosis", and so on. All of that is about having a moral commitment to the other person's wellbeing and not just some abstract commitment to truth regardless of the consequences.
When we're communicating, instead of having this blanket commitment to the idea, "I'm going to be honest all the time" when I think about communication, I think about it strategically. In other words, I think about effectiveness as what I'm mostly trying to maximize. So when I go into a communication situation, I ask myself, what is the goal? What am I trying to achieve with communication here? And then I try to say and do the things that will help me achieve that goal. I'm a rational person. I try to do the things that I think will help me achieve my goals. I view communication in terms of rational goals.
So, if we think about effectiveness, it's very rare that blunt and brutal honesty is going to achieve the goals that we want, unless the goal is to offend the other person, or to shock them, or to stun them, or to impress them with our brutality or our blunt honesty. Occasionally, I'll be honest, sometimes that's the goal. Sometimes we want to hurt people's feelings, or we want to shock them, or we want to stun them with our blunt brutality. But in most situations, that isn't the goal. In most personal relationships and in most professional settings, we have other goals, and blunt brutality will not achieve those goals. So that's the reason to avoid it.
Example #2 – Intimate Settings
Let's say you're out on a date, and you're thinking that you're attracted to this person and that you'd like to go back to your place and have sex with them. That's what you're thinking. That's the honest truth. You've had a date with this person, maybe you've had a couple of dates, and you're really sexually attracted to the person. You want to go home and have sex with them. Maybe you want to have sex with them all night. Maybe you're thinking of all the things you want to do with them sexually.
Again, if we follow Ray Dalio, if we follow Charles Krauthammer, what do we do? Right there at dinner let's just tell them. "I want to go home and have sex with you. These are all the things I want to do with your body and mind." and you say in blunt and brutal detail all the things you want to do. Good luck with that.
I suppose under some circumstances that could work if you're with exactly the right person and they feel mutually. But I think a lot of the times, your date is going to excuse themselves to go to the bathroom and not come back.
There's lots of other indirect ways of showing your attraction, of inviting them home and letting them make the inference that you're interested in them sexually rather than saying it bluntly. Now, there's room for confusion and it gets into issues of consent. Eventually, we need to sort of be honest with one another maybe when we're in private.
Example #3 – Professional Settings
Imagine that you're in a professional situation and you see someone give a presentation. They come to you afterwards and they ask how the presentation was. Let's say this is someone who works for you and who you're trying to develop. But they give a presentation and your honest opinion was, it was terrible. It was boring. They lost their train of thought. They didn't realize everyone started to look at their phone. Their slides had way too many words. You couldn't hear their voice. They were hiding behind the podium. They just did everything wrong.
That person comes and ask for your opinion. The Ray Dalio/Charles Krauthammer brutal honest approach would be, "You were terrible. You hid behind the podium. All your slides had too many words. Everyone was bored. I was bored. I was embarrassed for you. I was cringing the whole time. I couldn't wait for it to be over. It was one of the worst presentations I've ever seen," right?
All of that's the truth. You may be thinking all of those things. But if we think in terms of effectiveness, is that really going to achieve our goal? Ultimately, they need to know what was wrong with their performance. They need to know that their slides had too many words, that they hid behind the podium, that they didn't speak loudly enough, that the content was boring. They need to know that, or else they can't improve.
So here's the part about honesty that I agree with, that I think any sensible person would agree with when we offer criticism for example. There has to be some honesty in it, or else people can't modify their behavior in the way they need to, especially if we're in a position to evaluate others at work. They need to understand their evaluation so that they can improve. But again, to do so bluntly and brutally harms people.
If the effect you're trying to have is to encourage someone to improve and to give someone the courage and the determination and the confidence to try again, to improve their performance, then you've got to be more supportive than that. You can't just be blunt and brutal. Blunt brutality frightens people. It hurts people. If you've encountered blunt and brutal criticism, the one thing you probably want to do is never give a presentation again, because the consequence was, you have to face this blunt and brutal criticism.
If we can use language to contextualize a criticism and let people know that we value them and their effort, we can normally find something good about their performance, and then we can say, "But there were other areas where you need an improvement. Let's go over them." Maybe you do that in private, or you wait until they've had time to come down from the anxiety of the presentation. I think these examples reveal why you can't always be brutally honest. It just won't achieve your goals.
Emily Dickinson on Truth-Telling
There's a famous poem by Emily Dickinson, who's one of my favorite poets. A beloved American poet. She talks about telling the truth. She's such a good judge of human nature. She says,
I think that's so beautiful. It so perfectly captures what I'm trying to say. Let's take that apart just a little bit.
"Tell all the truth but tell it slant." Tell the truth, but not bluntly and brutally. Tell it slant.
"Success in circuit lies." Circuit indirectness. "Be circuitous", she's saying.
