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The rock group Fleetwood Mac can be profoundly insightful. Lyrics from their song "Little Lies" provides the title for this article and also contains the useful advice to "close your eyes, close your eyes." That's great guidance, particularly if you want to be happy and to uncritically accept much of the conventional wisdom about leadership. Because contrary to what people may want to believe, candor and honesty are frequently neither desirable nor common in the actions of successful leaders.
We often want to be lied to, for instance by politicians (Purcell, 2016). Moreover, telling untruths is common and frequently helpful in numerous ways. Therefore, HR professionals, instead of mouthing platitudes about candor and transparency that bear little resemblance to much behavior in the real world or to what can be useful and necessary, should teach people when and how to effectively deceive others.
What follows is some evidence and logic to support these assertions.
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Richard Moran, an author and currently president of Menlo College, was formerly CEO of Accretive Solutions, a partner at venture capital firm Venrock, board member at several public and private companies, and a senior partner at Accenture. When Moran came to my Stanford class on power, he told the students that although they claimed to want honest feedback on how they were doing, what they really wanted was affirmation of their wonderfulness-to be told how special, accomplished, and high-performing they are. The students argued with him, but Moran was right. Most people want positive feedback and praise-maybe even flattery in excess, which makes praising others a particularly effective technique for exercising interpersonal influence (Vonk, 2002). Many people do not seek out information, particularly from others important for their rewards and careers, about "areas for improvement."
Consistent with this argument, there is an enormous social science literature describing numerous self-protective and self-enhancing behaviors (Hepper, Gramzow & Sedikides, 2010). More than half of the people in any group will, if asked anonymously, claim to be above average on virtually any positive trait ranging from height to physical attractiveness to intelligence to sense of humor, a phenomenon called the above average effect that taps into people's desire to think well of themselves (Brown, 1986). Of even more relevance, when people are given information...