Tactfully Honest

Honesty is the best policy - or is it? The movie "Liar Liar" portrays this conundrum well. The character Jim Carrey loses his ability to tell a lie and the results are of course hilariious.

Being a motor mouth myself, and one whose blog is titled "Did I Say That?", you can probably imagine that I can relate to sticking ones foot in ones mouth! Oh yea, mix that with a glass of wine or a bad hair day and I can easily choke on a knee!

I Like to pride myself on being an honest person, but I don't think that being honest should ever interfere with being human. I mean seriously, we aren't robots that rely entirely on logic - we are complex human beings with deep feelings and a lifetime of experiences that all contribute to who we are and how we "hear" each other. This balancing of truth and relationship is what I call being tactfully honest.

In Graduate school I took a class on Leadership and Communication (didn't we all?). The main focus of the class was learning to understand how you are perceived by others. In other words it matters less what you say than how you say it and to whom you say it. I for one have been known at times to get this very wrong.

Ok, hold onto your hats for this epiphany...We could learn a lot from politicians who practice being tactfully honest. Have you noticed this? They know their audience and when they answer a question they do it in such a way that will not upset or insult the "hearers". They don't necessarily lie, but use a lot of tact in their responses. Ok some lie, I know, but I think they try to avoid lying so as not to fuel the opposition flame.

Jim Carrie wasn't being honest, he was being transparent - moreso than any of us should be. We all have those wicked little thoughts that run through our minds that we only hope don't come out. For instance, I was asked to dance the other night and replied, "No thanks, not right now", when what was really inside my head was, "are you kidding me, don't you even know what deodorant is? You stink!" Does this make me a liar? I don't think so.

Hey, does my butt look big?