Transparency. It’s what we say we want from everyone: our spouse, our pastor/priest/rabbi/imam, our politicians, our employees, our boss.
The great philosopher Billy Joel sang about it:
Honesty is such a lonely word
Everyone is so untrue
Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you
Honestly, I doubt it. And I’m being totally transparent here.
Leaders everywhere extol the virtue of transparency as essential in relating positively to people. Further, those who work for leaders constantly and consistently crave transparency from their leaders. And leaders judged to be less than transparent in their personal relationships within an organization are routinely dismissed (figuratively and/or literally).
What’s Wrong with Transparency?
So what could possibly be wrong with expecting transparency in a leader (or an employee, a spouse, our religious authorities, or political leaders)? First, there are a number of occasions when being totally transparent as a leader works to the detriment of the organization as well as all of its employees. Some obvious examples are the open sharing of proprietary company information or personal information about employees or the terms of their employment. This example would include things such as financial reports, trade secrets, or new business plans. Second, there are times when company decisions require great discretion and confidentiality so as not to damage ongoing negotiations with another company or within the company. Third, and most practically, there are times when there should be a disconnect between what you’re thinking on a particular occasion and what you should actually say in that situation. You might be angry and thinking things that would be damaging or hurtful to say. You might have opinions about a person or a situation that might be taken negatively and that are irrelevant to the real business at hand.
At times, the avoidance of complete transparency is a matter of survival. Most of us would have been fired from every job we’d ever held if we had always been totally transparent with our boss. Generally, avoiding blurting out every single thought that passes through our head is a requirement of civility. Indeed, we could define civility as a social contract of forbearance in which we avoid communicating some of our opinions so as to prevent harm, unease, or consternation in others. This social contract might be built around the Golden Rule. If we have a habit of wearing loud sweaters, we don’t want others constantly slamming us for our apparel choices. So we won’t always let others know when we think their sweater is ugly. Or the contract might be a basic type of social exchange in which we hope to receive certain benefits from one another by exercising mutual consideration.
Not Deception but Integrity
Exercising a lack of transparency need not require duplicity or deception. Instead, sometimes it means answering the question behind the question that is asked. If your best friend asks you, “Do you think I’m being unreasonable?”, you’d be well-advised to hear the question behind that question and reply with love and acceptance. Even if your friend does seem unreasonable, it may not help them to move forward if you simply reply with a “yes.” Of course, context matters mightily here. If your coworker snaps at you angrily without apparent justification, your best course of action might not be to respond in kind but to consider what is going on in that person’s life that made him speak shortly to you.
These considerations lead us to the resolution of the problem I’ve posed: If transparency isn’t always the best policy in human relationships, and if we are nevertheless to avoid outright deception, then what is the virtue that should hold sway? I make a case for the virtue of authenticity. Authenticity is the practice of moral integration, in which the values I hold are consistent with the words that I utter, and the words I utter are consistent with the actions I perform. Another word for this moral integration is integrity, a term I hold in much higher esteem than transparency. Integrity is the state of being integrated, usually taken in the moral sense of not being hypocritical. We generally use it in moral discourse to describe a person who has clear moral standards and who acts consistently upon them. According to this definition, Jesus had integrity. So did Gandhi. So did M. L. King. In each of these cases, the person consistently acted on his ideals without consideration of the cost to himself. But that’s very different from merely saying what’s on one’s mind at the moment.
Integrity and Justifiable Moral Standards
There’s one more important consideration here. For authenticity or integrity to have any moral quality in a leader, it matters immensely the particular moral values a leader holds. In other words, authenticity by itself isn’t enough to make a truly moral leader. Even Adolf Hitler had a sort of authenticity. Although he was an evil, deranged egomaniac, Hitler had a certain set of values, and he regularly and consistently applied those values in word and practice. Even when he was lying (which he did frequently), he was still demonstrating his core moral values consistently. But it would be spurious to claim that Hitler had integrity in the way we ordinarily use that word. Mere authenticity does not make a moral leader.
Instead, leaders should adopt fundamental moral values based upon some objective and justifiable standard, reflect critically on those values, articulate those values clearly, and act upon them consistently. The source of these moral standards will be a great subject for a future blog post. But without the belief in some sort of moral standard that transcends human experience, any moral standard becomes as defensible as the next. So real integrity requires that we base our moral decision-making upon some objectively real moral standard and that we act consistently with that standard. This stance is the true meaning of what we extol as “integrity” in our culture, and it far outstrips mere transparency in leadership value.