en 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.

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When Dave was at Yahoo, he attended a management training program taught by Fred Kofman, a
former MIT professor and 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, so people 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 with a group of Facebook employees who were native
speakers. One might think that Mark’s limited language skills would have kept these conversations
from being substantively useful. Instead, they gave him greater insight into what was going on in the
company. For example, one of the women was trying to tell Mark something about her manager. Mark
didn’t understand so he said, “Simpler, please.” Then she spoke again, but he still didn’t understand,
so he had to ask her to simplify fur