How - Dov Seidman [79]
An apology in the context of business demonstrates how much of our current success is tied to our ability to be actively transparent with those to whom we are connected. Transparency builds strong synapses by increasing trust and reducing the corrosive factors that weaken them. Active transparency is not just about ameliorating liability or diffusing potentially explosive regulatory missteps, however. It puts you out ahead in a lot of situations.
INTERPERSONAL TRANSPARENCY
When I was in law school in Boston, I rowed crew with a guy I had met at Oxford, a smart guy named Sig Berven. I remember him as a fun guy, a scholar-athlete. He did well in school, was very well-rounded, but was by no means head of his class. One day, he told me the remarkable story of his admission interview for Harvard Medical School, where he was then studying. “I went into the dean’s office and sat down,” he told me. “There was so much riding on this interview, and the air in the room was stifling. The dean sat there, behind his desk, with my transcript in his hands, and said nothing for a moment or two. Finally, he looked me right in the eyes, held up my transcript, and said, ‘You know, I’ve seen better grades than this before.’ I caught my breath, looked right back at him, and said, ‘So have I . . . So have I.’ Then we kept talking.”
At the time, I didn’t understand Sig’s candor with the dean. It seemed foolhardy, given his overall level of qualification. Later, I came to recognize how extraordinary was this simple act. Sig got accepted, and he is now a distinguished assistant professor at University of California, San Francisco’s department of orthopedic surgery. He aced his interview in large part because he was simply honest when the situation and the expectations in the room screamed at him to be otherwise. He didn’t say, “Well, let me tell you, my mom was sick, so I took this semester off and my GPA dropped.” He offered no excuses, no puffery, no lies, but simply acknowledged that he, too, had seen better grades.
Most people in Sig’s situation—applying for a new position, whether in a school or with a company—portray themselves as something they are not. They succumb either to the pressure of being on the spot and feeling like they need to say the right thing to please their superior or the pressures of the old get-ahead-by-any-means-necessary culture. This is easy to understand. Nowhere in business are you more vulnerable than when you are trying to find a job. Landing a new job means forming a relationship that will have a substantial impact on your life. The majority of your waking hours will be spent there, a hefty percentage of your physical and mental abilities will be applied to its endeavors, the money that supports the rest of your life activities will flow from there, and the time you spend there will be part of your path through life toward the goal of whatever your eventual success will be. It’s a little like marrying an elephant: You must trust them enough to climb into their back pocket, but you can only hope that they don’t forget you are there and sit down on you. The wrong choice could push you off the success track. An environment that stifles creativity and growth could hold you back from reaching your full