Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
People favour underdogs but follow top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs, anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
People who become "successful" learn that they have "personal" friends and "positional" friends. A personal friend is with you through thick and thin, high position, low position, or no position. A personal friend truly cares about you and enjoys your company.
A positional friend is a friend of your position of power or influence. He was the friend of the last person to have your position, and he will be the friend of the next person to have your position. This is good for business. There is nothing wrong with this. You just have to remember not to confuse positional friends with personal ones.
Then, of course, there are the really false friends - people who want to use you and your position for their own ends. Unlike positional friends, who want to maintain a good relationship while you have your position, false friends are just pretending, waiting for the right moment to make use of you and then turn and run.
Even worse, when you are successful, you win true enemies. Somebody else wanted your success. Somebody else lost when you won. Somebody doesn't want your star to rise because he sees himself as your rival. Somebody is embittered by anyone who succeeds and is looking for ways to attack or at least embarrass the successful. The higher you go in your organisation or field of work, the easier a target you become.
Kent M Keith
