Well, we have been taught since our childhood that we should be honest. However, as kids in school – nobody really tells us that being honest also has its consequences which are not always in your favour.
Something similar happened to Sharda when she tried to be honest at her workplace. She was working for an organization for 10+ years and she had learnt a lot from there. She had joined it as a fresher and managed to grow to a much higher position. Since the last couple of years, she had started to feel stagnant and wanted to move out. But no such brilliant offers were coming up.
She had realized that the atmosphere of her team had been deteriorating for quite some time especially since her new manager had joined a couple of years back. He was not only incompetent but also favoured the wrong people. This was causing a lot of politics at the workplace. She initially did not bother about it. She believed that if she continued to perform at her work, she could stay away from this politics. But she was wrong.
As she continued over the last 2 years, things were only getting worse. She finally got an offer from another organization which she readily accepted. But before leaving she went ahead and reported to HR, all that was happening to her team. Not only that, she even reported these things to the head of the business when she was asked the reason for resigning. The favouritism, gender discrimination, blame games, personal comments and everything that had bothered her in lately.
She expected action to be taken. But in the 3 months of her notice period, she saw no change at all, in fact, some of her team members turned hostile towards her. She left this job and joined a better organization and a better team.
One of her ex-team members called her one evening and told her that her superiors in the previous organization had defamed her a lot. She was incorrectly being blamed a lot for all the wrongs that had happened in the department. And that was all because her concerns were not handled in the right way.
Sharda was far away from that hostile environment but it still impacted her. She had been wronged.
This is a very common scenario especially at the workplace wherein subordinates are forced to move on when they really cannot deal with the unfair situations at work. Their honest opinions are used against them and power of position often wins.
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A few years back, I had to face a similar situation at the workplace. It wasn’t as bad as what Sharda faced. I had issues with the way our Department Head was managing our team. He was always micro-managing and had no trust in the team. As the team lead, I was finding it difficult to keep him away so that my team could have space to work the way we wanted.
My immediate manager however understood the situation really well and was very well on our side. I was asked for my honest opinion and blurted out all my frustration in front of her. It was very clear to her that I saw our Department Head as the major and only issue in that team.
My manager was a genuine person and she once said – “You are not scared to call a spade a spade and that is really good.”
She genuinely appreciated my honesty and handled the situation for me. It was a huge risk that I had taken. The situation could have very easily turned against me but I was lucky to have the right person as a Manager to whom I could confide in. The moral of the story is – Don’t always give your honest opinion. Sometimes people just ask you for your opinion because they want to play against you. It doesn’t work. Honesty is the best policy only when honesty is used with the right trustworthy person.
Candles Online 