Lead On with Greg & Mark (LOwGaM)
We invite you to join us as we talk about the world of leadership during times of complexity.
Lead On with Greg & Mark (LOwGaM)
S6: E3 Why Telling The Hard Truth Beats Spin Every Time
What does honesty look like when stakes are high and timing matters?
This episode centers on a simple rule from Big Mike: Bad news doesn’t get better with age. We unpack the difference between truth, spin, and omission and why partial honesty with a slant can be just as damaging as a clean mistake. From leadership credibility to team culture, we explore how delays create confusion, why silence isn’t neutral, and how a one-minute feedback moment can change a career.
If you care about honest leadership, crisis communication, feedback that lands, and building trust without theatrics, you’ll find practical takeaways here.
If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review to help others find it.
Ask yourself: What truth do you need to say sooner?
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What do you think? I like it. I like it. You're killing it with uh artificial intelligence music, brother.
SPEAKER_03:I'll tell you. It's amazing. Ten seconds, and you got a song. It is. I actually did that from the car. Don't tell anybody though. Uh while you were driving?
SPEAKER_04:Wait a second. You are the first to criticize Bucks County drivers, and now you're going to admit on our show that you're playing with AI music while you're driving?
SPEAKER_03:I did I put it out there, yes.
SPEAKER_04:How have your travels in Bucks County been? You've been a like a staunch critic. Is that the word? You're a staunch critic of Bucks County drivers?
SPEAKER_03:Very staunch critic. I only got cut off once, though, on the way here.
SPEAKER_04:What about blinkers or turn signals as we call them here in the civilized world? I'm actually seeing more blinkers. More blinkers. Do you think that your rant had an impact on our listeners? I do.
SPEAKER_03:And then you know there's just so many of them that they I contacted Penn Dot about it, everybody, you know.
SPEAKER_04:The Coons Corollary. That's it. It's now a felony to not use your turn signal in Bucks County. I know.
SPEAKER_03:It's just I just think it's lazy, you know?
SPEAKER_04:How hard is it to go? Click. I I have a question for you. I might have an answer. Let's see. When we released episodes one and two of the podcast a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_04:I got some grief, man.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, on uh on our opening song.
SPEAKER_04:Two things.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:The opening AI music, the funk one. Yes. The Bruno Marzi thing.
SPEAKER_03:The Bruno Marzi thing.
SPEAKER_04:Uh divisive, right? We had people who loved it, people who did not like it. Yeah. Some people like the music, didn't like the lyrics. They thought they were a little too shameless, self-promotional.
SPEAKER_03:That's I I could see that. Yeah, because I mean self-promo yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, like that we're complimenting ourselves and lyrics in a show, right? So I I actually that I did think that was a little cringy. But I thought that the um the vibe was fun.
unknown:Right?
SPEAKER_04:Did you get feedback on the songs?
SPEAKER_03:I I did get feedback on the songs. They liked the up tempo of it. Uh, and it's it sounded current, you know, kind of a thing. But I also got a little bit of the feedback, a little bit self-serving. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. But we're not those kind of people. That's no, no, it didn't fit.
SPEAKER_04:I think that's the part didn't fit, but like I don't think we realized it through that lunch because you just you were just experimenting. That's exactly right. And so like this one, the Marcy Playground, right? That was a little better because it wasn't about you and me. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:Exactly. And I just saw Marcy Playground Live last summer. How did they do? Ocean Ocean's Calling there in Maryland. Um amazing. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Um, let's hold that thought about Marcy Playground Live.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Hold that thought. Yeah. And then let me ask you another question. I got a ton of grief from longtime listeners that I'm close with. Yes. That I didn't tell them that season six was launching, that they just found out about it because they're a podcast app. Dude, the grief that I got, and you know who you are, people. Yeah. In fact, they were on a text chain with you.
SPEAKER_03:They were. I had to exit myself from those text chains.
SPEAKER_04:Can we talk a little bit about this? Okay. So I add you to a text chat. All right. All right. All right.
SPEAKER_03:So, so listeners, uh, Mark adds me to a text change. Like text group chat. And with this text group, I had no context. So, like, so I'm thrown in, and they're throwing like all of these like one-liners and things of things I have no idea about. It was, and then I was trying to eat dinner with my wife, and it's like ding ding. They kept going off.
