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HOW TO BE A SUCCESS AT EVERYTHING

The one thing that can promote openness and honesty, according to research

A less honest workplace is a less efficient workplace.

The one thing that can promote openness and honesty, according to research

[Photo:
Allison Saeng
/Unsplash]

BY Lydia Dishman5 minute read

Flip a coin. If it lands on heads, you get nothing. If it lands on tails, you receive a $20 gift certificate. Reporting is on the honor system. No one but you will ever know the actual result of the coin toss. 

Let’s say the coin lands on heads. Will you report honestly, or will you lie?

But here’s the more important question: Do you think other people would lie?

In 2012, researchers at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany, performed this very experiment. Their results were striking: Roughly half the 658 participants reported heads. In fact, the number reporting heads was slightly more than 50%, indicating that virtually all the participants told the truth, even if that meant forfeiting the prize, despite their reported results being anonymous and known only to themselves.

If you find these numbers hard to swallow, you’re not alone. A 2019 Pew Research Center report found that 64% of Americans believe that our trust in one another is shrinking. Yet, the IZA study indicates just the opposite, that the overwhelming majority of people can be trusted to tell the truth.

Isn’t that good news? Not as much as you’d think. Because if most of us believe that people are unethical, that belief is enough to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, accelerating our descent into a less-ethical society.

That’s why we need to take note of this week’s entry into the Ethical Lexicon:

Collective illusion | noun

The acceptance by most people of a view they don’t hold themselves because they incorrectly believe that everyone else believes it.

In a remarkable series of short videos, Todd Rose, CEO of the nonpartisan think tank Populace, describes this phenomenon and its corrosive impact on our lives. “The illusion of one generation tends to become the private opinion of the next generation,” he explains. The more we believe that any view is widely held, the more we suppress our own belief to the contrary.   When that happens, he says, “We end up behaving in a way inconsistent with our values.”

What’s even more disturbing is how established business practices may be driving the problem.

Dysfunction by design

In 1909, Frederick Taylor published The Principles of Scientific Management. His theories of how to create an efficient workplace revolutionized the manufacturing and production industries. However, the changes he introduced to business culture promoted efficiency by eliminating responsibility, trust, and choice. Taylor’s methods led to a managerial structure that effectively dehumanized employees, depriving them of the opportunity to find meaning and satisfaction in their work.

The cost of more efficient business was the diminishment of human dignity and the erosion of social trust. In the end, Taylor’s approach undermined its own benefits since, if employees aren’t trusted, they naturally become untrustworthy. According to Ron Carucci in the Harvard Business Review, the more that people perceive the culture around them as dishonest, the less committed to honesty they themselves become. And a less honest workplace is a less efficient workplace.

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We are what we see

To help businesses promote a healthier work culture, Populace developed the American Workforce Index, which provides a list of 60 possible goals for what employees want most to get out of a job. When asked to evaluate how others prioritize those values, respondents ranked a prestigious job as #5. For themselves, however, they ranked job prestige at #55. Also ranked near the bottom of the list were job perks and personal connections.

The problem with this kind of misperception is that well-intentioned bosses will try to design work environments to provide or produce what they believe employees want. If their perception is skewed, they end up creating a culture that accomplishes the opposite of what they set out to do.

In fact, says Rose, “What people want most is for work to be a positive part of the rest of their life; they want to be trusted to make decisions about how they do their jobs, and they are expecting more meaning and purpose in their work.” When leaders suffer from collective illusion, they end up incentivizing the wrong things and designing a work environment that emphasizes the wrong values.

Creating a culture of honesty

The phenomenon of collective illusion is not new, but it has propagated exponentially through social media. With 80% of content produced by 10% of users, the appearance of both widespread ideology and widespread extremism is compelling and convincing. Social media saturation is so intense that we can’t help absorbing what we read and believing what we see.

Psychologist Rob Henderson explains that propaganda is often extreme to the point of absurdity by design. It’s not about brainwashing or indoctrination. The point is to “habituate [people] into acting ‘as if’ they believe in the official doctrine, if for no other reason than that they do not publicly question it.” Again, perception shapes reality.

Indeed, the sages taught 2,000 years ago that silence is tantamount to consent, which supports Rose’s contention that unity for the sake of unity is a false consensus. Going along to get along and agreeing to disagree sound like they promote a culture of peace and harmony. But respectful disagreement and civil discourse do a better job to dispel the illusion of division, recalibrate our collective moral compass, and spur constructive conversations more likely to produce solutions to our problems in business and in life.

Nevertheless, it’s a constant battle to resist the magnetism of conformity bias. Groupthink encourages conformity and self-censorship because any deviation from the group causes the brain to deliver an “error signal,” producing discomfort and insecurity.

But casual conversations between individuals promote openness and honesty. The moment we discover our illusions are false, we gain freedom from their influence. A culture that promotes an honest exchange of ideas encourages creative, courageous, and ethical thinking. 

Such is the wisdom of French philosopher Joseph Joubert, who observed two centuries ago that, “It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.” Applying this principle in business will protect us from blundering into bad decisions. Applying it in other aspects of our lives will contribute to a healthier world.


Yonason Goldson works with business leaders to build a culture of ethics that earns trust, sparks initiative, and limits liability. He is an award-winning podcast host, TEDx speaker, and author of Grappling With the Gray: An Ethical Handbook for Personal Success and Business Prosperity.


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lydia Dishman is the senior editor for Growth & Engagement for fastcompany.com. She has written for CBS Moneywatch, Fortune, The Guardian, Popular Science, and the New York Times, among others More


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