At a previous company I had a kid working for me as an inside sales rep who was struggling. We worked together to improve his call skills, I talked to him about work ethic and what it really took be successful in my opinion and we got him a few small wins that started to build momentum in the right direction. One week he had a really good week and came to me excited about the results. He was so motivated that he wanted to come into the office over the weekend to work with me on a plan and get organized for the following week.  I was excited to see the improvement in his results and even more excited to about the improvement in his attitude and confidence. Since I was usually in on the weekends I was more than happy to come in and work with him.

I was only about 26 years old at the time so I was still going out and partying every weekend and he was close to me in age so there was somewhat of that ‘personal hang out’ factor in our relationship even though we never hung out outside of work related events. With that, after telling me he wanted to come in on Sunday and work with me, he told me his girlfriend was coming into town from NYC Friday night and was staying with him until Sunday morning.  He explained how he hadn’t seen her in a long time and how he had a whole weekend (2 full days) of fun mapped out.  His plan was to drop her off at the train station and come to work on Sunday around noon.

I got to the office around 10am on Sunday. Noon time came and went ad he didn’t show. 1:00, 2:00, 3:00…I finally called to see if he was coming in before I left.  He picked up the phone and told me his girl didn’t get in until Saturday night so he was spending the day with her instead. Ok, fine, I totally understand and didn’t even think twice about it. But then Monday morning came around. We had a standing team meeting at 7am on Monday mornings. At 6:45am I get a call from the kid with this pathetic fake cough and raspy voice telling me he was sick and then went into graphic detail about the problems he was having with his stomach that wouldn’t allow him to get out of bed or come into work but he “might be able to come in the afternoon is he was feeling better.”  In my head I’m thinking are you kidding me? Was I born yesterday? You just told me on Friday that you hadn’t seen your girl in a long time and you were really looking forward to spending two days with her. She came in a day late. It was so blatantly obvious she was lying in the bed next to him while he came up with this lame ass excuse to get out of work and spend more time with her.

Being a very young manager I didn’t exactly know how to react. My first instinct was to call his BS and then fire him immediately but since the rules on firing were a little unclear to me at that point in my career I held off, wished him well and told him I would see him tomorrow. To make a long story short, I ended up confirming through others that he wasn’t really sick which made me lose my trust in him completely and I ended up firing him soon after.  If he had told me the truth I wouldn’t have been thrilled but I would have accepted it, dealt with it and moved on.

When there is distrust everything ends up falling apart. This is true with managers, employees, partners, customers, and everyone else, especially yourself.  At the end of the day, honestly is by far the best policy. If you screw up with a client, are late to a meeting you forgot about, didn’t do something you were supposed to, or whatever it is – own it, take responsibility and move on. The more you try and cover it up the worse it gets, just ask Rob Ford.  This is especially true when it comes to yourself. You know when you’re lying to yourself or trying to justify to yourself why you did or didn’t do something. Stop making excuses. If you can’t genuinely look yourself in the mirror and feel good about what you’ve done or are doing go make the necessary adjustments so you can. Good luck and happy selling.