Negotiating Reality: Truth vs. Harmony
How most people default to something other than honesty and the damage it does.
Has it ever bothered you how people often lose their jobs and are never clearly told why? The values underlying this phenomenon is what today’s article is about.
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Last week’s podcast How Are We Not Victims to Influence? featured a killer (a hint?) mystery celebrity astrology chart in the context of the immense challenge of playing victim.
A conversation with AI helped me realize something about myself that I hadn’t fully articulated before. It wasn’t merely a difference in communication style. It was a difference in what I think communication is for.
The insight came from an argument over a fence.
I hired a guy to build a fence around my property. He does excellent work; in fact, his craftsmanship is probably better than average, but his logistics are abysmal.
For astrology students, I got his chart because I needed to know: Sun conjunct Mercury debilitated in Pisces 12H! Don’t see how that’s causal? Take my class in September!
He consistently shows up hours later than expected. His communication is poor. He tells me he’s coming, then texts me he’ll be late, then arrives much later, or sometimes not at all. On one occasion he had repaired the motorized auger he needed for the project but couldn’t use it because he lost the bolts necessary to put it back together. Instead, he dug post holes by hand, while I wondered if I’m paying for the additional time.
His disorganization repeatedly spills over into my life, because it invites supervision, which I define as “Making sure somebody does what they already know how to do.” Supervision wastes resources and I strive to eliminate it everywhere I can. When a person doesn’t take sufficient responsibility, they unconsciously draw attention from the closest more responsible person, like how heat moves toward cold.
This isn’t just an inconvenience. It consumes my attention. I continually wonder when he will show up, whether he will come at all, whether I need to adjust my own plans, and whether the project is still progressing in a reasonable way.
I already confronted him about it.
In my Accountability Path, there is a sequence:
The Notice
The Nudge
The Conversation
The Carefrontation
The Line
I won’t go into details here. It’s something I train managers with, and I have an entire course on the model, but you get the idea.
I already gave him The Carefrontation. He admitted that he needed to improve his communication and logistics. I asked him for a schedule and he said he can’t provide one. “So you’re telling me you’re not in control of your time?” I summarized. He agreed. Well, if you pay peanuts, sometimes you get monkeys. I am getting a good deal on the work so it’s worth tolerating.
Then, after working only a couple of hours one afternoon, he texted me as he was leaving, asking for money. Not a scheduled progress payment, not something we had agreed upon, just a vague request for “some cash.”
I responded: “We don’t have an agreement about payment terms. I’ve assumed I’d pay you when you’re done. We can talk about it. Also, if you’re planning to come tomorrow, let me know what time.”
The next morning I began thinking about what I would say when we discussed payment. My position was simple.
I intended to tell him that because of the repeated delays, the poor communication, and the increasing amount of management his disorganization required from me, I preferred to pay him when the project was complete; not because I was trying to punish him, or for leverage, but because that accurately reflected reality.
Then I discussed the situation with ChatGPT, who suggested that I simply say something like: “I’d be more comfortable paying when the project is complete.”
The suggestion wasn’t unreasonable; in fact, it’s the kind of language most negotiation experts would recommend. State your preference, avoid criticizing the other person, keep the conversation calm, and focus on the outcome.
But something about it bothered me immediately, and I didn’t know why so I explored it.
The problem wasn’t the wording. The problem was that it omitted the reason. For me, that’s a lie by omission, and I can sense when people do it with me. I feel “handled” (read: manipulated) and I feel icky when on the receiving end of it.
If the actual reason for my decision is that repeated failures in communication and logistics had reduced my confidence in the project, then saying only, “I’d be more comfortable…” isn’t merely incomplete. It conceals the causal structure behind my decision.
It sounds polite and diplomatic, but it’s dishonest, and robs my fence guy of the opportunity to experience the consequences of his actions. I optimize communication for truth, whereas most people and therefore AI optimizes communication for effectiveness. Most negotiation advice asks: “What works?” My mind asks a different question: “What is true?”
Those are not always the same question. Sometimes they overlap beautifully. Sometimes they don’t. For me, relating and therefore communication is fundamentally about two or more people negotiating reality.
Sometimes we’re negotiating facts. Sometimes expectations. Sometimes responsibilities. Sometimes meaning itself. But we’re always negotiating reality.
Consider the fence guy’s request: when he texts me asking for payment before the project is complete, he isn’t merely asking for money. Embedded within that request are multiple assumptions about reality. He implicitly asserts: it is reasonable to request payment now, we either have an agreement allowing this or we should, and the current state of the project justifies such a request. Those are tacit reality claims.
