Owning your B.S.
Owning Your B.S.
A while back I wrote an article for an online magazine. But I had an incident with an editor at large of this magazine who kept telling me she was going to publish my article—yet never did. She committed to publishing it three times without following through.
It was frustrating, to say the least. Finally, after some phone calls and queries, another editor at large of the same online magazine intervened and told me what was going on behind-the-scenes: the article was not a good fit with the magazine.
Now, if the truth had been told from the beginning, if the editor had simply said, “The article you’ve written is not right for our magazine,” that could have been the end of it. I could have either re-written the article to meet the magazine’s goals and audience, or I could have moved on. But all I received in the way of communication from my editor was silence, false excuses, and indirect, poor leadership.
When I finally heard the truth, the editor scorned my being upset. It was “inappropriate.” There was no acknowledgement that the management of the editorial process was not being conducted in a professional, frank, and honest manner. In short, the editor was not owning her bullshit.
If this were to happen in any other context, this kind of behavior would be totally inappropriate. Not being able to sit down with one another and speak the truth does harm, not good. If you cannot be honest and candid, there is no relationship: only…bullshit.
If ever we speak nonsense or untrue talk, we need to acknowledge it. We need to make things right, set the matter straight. If necessary, we need to apologize. It is hard to admit when we’ve been dodgy. It’s difficult to accept responsibility for our actions, especially when they are embarrassing. But it is never too late to come clean, to reconcile and to repair.
In many ways, it’s all about repair. None of us come into any kind of relationship without hurts, wounds, and a messy past. But if we do not have the ability to heal and to grow—to repair—then we have nothing.
Tags: authors, honesty, publicist nyc, publicity, sherri rosen publicity nyc
This entry was posted on Friday, February 17th, 2012 at 3:26 pm and is filed under athlete, Clients, Friends and Colleagues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
