MyPunchblog

What makes something the brutal truth? In my opinion, the difference between the “truth” and the “brutal truth” is that the other party doesn’t want to hear your perspective. There’s an inherent resistance (and usually vested interest) by the other person to live in their world, even though an objective 3rd party would likely disagree with their point of view. The brutal truth confronts the situation head-on with the hope that it will help set everyone on a better path.

I’ve been in a few situations recently where I decided to tell the brutal truth.

The first situation happened at work. We’re working on a new feature for MyPunchbowl, and it’s been progressing steadily. The lead developer on the project has been working hard over several weeks to hit the deadline. It hasn’t been an easy project, and there are multiple pieces to coordinate. He’s making progress, but it’s going to be a close call whether it will get done on time.

Last week I had the chance to see how the feature is coming along. The developer gave me a quick demo, and I was happy with the functionality and how the project was coming together. There was clearly lots more to do, but I could see how it would be a great feature for our site. However, there was something really wrong with the new feature: it was ugly. Really ugly.

Here’s where the brutal truth came in: despite the look in the developer’s eyes and the approaching deadline, I had to tell him that the feature was simply ugly. I specifically explained why I thought it did not meet our standards for shipping a great product and I asked him and our lead designer to revisit the visual look of the feature. It was a hard conversation. As much as I wanted to tell him that the feature was almost done, I knew that the brutal truth would lead us to a better end result.

I had a similar situation recently with a family member. This person is having a hard time, and is going through some personal problems. Unfortunately, a similar situation has happened in the past and the most latest episode is almost a carbon-copy of before. As hard as it was to do, I believe that telling the brutal truth was the best way to deal with the situation. Others around me felt that we should be careful to not upset the situation more by highlighting the similarities, but I knew in my heart that it was time to confront this person. Sometimes hearing the brutal truth hurts. But I believe that by my actions to tell the brutal truth, the end result will be much better.

Try it for yourself: sometime this week tell someone what you are actually thinking rather than sugarcoat it because you’re afraid of their reaction. You’ll feel liberated by knowing that you’re helping to drive to a better end result more quickly.

They say that “the truth can set you free.” Perhaps, then telling the brutal truth “can set you and others free.”

Do you think telling the brutal truth is sometimes the best course of action? Why or why not? Please share your thoughts with me and others in the comments.

This entry was posted on July 7, 2008 at 10:54 am and is filed under Startup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.