My first response therefore wasn’t emotional, but factual: “We don’t have an agreement about payment terms.”
That wasn’t a negotiation tactic. It was a correction of reality. Only after establishing that shared reality could we discuss whether we wanted to create a new agreement.
As ChatGPT and I continued talking, I realized exactly why “I’d be more comfortable…” bothers me so much. Imagine this conversation. “I’d be more comfortable paying when the project is complete.”
Why?
Because…
At that point the real conversation begins.
Everything before that is merely positioning. The actual reason matters because it allows reality to be tested. Suppose I say: “I’ve lost confidence because your communication has repeatedly cost me time and energy.” Now the negotiation becomes real.
He can agree. He can disagree. He can point to evidence. He can explain circumstances I don’t know. I may discover that I’m wrong. He may discover that I’m right. Reality is now available for examination.
But if I simply say, “I’d be more comfortable…” there is nothing to examine. The actual premise remains hidden. The negotiation becomes a negotiation over preferences rather than reality. Good-faith negotiation requires revealing the observations and inferences that materially influence your decisions. Notice the qualifier: materially influence.
I’m not arguing that every thought should be spoken. Many thoughts are irrelevant. Many observations are private. Many emotional reactions have nothing to do with the decision under discussion.
But when a fact or inference is actually driving your decision, withholding it weakens the integrity of the negotiation. The other person cannot respond to reasoning they cannot see.
Almost every accountability conversation follows three layers.
First comes observation: “You arrived two and a half hours late.”
Second comes inference: “This repeated pattern has reduced my confidence in your reliability.”
Third comes decision: “Therefore, I’m not willing to make progress payments.”
Each layer is testable and can be challenged and/or corrected.
That is what makes the negotiation honest. The conversation is no longer about personalities or their preferences. It is about reality.
People often tell me that I’m unusually direct and that’s true. But directness isn’t the core value behind the behavior.
I value correspondence and fidelity to reality. So when someone says, “I’m not comfortable with that…” I have no idea what they’re talking about.
Why? What exactly is producing the discomfort? What observation are you withholding? What conclusion have you already reached but aren’t saying? Many people use phrases like “I’m uncomfortable” because they soften conflict, but they also frequently conceal causality.
The explanation disappears, but the preference remains. To me, that weakens the conversation, not because harmony is bad, but because truth has been diluted in its favor.
Optimizing for truth does not mean believing you’re always right; in fact, it means almost the opposite. If I tell my fence guy, “Your repeated disorganization has reduced my confidence in the project,” I expose my reasoning to criticism rather than hide it.
He can say, “No, here’s why you’re mistaken.”
Or,
“You’re right. I didn’t realize how much it affected you.”
Or,
“I disagree.”
Good.
Now we’re negotiating reality. Now, we’re actually relating!
Reality cannot be negotiated if one party conceals the premises behind their thinking, decisions, and conclusions. Truth is not valuable because it wins. Truth is valuable because it can be examined. The older I get, the more I suspect that healthy relationships are not primarily built on agreement, nor are they built on emotional harmony. They are built on mutual reality testing.
Each person brings observations, interpretations, and exposes the reasoning behind decisions. Those observations are challenged, refined, corrected, and sometimes abandoned. That process is relating.
It’s not merely exchanging feelings, avoiding conflict, and influencing behavior; rather, negotiating reality together. And this is perhaps that’s why accountability matters so much to me. Accountability isn’t punishment. It is the mechanism by which people align more with reality via interaction with consequences.
Without consequences, reality becomes optional.
Without truth, relationship becomes performance.
Without negotiation, neither person grows.
All of that being said, there are certainly situations where the harmony-inducing language of diplomacy is called for. I’m not calling anything other than the full truth pathologically inauthentic.
Most people have to learn to be direct. Fewer people need to learn when not to be.
Psychological maturity requires fluency in both fidelity to reality and diplomacy, together with the discernment to know which serves the situation.
Some people default to confrontation. Some default to avoidance. Some default to nurturing. Some default to diplomacy. Some default to force. None of those are virtues in themselves. They’re habits.
The mature question isn’t: “Am I a diplomatic person?” It’s: “Given the structure of reality in front of me, what response is actually warranted?”
That’s a developmental question. Every relational strategy becomes pathological when it becomes the only one available.
The diplomat who cannot confront becomes dangerous. The confrontational person who cannot compromise becomes dangerous. The nurturer who cannot set limits becomes dangerous. The disciplinarian who cannot show mercy becomes dangerous.
Development isn’t choosing one, or letting one choose you. It’s expanding your repertoire and then accurately perceiving reality well enough to know which one fits, and that is the journey of a lifetime.