The Importance of Honesty in the Modern Workplace

The relationships in the modern workplace are shifting fast. Discover how the personal AI Kin can help you navigate that by helping you stay honest.

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Comfort at work is becoming an increasingly undeniable need. It was only recently that massive movements of workers to ‘better workplaces’ spouted articles discussing the ‘Great Resignation’¹, and the ‘Great Reshuffle’², and the trend shows no signs of stopping. As a result, employers are investing in it more than ever.³

Based on worker polls around the time, one massive driver for this exodus was the lack of honest communication and realistic expectation-setting between employer and employee. Workers are leaving because they feel like they’re working too much, for reasons they don’t understand, let alone feel are important⁴.

Central to preventing this, studies are finding⁵, is the proper use of honesty and integrity in the workplace. Chief among suggestions on what this ‘proper’ use should look like are models like “Radical Transparency”, and “Radical Candor.”

But, it’s one thing to say that. Read on for a closer look at what those terms mean, and how personal AI like Kin can get the best out of them.

Shifting Work Relationships

Saying that the pandemic was groundbreaking for flexible and remote work is a huge understatement.  

So, how have work environments changed since the pandemic? A reduction in working hours. An increase in social activities. The introduction of mental health allowances. Modern workers aren’t just happy with a paycheck anymore, and they don’t need to be. These days, people want workplaces that prioritize well-being and foster a positive culture as core values 6 —and employers are rising to meet them.

That’s largely because moving back to old company values might just be impossible. Even just recently, when Dell requested its workforce return to the office or “else”, almost half of their workforce decided to lose promotion potential⁶ instead of losing their remote working lifestyle. 

The Rise of Radical Transparency

Understandably, many employers have doubled down on meeting new standards. Based on the large call for honesty in the workplace, some have even gone as far as using something called ‘Radical Transparency’⁷. This is where all of a company’s business decisions are communicated to its employees, with space for honest feedback.

Changes like these have empowered employees to call out problems, and young, modern professionals are leading the charge⁸. A number of critics suggest this makes employees difficult and unreliable—and none more than ‘Gen Z’ employees, who are often named the “least resilient”⁹ due to their vocal tendencies.   

However, the modern worker is not the problem. An honest atmosphere of discussion and feedback has been missing from workplace culture for some time¹⁰, and some argue younger workers have not yet been taught to read that as acceptable.¹¹  

Still, it can be hard to know, in such a shifting landscape, what ‘open discussion’ looks like, and how honest is too honest. Building a healthy business relationship with honesty as its core value is a balancing act, and this article will go one side of the scales at a time.

How Kin, as a personal ai, Helps Demystify the Modern Workplace

Kin can help modern employees and employers adapt to these new working conditions, by offering tailored support and insights on their professional development.

For instance, Kin’s contextual memory allows its users to track its users’ work patterns, suggest optimal schedules for them, and remind them to stick to them. 

It can also remember their descriptions of team dynamics, and identify potential miscommunications and issues with their specific colleagues might face in the age of remote work.

More on how Kin supports professional development can be found here.

Why ‘Healthy’ Looks Like ‘Honest’...

Honesty is central to any partnership, and a business relationship is no different. 

The only way to really know if two working parties are a good fit, whether they’re employers and/or employees, is through neither party needlessly lying.

Employees should be honest about their skills, goals, and any concerns they might have. Colleagues need to understand each other’s feelings on a project, and their contributions to it. And, most importantly, as research shows¹², leadership teams need to be upfront about job expectations, company culture, and potential challenges.

When these expectations are clearly communicated, teamwork improves¹³. Employees know what actual role and workplace they’re signing up to, so they know they’ll enjoy where they’re going. Colleagues are going to be much better at getting along, checking each other’s work, and allocating skill sets. Common goals will be clear. Lastly, it means employers know exactly who they’ve hired, so they can make the best use of their talents—and foster the company values they envision—through properly-informed ethical decision-making. This all increases workplace integrity, and helps people stick to their promises—which all helps the bottom line.

So why is honesty in the workplace important? Because it builds trust, and leads to a better-rounded product. 

Why Kin Encourages its Users to be More Honest with Themselves

Kin can help its users be more honest with themselves and others, by prompting them to regularly check in with their feelings and experiences, and understand their own head.  

This knowledge also allows Kin to advise on what jobs best fit its understanding of its users’ personalities—which only becomes more accurate when employers are honest about their positions. 

Additionally, Kin’s memory helps it to track its users’ growth, and remind them of their aspirations, like a career coach. It can then suggest relevant training or development opportunities based on individual needs.

Even better, it can help its users prepare for discussions and disagreements in their workplace, by supporting them in organizing their feelings and communicating their thoughts effectively. Its dynamic knowledge of its users’ workplaces also allows it to tailor these suggestions to the ways its users’ individual colleagues work.

Honestly Must Also Be in the Self

However, the most important honesty both in and out of work environments is someone’s honesty with themselves.

Someone being honest about their skills, likes and aspirations builds more than an understanding. The honesty builds an acceptance of these things.

If people can recognise their own strengths, limits, and biases, they’ll know when to volunteer themselves, and when to ask for help. It also makes it easier for someone to figure out why they’re struggling, in both their professional and personal lives.

For example, if someone is struggling to progress on a new task, but they know they can be a perfectionist, they can look for ways to make a non-perfect start easier to do, and ways their colleagues can help. (Though Kin is good at providing that kind of advice, too.)

But, if that person is struggling on a task they’re good at, it’s more likely that the problem is bigger than them, and they need to ask for help tracking it down. (Again, Kin can give advice there, too.)