"Too bright for our infirm delight the truth's superb surprise." It's too bright. It's too stunning. It's too shocking. It's too harmful, the truth's superb surprise. That's why we don't want to be blunt and brutal.
And then she gives an analogy, "As lightning to the children eased with explanation kind." So a kind explanation to children eases their fear of lightning.
"The truth must dazzle gradually." Gradually we have to tell people the truth.
"Or every man be blind." She's saying, "Every man be blind", there will be tremendous harm. The truth will cause us tremendous harm. The metaphor and analogy she uses, "Or every man be blind," that blunt truth is so bright and damaging, it's blinding. But blinding to our ego, right? Damaging, humiliating, making us be ashamed, and so on and so forth.
Does InDirectness Make Us inAuthentic?
Telling the truth or maintaining your relationships, this tension never goes away in communication. Being skillful in communication is mostly about learning to manage this tension, learning to say difficult things in a way that preserves relationships and maintain psychological safety, does not shame or humiliate the people we're communicating with. A skillful communicator does these things while preserving their reputation as a person who is trustworthy to interact with, who can be counted on, who will not humiliate us.
If we develop the reputation as blunt or brutally honest, I'm telling you this is not a reputation you really want to develop. Most people will avoid you. You won't get promoted. Romantic partners won't want to be around you, and so on and so forth.
Let's talk a little bit more about, does it mean we are being inauthentic if we are indirect or if we care about people's feelings? No. Authenticity is sort of about being true to ourselves and being a true expression of ourselves. That does not mean saying everything we think.
I challenge you sometimes to say everything that you think. Or just write it down. Don't do it in front of everybody, and think of how really honestly say everything you think. Imagine if people could read your minds and how terrifying that would be if people knew all of your thoughts.
Authenticity does not mean transparently saying everything we think. Authenticity means somehow letting our behavior be a true expression of ourselves. And so, if you yourself are someone who cares about other people, about how they feel, about them not being ashamed or humiliated in social situations, then authenticity necessarily requires you to be tactful.
I suppose if you are an evil person or if you are a cruel person or a sadist and you like seeing other people suffer, then brutal honesty would be authentic to your true self. But I think so few of us are like that. Most of us are just kind and decent people trying to get through the world, make friends and live our lives the best we can, and that authenticity means living up to our own values. And most of us value kindness. Brutal honesty is just the opposite of that.
Does Tact Make Us Manipulative?
There's also this issue here of, are we being manipulative? If we're careful about what we say, are we being manipulative? Look, everything we say has effects on people. If we're brutally honest, we're designing our words to shock people, right? That's manipulative. If we're tactful, we're designing our words to ease the impact of our words on people.
Both strategies, brutal honesty and tactful indirectness are designed to produce a particular effect in another person. Both are equally manipulative. It's not as if brutal honesty is not manipulative. It's just manipulating you in one way to hurt you, to shock you. Tactful indirectness is manipulating you in another way. The word manipulation is so pejorative. It's as if we're doing something really bad and shameful, but it's just we are designing language to achieve goals. This is not manipulation. This is how language works.
Language is strategic. We design what we say to achieve goals. I guess if you insist on seeing that as manipulative, I'll live with that. I just say language is strategic and we use it rationally to achieve our goals. There's nothing to be ashamed of about that and in no way are we being inauthentic when we are being indirect or tactful.
Honesty and Vulnerability
There's one more thing I wanted to touch on, this idea of vulnerability and honesty. I think to build intimacy in relationships you need to be vulnerable. You need to be honest about yourself. If there's one place where I think you can be really honest, it's often about your own faults. Be honest about your own faults. Be honest about your own struggles. Be honest about your own weaknesses, your own fears.
This kind of honesty reveals vulnerability. This brings people closer to you. Because if you could be honest about your own fears, anxieties, trepidations, worries, your own sources of shame or whatever it is, this is vulnerability, and this will draw people to you. They will then be willing to maybe reveal something about themselves. This mutual self-disclosure will bring you closer together.
So, if you really are craving being honest or if you think that honesty is the key to authenticity, I say be honest about yourself. If you want to be bluntly critical, be bluntly critical of yourself, but not of other people. It's unkind.
Summary
That's it. Do not follow this advice from Charles Krauthammer about blunt honesty. Do not follow this advice for Ray Dalio about radical transparency, not unless you also have the skill to create psychological safety for other people. Otherwise, you're going to be a pariah, and people won't want to be around you. You are going to hurt other people in ways which I don't think you intend to do.
That's all I have on radical honesty versus tact. Leave me a comment down below and let me know what you think of tact versus honesty. Maybe you think I've gotten it wrong. Maybe I have gotten it wrong in some respects. This is a complicated topic. I would love to hear from you.