SPEAKER_04:All inside jokes about, you know, but about things I know nothing about. But then there was a question about the dog bite. People wanted to, these two in particular wanted to know the severity of the dog bite and whether you were making it up or whether you were exaggerating it. And then how ironic that just last week you ran into one of them live in person. I sure did. So, but what was the interaction like when he confronted you in a in a playful way about the dog bite? He wanted proof. Did he inspect your hand?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, he inspected my hand. He wanted proof that, you know, and he goes, Oh, that is pretty bad.
SPEAKER_04:Do you think he regretted questioning the seriousness of your injury when he saw the scar that I got to see?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Because I defended you, brother.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I know you did. I know you did.
SPEAKER_04:You were getting those sorts of AI generated pictures of like Chihuahuas biting you.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah, I was getting chased by dogs, all these AI pictures they were sending.
SPEAKER_04:So I called my dad because of their because of these two, their strong reaction and their questioning of whether or not you uh you actually were injured. Um, I asked my dad, I said, Pop, because he listens. And he always tells me the truth. I said, Big Mike, um, what did you think of Greg's story about the dog bite? I said, Were you concerned for Greg? He said, actually, I was mostly concerned about the well-being of the dog.
SPEAKER_03:Love Big Mike. Love him.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Let's let's go back to um let's go back to Marcy Playground real quick.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Yes.
SPEAKER_04:That's a perfect setup for some questions that I have for you.
SPEAKER_03:Wonderful. Wonderful.
SPEAKER_04:What was your first concert?
SPEAKER_03:First concert was the Psychedelic Furs.
SPEAKER_04:Psychedelic. I saw them in Austin this morning.
SPEAKER_03:They were solid. Yeah. And the lead singer started off like doing this weird dance where he was like twirling. Like it was wild. And I saw with brother Stevie was there uh with me, and it it was what was great is we won it from a radio station. Did you really? And they uh they put the question out if anybody knows the the band who sang Pretty in Pink. Oh wow.
SPEAKER_04:So that's that's awesome. Yeah. Um mine was the Mighty Mighty Boss Stones. Oh, nice. At the Trocadero in ninth grade. Took the train down to Chinatown in Philadelphia where the truck was. Worst concert.
SPEAKER_03:Uh worst concert. Give me a second. I'll tell you.
SPEAKER_04:I'll tell you mine. I went and saw Ray Mont Ray La Montagne at the tower or the Keswick. I can't remember. He's pretty mellow. Dude, I fell asleep.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, he's pretty mellow.
SPEAKER_04:I fell asleep. Now his music, this is when my trouble is. Yeah, but dude, he put me to sleep. My wife is like, you are snoring. Yeah. It's not a concert where people stand up. Like literally, you go to a theater with seats and you fall asleep listening to him. So I would say that was the worst concert.
SPEAKER_03:I'm gonna have to think about that one.
SPEAKER_04:Really? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You've been to so many concerts? So many good ones, but I always research it before.
SPEAKER_04:But what about that bluegrass show we saw the other week? We didn't even listen.
SPEAKER_03:Let's not say what their name is.
SPEAKER_04:I'm not gonna say who they are.
SPEAKER_03:That was one of the worst ones, but it was the best uh location. XL Live.
SPEAKER_04:I don't feel like they had a set list. I feel like they were at the end of their tour and they were done.
SPEAKER_03:They they just seemed like Yeah, that wasn't good. Best concert. Overall, best concert. Manchester Orchestra's up there with one of my favorites. With Foxing. With that, you were there with me. Yeah, where was it? The Fillmore? Yeah. That was Fillmore. Yeah. Yeah, that was one of my favorites. Um honestly, that was just to another level, that one was. Yeah, yeah. Um, a lot of the a lot of the other ones go back to the Horde Festival when Horde came out. Yeah, they were uh that's where I saw a whole smattering of bands.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, smattering. You like that? Uh who did you see in concert before they got huge?
SPEAKER_03:Dave Matthews. Really? Tell me about that. They had they only had the song Ants Marching out. Yeah. And small crowd? Yeah, really small crowd. We saw them at Lafayette University. Yeah, sure. I mean, we're talking small gym. It was in a gymnasium.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, for Lafayette's it's all liberal arts college up in Lehigh Valley. I saw um the National. No kidding. It was like, and I love the National. I mean, I go back to like, I don't go all the way back, but I go back to Alligator.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:And um they were probably, Lisa and I were there, there were probably like 300 people there. Can you imagine seeing the national with 300 people?
SPEAKER_03:I can't.
