People learn quickly what kind of truth is safe to bring you. If honesty consistently gets punished, eventually you won’t have to ask for lies.

seen this exact thing with code reviews, punish one honest bug report and the next ten are just lgtm

Many people think they speak the truth. But then it’s just an opinion.

✔️✔️✔️

Comfort is cheaper for them than telling you the hard thing twice.

The punishment is rarely a blowup, it's smaller than that. A flicker of annoyance, a cooler tone, being slightly less looped in next time. People run that calculation on you in real time, they don't need you to yell once to learn the lesson.

A lot of people complain that everyone around them has become fake. They forget they trained them to be.

Honesty is a rare virtue these days. Everyone that possess this virtue should be okay and brave enough to accept the outcome. Just because you will be punished or discarded for speaking the truth. Does not give you a reason to become a coward like everyone else. Be brave, the universe will reward you for it.

Most people claim that they want the truth, but they don't.

I try to hold this running my team at work. The first time you punish someone for telling you the truth is the last time they bring it to you. Same rule applies at home with my wife, and especially my kids.

Lindsay is honest about murdering kids, that’s why she’ll walk soon. 🔜 In all seriousness, this is some weak beta nonsense. You must be either surrounded by liars, or have been a chronic one and now try to recover, or both. It is not your problem to solve other people’s personality flaws. And it is not on you to enforce someone to be truth teller by affirming and not being negative about it. It’s extremely narcissistic take at least. “Oh yeah, if I just don’t punish people for telling the truth, I’ll hear more of it and can use it to my advantage.” If anything or anyone matters, truth is assumed but not expected. If they lie, and you catch them, it’s up to you to enforce consequences (ending friendship, disciplining a child, warning an employee, etc.) + dealing with whatever they lied about accordingly. 2 wrongs 2 adequate consequences. If someone tells the truth about them doing something bad, you can say thanks for telling the truth. And then do the consequence that’s adequate for whatever was done. Forgiveness can be adequate or brushing it off. But it can also be the same as above. It’s low fucking standards to reward people for just telling the truth. Maybe it’s high standard among people you deal with but it’s not universal. Always amusing people write this stuff publicly expected to come off as some sort of truth teller heroes.

Agree. And you never find out it happened. You just notice that everyone agrees with you now.

How can you do this if someone has lied to you before blatantly? How do you not question if they’re actually telling you the truth this time if you’ve had to dig for it before

Yeah If you kill honesty you are also taking out loyalty, among others Killing honesty always produces extensive collateral damage

Excellent advice. Always served me well.

The punishment is rarely loud. It's the slightly cooler tone for a week after. People read that faster than any argument, and they adjust. Most of us never notice we trained it.

In Japan, we value harmony (wa). But true harmony doesn't mean avoiding uncomfortable truths. It means treating someone with enough respect that they can speak honestly without fearing your reaction.

Honesty is nice, but perhaps we should be teaching people to live so they never have to remember a lie.

Truth is often harsh. Our mind loves listening appreciations and applause. Criticism hurts it. Outwardly whatever we may project but fact is no one likes blames and negative feedback. That’s why most stay ordinary Go beyond your mind. Rebuke it and it will behave.

Honesty survives where feedback has a landing pad: ask for one fact, pause before defending, and reward the person for telling you.

It's better to be with someone who calls your BS out when you are wrong to bring out the best in you. Than to be with someone who just agrees with everything you do to avoid conflict.

Yeah If people are always telling you what you want to hear, that's a warning sign. Good relationships need at least one person willing to say, “I don't think you're right.”

Love this because I'm guilty of being harsh

Many high-ranking elected officials surround themselves with those afraid to tell them the truth, so-called yes-men (or women.) These officials would be better served to hire at least a few "no-men" (or women) who tell them the unvarnished truth instead of what they want to hear.

learned this on sales calls, honesty is fragile

Sometimes the truth is not hard to hear, accepting it is.

Same pattern shows up on teams. People usually stop bringing bad news not because it got punished, but because nothing changed the first time they brought it. Silence is more often a follow through problem than a courage problem.

People learn fast whether honesty costs them. If it does, they stop bringing it. Protect the ones who still do.

One needs to examine themselves closely as to why they would desires to make people regret being honest.

True in companies too. If every update reaches the founder polished and reassuring, the culture is not aligned. It is scared.

100%. Make sure you apply this especially to your own children

That's very good advice. You should always encourage honesty, even if it hurts.

Truth only survives where it is safe to report. Reward the signal, even when it interrupts the story you wanted.

This one is tough, even if you don’t punish person for telling the truth, someone else will. Also, some truths aren’t easy for anyone to take, such as, “I no longer find you attractive”. That being said I agree overall.

This is especially true in leadership.

This is why I ended a friendship with someone last year. I couldn’t be honest with her.