Jack Zenger
John H. Zenger is the cofounder and chief executive officer of Zenger Folkman, a firm that increases the effectiveness of leaders.
Jack taught at the University of Southern California (USC) and later at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He received a doctorate in business administration from the University of Southern California. He was a trustee and board chairman for the UVU Board of Trustees, and just completed 10 years as a member of the Board of Regents of the State of Utah.
He received ATD’s Lifetime Achievement in Workplace Learning and Performance Award, and was inducted into the Human Resources Development Hall of Fame.
He is the author or coauthor of 14 books, 150 articles and blogs, and he writes regularly for Harvard Business Review and Forbes.
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When CEOs describe what they want most in people they hire, they consistently talk about honesty and integrity. Among the leadership competencies that our firm measures via a 360-degree feedback assessment, honesty and integrity have consistently received extremely high scores, in first or second place in comparison to everything else.
I had an experience that gave me a whole new perspective on this important leadership attribute. The lesson did not come from any leadership guru; it came from a physician.
My son was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He was a practicing physician, specializing in pulmonary care. His cancer was not common and the optimum treatment was unclear to his physicians. He endured extensive chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery to remove half of his stomach, and finally a bone marrow transplant. After months of treatment, they performed a CAT scan that found no trace of cancer cells; his physicians, family, colleagues, and friends were hoping for a complete cure.
On Easter Sunday, his condition took a sudden turn for the worse. He was admitted to the hospital where they again began conducting extensive tests. The following day, I and other family members were in his hospital room when his oncologist came to review the results.
What then transpired was an incredibly honest and yet caring presentation of the facts. The tests revealed that his cancer had returned with an astonishing vengeance, now filling his entire abdominal cavity. His liver and kidneys were totally overtaken with cancer. Blood tests painted an equally bleak picture. At the end of his calm and careful recital of the test results, the oncologist asked if my son understood. After a short pause and in a matter of fact manner, my son quietly replied, “Yes, this means that I am going to die.”
I sat there thinking about the many business leaders whom I’ve known through the years who could not muster up the courage to tell a colleague about the negative consequences of their behavior. Those conversations were about minor blips in a career. This conversation was about the biggest issue anyone could imagine, literally, life and death. It happened that my son and his oncologist were personal friends and esteemed colleagues. But even that relationship did not make the oncologist dilute his honest recital of the truth.
I recall thinking to myself that I had a great deal to learn from those in other professions. The physician had been compassionate and respectful in his delivery, but he chose not to sugarcoat this most painful of all messages. His dear friend and colleague deserved to know the truth, as did his entire family.
Two days later, with all of us at his bedside, my son passed away. There are no words that adequately describe that event and the emotions that came gushing up for me and all in the room. But words are also not adequate to describe my admiration for the doctor who courageously delivered a message that was incredibly painful for him to convey.
One of the fundamental principles of good leadership is the willingness to treat others with respect. Our ability and courage to speak honestly with one another are most certainly at the heart of treating one another with esteem. Indeed, our research1 on leadership integrity paints an interesting picture. We found that leaders who received high scores on honesty and integrity also received high scores on five behavioral indices:
The first four of these describe how someone treats another with great respect. They are not in the mold of the leader who smiles up and kicks down. Nor do they characterize haughty leaders who put themselves into a different category and feel that they need not play by the rules that govern the rest of us. As I observed the oncologist talking with my son, he exemplified each of these characteristic behaviors.
The final item, acting assertively, is a bit odd. Most people would not immediately think of assertiveness being a bedfellow of honesty and integrity. I thought, however, that the oncologist attending to my son could have ducked that extremely difficult conversation in a variety of ways and with countless excuses. But he didn’t, and he taught me a profound lesson about the kindness of true honesty.