SPEAKER_04:I also saw a real big fish when they opened for Goldfinger. Nobody knew who they were. They came back three months later and they sold out the electric factory. Um something you hate about concerts in 2026. This is us being Gen X yelling at the sky.
SPEAKER_03:I'm going to be, I'm putting it right out there. It might offend some people. The vaping. Oh, yeah. I because we went to see uh Dave Matthews current like two years ago, and it's right when vaping came out. There was just a cloud of vape out there. It it just took away from the experience.
SPEAKER_04:It is better than cigarette smoke. Agreed. But it's still annoying. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, I hate to say this because it'll offend everybody, but cameras, put them away.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Or if you're going to pull your camera out because you want to take a snippet and send it to someone for like envy or for do it for like 30 seconds and then put your phone away. And like, I don't care about you living in the moment. I don't care about your life in that regard. I mean it with peace and love. I mean you holding your camera up as a distraction to me.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:And you'll see hundreds of them. Right. And and who's going to watch that, by the way? Like, who's really going to go back? Do you go back and watch concert footage? No. No, of course.
SPEAKER_03:Unless they're posting it uh on like a YouTube kind of a thing.
SPEAKER_04:Right, but I'm talking about with stuff that you might have recorded. Of course not.
SPEAKER_03:Never. I end up going back and deleting them if I ever do that.
SPEAKER_04:So yeah, I love it. Hey, uh, we talked about my dad, Big Mike. Yes. We've gone over his rules. He's been here. I want to talk about one. Because it's been coming up lately. Sure. Uh, and not with my team, but with others and and and just some random interactions that I have. Bad news doesn't get better with age. One of Big Mike's axioms that he obviously attributes to some of his mentors in his government job. Um, bad news doesn't get better with age. It's this constant reminder, Greg, that I say to myself and my team that if something's going wrong, you've got to bring it up now. And also, if something isn't good, you have to tell the truth. That's where I want to go. If something's not good and it will make a difficult conversation, or you might feel you'll get sort of blamed for it or associated with it, you still have to tell the truth, and you can't lie by omission. The number of things of lies by omission that I've seen, not here again. No, no, no, not here, but related in society, some other things I'm seeing. People that aren't telling the truth, they might not be lying, but they're not telling the truth either. They're letting somewhere in between. They're letting a misperception or a myth truth hang.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. So talk about that. So let's I want to circle back to the case. And I have an article. So the big mic No kidding.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I sound like you did it.
SPEAKER_03:I have an article.
SPEAKER_04:Go ahead. So let's circle back. Yeah. So listen, we're kind of stuck.
SPEAKER_03:Bad news doesn't get better with age. Okay. So when you say with age, we're talking about timing here, too. And that's something I didn't hear you mention. So my feeling on this is it all starts about when you know something, acting on it. Yeah. And how long you take to act on it. Because I think the longer you take to act on it, it leaves more room for problems. Well, and also So, like if it happened yesterday, Mark. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. And it's something that's you know time sensitive, here we are talking about today. It's too late. Or it might have already it might have already gone out in a communication channel.
SPEAKER_04:People are finding out about it from somebody else.
SPEAKER_03:You got it. Weird, right? So my yeah. So this is this we can go on a lot of different tangents with, but I really feel the timing of this is one of the most important things.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and it's it's weird too, because if you're a part of that lie that someone's engaging in, or that omission, that failure to tell the truth, let's call it. If someone comes to me to confront me on the accuracy of those statements, I'm gonna tell the truth, even if it means it reveals the other person is a liar.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_03:So you're gonna throw the other person.
SPEAKER_04:I'm not gonna throw them under the bus. I'm not gonna say that Greg lied. I'm just gonna say But you're gonna say what you're the right thing. Here's my take on the here's my take on the truth.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. From my from my seat, this is what I'm hearing and this is what I'm seeing.
SPEAKER_04:And that full well might contradict what this person's been told.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and that's different from throwing under the bus. So clarifying. I know you wouldn't say that snitch. I know, I know, I know. Do you know why? Because snitches get snitches, baby. That's right, that's right.