Having the self-awareness to differentiate like this doesn’t just help people in business communicate their feelings and needs clearer, but it can also help them become a more reliable team member. Self-aware people are the people that know their abilities and limits, and can promise realistic timeframes and workloads. Those are the people that make a workplace culture which makes life better for everyone.    

So, healthy work is an honest team effort.Sharing intentions and feelings lets colleagues get a better understanding of their work and themselves, which means they can work in a team and do the job they do better than they could otherwise.

Though, just how honest should you be in a professional setting?

Why Radical Candor Beats Radical Transparency for Communication 

As mentioned, some businesses have adopted a practice called ‘Radical Transparency,’ based on the modern worker’s call for honesty. Again, this is where the business makes all of its information and decision-making processes visible to and open to discussion from its employees, to be more “honest” with them.

The Problems Plaguing Radical Transparency

It is first important to say that real-world use of Radical Transparency does show some benefits.¹⁴ Having employees of all levels being invited to discuss CEO-level decisions satisfies 80% of the workplace’s desire to understand their company’s decision-making process¹⁵. And that makes sense: it gives employees a way to be heard, have input on their workflows, and understand where all their time is going. After all, if they can understand, impact, and agree with the overall company plan, they’ll be happier to do their part—and help their colleagues do theirs.

But, Radical Transparency puts all information on display. Information like breakdowns of individuals’ time, their salaries and explanations of why people were fired. So, then: is Radical Transparency best for the workplace?

While it might sound like the best policy on paper, research shows radical transparency to that extreme can harm employee engagement. Employees can start feeling vulnerable, and anxious to create good performance metrics for company-wide viewing. In fear of this, some employees were found trying and hide their work and ideas—even when they’re making improvements.¹⁶

Radical Transparency can also encourage employees to provide each other with feedback, and generally vent about their workplace environment. Though it’s true that research¹⁷ shows this boosting workplace communication and relationships, and creating a tightly-connected workforce, it can also do the opposite. Quite often, the same research shows that unchecked Radical Transparency can contribute to burnout by stimulating co-rumination, where people repeatedly discuss their issues, and create a negative workplace environment¹⁸. In fact, this chatty behavior has been cited as having contributed to the Great Resignation, the Great Reshuffle, and now the ‘Great Resistance’ to returning to the office.¹⁹²⁰ Sometimes, an honest environment can be too honest.

How Does Radical Candor Improve on Radical Transparency?

In light of this, more and more companies, including Atlassian²¹ and Indeed²², and LinkedIn have been discussing an alternative: Radical Candor. Radical Candor is a happy medium between telling everyone everything and telling no one anything. It’s telling people the things they need to know in a way that’s sensitive yet direct. 

Pioneered by Kim Scott²³, an ex-Google lead and CEO Coach for companies like Dropbox and Twitter, the approach is based on two concepts: “challenging directly”, and “caring personally.”

Essentially, it’s a framework of giving feedback while caring for the people being criticized, and giving space for everyone to do the same. As space is tight, here are some more comprehensive breakdowns²⁴ on the web. In practice, Radical Candor is considering other colleagues’ humanity when discussing workplace matters, so that important conversations and observations can happen without sacrificing psychological safety. And, as Google found during internal research, this goes for peer-to-peer interaction just as much as worker-to-boss or vice versa.²⁵

Some major points for business communication include:

• Still praise and criticize peers, but don’t needlessly attack, shame or inflate people when doing so. Make sure what’s being said is clear and helpful.     

• Don’t release individual information company-wide, but have 1:1 discussions about it when needed.  

Rules like those seem to be working, but there are many more of them to remember. Maybe too many. 

That’s where Kin comes in. 

How Kin Can Help Communication Get Candid, and Stay Candid

Figuring out this line between Radical Transparency and Radical Candor can be difficult—especially when it can feel like everyone wants a different level of honesty.

This is where Kin really shines. Its conversational approach is designed to help people talk about themselves and their situations, to help them understand both better. As mentioned, Kin’s deep memory capabilities then allow it to track recurring issues and identify patterns. Much like executive coaching, if there are problem-people or situations, Kin can help its users find them.

Then, based on their past experiences, tendencies and preferences, it can suggest the proper mix of tact and candor—with input from its wide knowledge base, provided by a mixture of leading AI models. Users can even roleplay interview and team meeting scenarios, so they feel comfortable in knowing exactly what to say and how. Essentially, it acts as a personalized career coach and mentor, helping people navigate tricky workplace dynamics and maximize business communication.

And, once things are going well, Kin continues to assist by gleaning its users’ workload and stress levels from their conversations with it. If it detects overworking or burnout, it can suggest steps to address these issues, such as proposing a meeting with a manager or recommending time management strategies. All with insights on how to show the proper radical candor in the meantime. So, how does AI help with workplace honesty? Like that.

Understandably, some users will be worried about sharing so much of their work life with Kin, given the unethical behavior in parts of the AI industry—but they needn’t be. Kin’s local-first approach processes as much of its users’ data on-device as possible, so only a minority is sent securely for anonymous cloud processing.

Kin is the modern worker’s personal AI, and it will always help people remain honest and radically candid about their capacity—without using that honesty against them.

Overall… 

In the end, someone being honest with Kin is being honest with themselves. By leveraging the value of honesty, people can foster healthier, more transparent work relationships that benefit the business relationship between colleagues, employers, and employees. 

It’s a way to take control of discovering feelings, and finding the best ways to express those feelings to the people that need to know. With Kin, people can help ensure that their work relationships are built on a foundation of trust, honesty, and mutual respect.

If you’re ready to become more honest at work, here are a couple of prompts you can use with Kin for assistance.

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