Presume Integrity

A friend of mine was recently looking to move to a new position in his organization. He'd submitted his resume and been interviewed, and got an offer. There were a few things to arrange, including his departure from one department and their contract while moving to the new one, and all of this required some paperwork. After submitting the info, however, he got an e-mail from his new boss telling him they'd noticed some inconsistencies between his interview and his paperwork, and so they were withdrawing the job offer.

Upon getting this my friend collected the sources of his information -- firm policies, pay records, and so forth -- and sent all of this to that new bosses, along with some reminders about what they'd discussed in the interview. Almost immediately they acknowledged that the misunderstanding was on their end, that they had not read everything completely, and that they had screwed up (though the words "sorry" or "apology" were never used). The damage, though, was done: my friend had no desire to go work for people who had assumed he'd been lying.

In creative fields you'll have plenty of opportunities to face lying. Plagiarism from old sources, taking ideas from colleagues without giving them credit, missing deadlines for no good reason...yes, your Creatives might lie to you. But you should never assume they're lying from the start, and had better be pretty sure before accusing them.

A person's reputation is important to them, and to suddenly be told others don't trust them is a real slap in the face. It's tough to take it back once you accuse someone, so you need to be very sure before accusing someone of lying, especially if you're going to take action against the. Ideas like "innocent unless proven guilty" aren't just theoretical concepts when you're talking about real people.

If you think someone is lying to you, you need to investigate it quietly first. Check out the information they've given you. Ask them some follow-up questions without signaling distrust. You need to be pretty sure before confronting them, and VERY sure before taking action against them. There's another concept in the Western legal tradition that says "better a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent be punished," so before you confront someone based on a hunch you need to consider the consequences if you're wrong.

In my friend's case, he's no longer pursuing that new department, and he's reconsidering whether he wants to stay in the organization at all. "I don't want to work for people who don't trust me," he says, and it makes sense. The respect between leader and employee has been severely damaged. From a leader's perspective, you need to consider whether you trust the people working for you, and if you don't, well, why do you have them working for you?

Now, if you examine something questionable and it turns out someone is being dishonest, well then, do what you need to do. My solution is generally to get rid of someone whom I can't trust, but that's me...you might not take such a drastic action, everyone needs to decide for themselves what works best. But don't lose a good employee just because you're the one who made a mistake.