Speak a Straight Forward Speech
• Be simple, brief, straight forward and most importantly honest. Spin doctoring, manipulating or distorting the facts, or even leaving false impression can cause a huge withdrawals with others ultimately leading to loss of all trust.
• Create transparency and openness: This means being real, genuine and telling a truth in a way that people can verify. It means that your motives are aligned with your words and either there is no conflict of interest, or you have disclosed the conflict of interest.
• Confront reality: Take on tough issues head on; discuss the undiscussable (elephant in the room); share the bad news as well as good news.
• Service recovery: Right the wrongs, especially when you are the one who has wronged. You can’t do it if you’re arrogant; you will not admit to being wrong, you might cover things up when you have wronged, or you might project blame on others.
• Prioritize to what is important: If something is not beneficial to you in this life or the Hereafter, you should avoid it. You should train yourself to avoid useless or harmful pursuits and instead, concentrate on the truly beneficial and important matters. Why waste valuable time in matters that is of no concern to someone? Be above petty, useless activities. Concentrate on beneficial pursuits. Abu Hurairah quoted Rasoolullah as saying, “Part of perfection of a person’s Islam is his leaving alone that which does not concern him.” [Tirmithi]
• If you were to add a value to your integrity how much would it be worth? And if your integrity was worth more than a million dollars, how tightly would you hold on to it? Would you speak truth faster or allow your hesitation to eat away what you value.