The Three Ts: Truth, Tone and Trust
On Friday evening, Germany played Scotland at the home of Bayern Munich, kicking off the eagerly anticipated European Championship Finals that will conclude with the final in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium on Sunday 14th July.
Monday’s assembly reading was based on football but was mainly about three words beginning with T – truth, tone, and trust. Earlier this year, the (excellent) journalist Matthew Syed interviewed Sean Dyche, an experienced former player and Head Coach who currently manages Everton Football Club. During the interview, Dyche recalls being in France with the Nottingham Forest youth team when he got his O-level exam results. They weren’t very good.
He called his father from a phone box – these were the days before mobile phones – and started to explain why his results were poor. He blamed his teachers, the fact he’d been too focused on his football to revise properly, and anyone or anything else he could think of. His Dad’s response was clear when he told him to stop making excuses, stop blaming other people, and just work harder. Sean Dyche recalled in the interview that he didn’t resent his father for saying those things, rather he felt they were a sign of how much his Dad loved him. In his own words, he said ‘I think love is shown by telling the truth, the whole truth and sometimes, the brutal truth. Yes, you need to say it respectfully and sometimes gently, but unless you are prepared to say it how it is, you are just misleading the person you’re talking to.
Matthew Syed, the journalist who did the interview, wrote that this made him reflect on the public spat between Pep Guardiola and Kalvin Phillips, following the Manchester City manager’s public statement that Phillips had returned from playing for England in 2022 overweight and out of shape. Phillips criticised his manager for doing this and said it had affected his confidence. Guardiola’s defence was that he had tried to make his point privately but that it hadn’t made Phillips change his attitude or reach the fitness levels his manager expected. His view was that in telling the truth, he was trying to help a player who had undoubted talent but had sometimes struggled when it came to showing the discipline and dedication needed to maintain a top-level career in football.
It’s clear that their relationship has never really recovered, but should the manager have acted differently, or should the player have reacted differently? Does it show that we care about someone if we tell them the truth when doing so may be painful, or is it just a sign that we are trying to put them down or make them feel inferior?
In Matthew Syed’s article, he suggested two other words beginning with T that can help us answer this question – the first is tone and the other is trust. Tone matters – if we get it wrong it can feel as though we’re trying to belittle someone when we may be trying to help, but if we get it right it’s much more likely that the other person will see a more positive intention that lies behind our words. Ultimately, if we have relationships built on mutual trust it’s always more likely that we will be able to tell the truth in difficult situations and the person to whom we are speaking will always be more likely to see the kindness in what we’re saying.
As for who was right between Kalvin Phillips and Pep Guardiola, perhaps the view of former player Sergio Aguero is helpful. He was once dropped by Guardiola for being 100g above his agreed weight range of 79-80 Kilograms. Aguero, who famously scored the goal in 2012 that won Manchester City their first Premier League title, later said that Guardiola was right because it was the truth (he hadn’t been sufficiently disciplined in his training); he’d said it with a positive tone; and above all because he trusted that his manager wanted the best for him.
I shared this six-minute video with our students on Monday. It summarises the book ‘Radical Candour’ by Kim Scott, which is all about telling the truth kindly, and why it’s so important.
Have a great weekend.
Michael Bond
