Lean In

performance is assessed by someone else’s perception. This makes people even less likely to tell the truth. Every organization faces this challenge, no matter how flat it tries to be. At Facebook, we work hard to be nonhierarchical. Everyone sits at open desks in big open spaces—no offices, cubes, or partitions for any of us. We hold a company-wide Q&A every Friday where anyone can ask a question or make a comment. When people disagree with decisions, they post to the company-wide Facebook group. Still, I would be an idiot, or not telling myself the truth, if I thought that my coworkers always felt free to criticize me, Mark, or even their peers.
    When psychologists study power dynamics, they find that people in low-power positions are more hesitant to share their views and often hedge their statements when they do. 1 This helps explain why for many women, speaking honestly in a professional environment carries an additional set of fears: Fear of not being considered a team player. Fear of seeming negative or nagging. Fear that constructive criticism will come across as just plain old criticism. Fear that by speaking up, we will call attention to ourselves, which might open us up to attack (a fear brought to us by that same voice in the back of our heads that urges us not to sit at the table).
    Communication works best when we combine appropriateness with authenticity, finding that sweet spot where opinions are not brutally honest but delicately honest. Speaking truthfully without hurting feelings comes naturally to some and is an acquired skill for others. I definitely needed help in this area. Fortunately, I found it.
    When Dave was at Yahoo, he attended a management training program taught by Fred Kofman, a former MIT professorand author of
Conscious Business
. Dave hates training of any kind, and the human resources team at Yahoo had to force him to attend the two-day session. When he came home after the first day, he surprised me by describing the training as “not too bad.” By the end of the second day, he started quoting Fred and making observations about our communication. I was in shock; this guy must be
good
. So I called Fred, introduced myself, and said, “I don’t know what you do, but I want you to do it for my team at Google.”
    Fred showed up at Google, and his teachings changed my career and my life. He is one of the most extraordinary thinkers on leadership and management I have ever encountered. Many of the concepts discussed in this chapter originated with him and reflect his belief that great leadership is “conscious” leadership.
    I learned from Fred that effective communication starts with the understanding that there is my point of view (my truth) and someone else’s point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, sopeople who believe that they speak
the
truth are very silencing of others. When we recognize that we can see things only from our own perspective, we can share our views in a nonthreatening way. Statements of opinion are always more constructive in the first person “I” form. Compare these two statements: “You never take my suggestions seriously” and “I feel frustrated that you have not responded to my last four e-mails, which leads me to believe that my suggestions are not that important to you. Is that so?” The former can elicit a quick and defensive “That’s not true!” The latter is much harder to deny. One triggers a disagreement; the other sparks a discussion. I wish I could always maintain this perspective in all my communications. I don’t—but I continue to try.
    Truth is also better served by using simple language. Office-speak often contains nuances and parentheticals that can bury not just the lead but the entire point. Comedies like
Office Space
ring true for a reason. People fear insulting others, especially the boss, so they hedge. Rather than stating, “I disagree with our expansion strategy,” they say, “While I think there are many good reasons why we are opening this new line of business and I feel confident that the management team has done a thorough ROI analysis, I am not sure we have completely thought through all of the downstream effects of taking this step forward at this time.” Huh? With all of these caveats, it’s hard to decipher what the speaker actually thinks.
    When communicating hard truths, less is often more. A few years ago, Mark Zuckerberg decided to learn Chinese. To practice, he spent time