SPEAKER_04:Greg, there's an article here that I thought was interesting. I did a little Google search. I don't mean to imply that this is the best one out there. It's by a guy named Mark Wager. First name. Great. First name. He spells it with a K. Shout out to my mother and my father, I guess, but she takes credit for that. Why leaders need to tell the truth. Are you ready for this? Yes. He's got a couple of things. He says, you gotta sit what he says, when you're a leader, I guess really in any position, because everyone is a leader, but what you say matters. What do they say about credibility and reputation and integrity? People look towards their leader for directions and answers to everything, and everything they say has consequences.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_04:So like you're in a position like yours and mine, right? That's a lot of eyeballs and ears looking and listening. And a lot of opportunity for one mistruth, one omission. It is to go a long way. That's a lot of trust to lose. And so honesty and integrity and forthrightness are essential.
SPEAKER_03:Can we go over, and I know we're gonna delve into this, but can we go over what it means to tell the truth? Because a lot of times there's some truth in it, but then there's a spin. I love that. Or an omission. Or an omission. This is what I think really makes us you know delve in and get it into the the good the we'll say more then. Okay, so what is the underlying issue? And a lot of times you miss that if somebody gives you a little bit of truth. Like can you think of it? Can you think of something?
SPEAKER_04:I think the people that um spin it are cowards in some cases. Yeah. They're afraid of the consequence of of being associated with bad news. They're in a they're in a position where they're afraid that the bad news they're delivering will be associated with their own personal integrity and worth. And so they would rather tell the truth knowing it will likely result in some catastrophe later if it spares them the uncomfortability or potential of being associated with it in the short term. Right. Right. And that's a terrible place to be because you're gonna get caught.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:And you're gonna lose capital. Exactly. You know, and and and there's a couple more in here. I want to talk about the state budget. Yes, and communication strategies that we used here. He also says the truth makes people better. When someone makes a mistake and can feel awkward to approach them, if you're their leader or their colleague, the only way for people to learn is when people tell them the truth about their errors. And he's not talking about criticism, he's talking about feedback. Right? Like if you've got someone on your team that just keeps bombing presentations because of some behavior they're doing, or they keep losing some uh political or social capital with their colleagues because they're not coming to meetings on time. That might be awkward, but you gotta tell them.
SPEAKER_03:It's your job to cultivate leaders by telling them the truth. I would agree. And I I would say, and I'm not I'm not pat I'm not you know blowing smoke at you here, you are very good at this. Oh, okay. Um, somewhat sometimes to a fault. Uh sometimes I mean, I I'm and I'm saying that out of love. Yeah, but I think there's some times where you'll you'll give me feedback and I didn't really ask for it.
SPEAKER_04:I love that.
SPEAKER_03:So it does it does happen. Yeah, everybody does that. And I and I think yeah, but I I just wanted to let you know that.
SPEAKER_04:But there's so many times telling me that's the only way I'm gonna learn.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah. It's you being honest with me. But there's so many times you have saved me from issues because of that feed same feedback, same types of things. I understand. But do you but I think we've talked about it before. Some people come in looking for feedback and some people don't. They just want to come in and vent.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, we talked about that before. What's the question? Uh, what do you want me to do with this information? Yeah. Am I here just to listen, or do you actually want some advice? Right. Exactly. Yeah. He says the truth builds trust. He uh he talks about a business manager who has several shops, several stores, let's say, and one of them is losing money and on the verge of closing. And the manager, um, in order to spare the emotions and the difficult conversation that he has to have with his staff, doesn't tell them until the day they arrive at the store and it's closed. And the idea there is that had he been communicating all along, people wouldn't be met with this harsh reality of the truth being that the store was in financial difficulty.
SPEAKER_03:Can we transition right now to the state budget? That's exactly where I want to go with it. I I actually love this uh because we were faced with, uh listeners here in PA, for those listeners who were not in PA, we were faced with a state uh state budget issue where we were at an impasse.
SPEAKER_04:What we chose to do here was like starting in like September, we started I I sent out a communication once a week here.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, you did.
SPEAKER_04:Because I didn't want bad news to hit people in December. I wanted them to know the truth in October four times. In November, four, all the way until it was resolved. And as difficult as that was, I got a lot of feedback from people saying, thank you for treating us like adults and telling us the truth and telling us what you knew and what you didn't know and what you were worried about. Because otherwise it's withholding. Well, right, because people are reading about it in the news and they're probably wondering what's going on at the IU.
SPEAKER_03:How does this impact us here at Bucks IU? Sure.
