More Honesty - Less Brutality
Monday, August 31st, 2009
Was thinking this weekend about people who seem to have the need to combine brutality with their honesty.  My observation is that far too many people seem to use honesty as a deliverly mechanism for their brutality.  The phrase, “I was just being honest.” is no excuse and a poor cloak for viciousness, envy or malice in any form. Our “words reveal us”.
Richard Needham said it this way, “The person who is brutally honest enjoys the brutality quite as much as the honesty. Possibly more”.
In Jim Collins book, “Good to Great” , he identified that one key characteristic of organizations that made the leap to greatness was their ability to “Confront the brutality honest facts, without leaving people feeling attacked or brutalized.” This takes a measure of skill, maturity, and wisdom that I have yet to witness in a person who commonly uses the phrase, “I was just being honest” .
That our world needs more honesty and more honest men and women than ever before is an undeniable truth. But equally true is the fact that our world needs less brutality of both the physical and verbal variety.
Honesty can guide us, inspire us and protect us… we must never demean or undermine it an attempt to put someone in their place, get even, or in any way to dress someone down.Â
If honesty is to remain the best policy, then brutality cannot be a companion policy.
Kirk Out - Honestly

Cleaning out my inbox was only part of the needed spring/summer cleaning I have been needing to get done. “Lean is just one letter short of clean.”I needed to “get lean” in other others of my life as well….namely the home office. The other is my home office which often seems to serve as bit of  a pit stop where I come to change the oil and the tires before I race out to complete more laps. 


Today I finish up working with WeStar Power on their annual safety conference which they themed, “Super Heroes For Safety”.  On the banner they made for this event I became Iron Man (yeah right). The message to them was about how all of us can be Heroes for safety by courageously making and taking a stand for safety.   Â
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Leaders learn yes, but they don’t learn in the library as much as they do in a laboratory. Laboratories by design encourage and even require risk, experimentation, trial and error. Results are measured, feedback is weighed and considered… adjustments are made and the experiment is repeated. In the laboratory of leadership the experimenting, or practicing and playing with the principles of leadership dramatically accelerates the leaders learning. It both refines his character and deepens his convictions. And perhaps most importantly, at the same time it helps the leader to identify and strengthen his or her natural talents and strengths. 
