How to Win Client Business When You Don't Know Where to Start

CHAPTER 20Transparency Is Good, Right? : How and When to Be Transparent

Presence is about shedding whatever is blocking you from expressing who you are. The more we are able to be ourselves, the more we are able to be present. And that makes us more convincing.

—Amy Cuddy, Harvard psychologist and author, Presence

Transparency has received a lot of attention in business lately. Countless books on the importance of transparency have populated bookstore endcaps for the past decade. This trend began with Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor, written by the late leadership guru Warren Bennis. Bennis, who served as a leading scholar at the University of Southern California for over 30 years and is widely regarded as one of the most respected pioneers in the field of leadership.

But what is transparency anyway? Transparency is a somewhat squishy business concept, like authenticity. While it's hard to nail down a definition, a good start for us is that transparency is synonymous with openness – the candid sharing of information with others.

It's generally accepted by most of us that more transparency is a good thing, especially in government and business organizations. Hiding information leads to a breakdown in trust between institutions and its stakeholders.

But when it comes to transparency in our professional lives, it can be hard to know how transparent we should be. It's kind of like knowing how honest to be when a friend asks, “Do you like my new haircut?” ...