SPEAKER_04:Exactly. Yeah, so if you know that there's potentially bad news coming, my theory here is let's tell people about it as soon as possible. Let's tell them what we're doing about it, what we know about it, what we don't know about it, and what we're thinking about, what we're concerned about, what we're not concerned about. And I feel like we modeled that well here. Um kept ang kept anxiety at a very stressful time at least managed and predictable. I don't know that it cured people from feeling I don't know that it made people feel great. Because we're talking about budget impasse. But at least they felt, I think, respected. Or that they were a part of the circle, or at least at the very least, they knew what I knew.
SPEAKER_03:And there's nothing wrong with somebody coming to you, Mark, and saying, asking a question, you saying, I don't know. I have no idea. Because a lot of times you don't. No, of course not. You know, you're giving them whatever information you have at the time.
SPEAKER_04:Mark says the truth increases respect. To tell the truth requires two qualities, he says courage and respect. Leaders need to have courage to see the truth and respect the people enough to share it with them. The truth helps teams achieve their goals. Conflict avoidance is something that I see a lot. People that are afraid to have a difficult conversation and their behaviors become pretty predictable. He says the number one reason people don't achieve their goals is that they don't fully understand what's required from achieving those goals. And in some cases, I'll take that and stretch it to say because the boss or the mentor or the colleague doesn't have the courage to tell the person the truth to help them get to their goal. And so rather than have that awkward, difficult confrontational conversation, constructive confrontation, they don't do it at all and the person continues to fail. And also they lose respect for their leader because if you're not getting feedback from your boss, then nobody's perfect. You should be getting feedback from your boss.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, you should.
SPEAKER_04:And if you're not, it means your boss is probably uh anti-confrontational, afraid of conference uh what do I call it? A conflict conflict avoidant, I call it.
SPEAKER_03:It's almost like the one-minute rule, too. Like a lot of these conversations can occur in one or two minutes. And it's a matter of, look, I I heard you say this. Yeah. This is how other people perceived it. Think about it. Let's just let's let's not do that next time. Think about it. Let's let's approach it a different way next time.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, how could you approach it differently? Yeah, how could you approach it differently? Come see me next week and tell me after you've reflected. Yeah. And then related, he says your role doesn't exist to benefit you, it's to benefit the team, and this is the whole conflict avoidance thing. Uh leaders um who aren't truthful and who perhaps lie through omission are doing it because that's what's convenient for them, not what's best for the employer who needs to hear it. Back to the other point. So, you know, I s I I was thinking about this, and I was thinking of my uh my dad's bad news doesn't get better with age, and I was just like, you know what? Here's a reminder for people that tell the truth, people, even when it sucks, tell the truth when it's hard. Don't lie by omission, don't allow lies to stand, don't allow myth truths to hang out there. Be an adult, be a leader, and say what needs to be said. And I don't mean be a jerk, I'm not talking about candor here. I'm not talking, I'm talking about truth.
SPEAKER_03:And like I said, the most dangerous thing is having a little bit of truth with a slant on it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And and it happens all the time. And and you can kind of tell in conversations because they'll say that little bit of truth, but then they'll start talking about their perspective on it sometimes and and putting a little bit of a spin on it. So a great topic, though, Mark.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I'm all fired up, great. I could tell. I could tell. Yeah. This this one resonates with me. Um I don't I'm not fired up because there's something happening. It's just you know, you just start to see patterns.
SPEAKER_03:Well, if somebody doesn't tell the truth, it's gonna it just wastes a lot of time because you have then have to research just to have to come back to the same person and say it really, you you probably have to meet with a couple different people and then have to circle back with that original person. Why don't you just tell me in the first place, guys?
SPEAKER_04:And then don't you lose trust and you lose trust in it. And you're just like, what else are they lying about? That's it. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I I get your frustration.
SPEAKER_04:All right, dude. What do you say we wrap this one up? Oh, we can wrap this up, and we have Marcy again.
SPEAKER_03:Little Marcy and fake Marcy who they did hold up with age. Uh Devo did not hold up with age. Mark Motherspah. Is that him? Mark Motherspaw Devo? That's it. That's it. And it stands for de-evolution. Oh, I think. There's a whole like uh thing on Netflix about it. Anyway, I just see I didn't watch it, but I saw the thumbnail. Yeah, it's pretty good. So, all right. Uh that's uh season six, episode three. Episode three. All right, here we go.
SPEAKER_04:Dog bite deniers. Beat your heart out. Let me see that cigar. Yeah. All right. I put a stake on it.
SPEAKER_02:Take the seat stay a while.
SPEAKER_01:Let them on, let them on with my mind the question mama. Let them on, let them on. Let's make a start big ideas for the bigger heart.
