I’m about to hire my first full-time employee. There’s nothing like that to make you feel like a real business.
I’ve made some mistakes in hiring contractors in the last year and this has really called me to grow into a leader that decides from, and follows, her Truth.
I’ve come to realize that my business is all about Truth. Since the moment that I realized, in a coach training program back in my corporate gig, that most people were pretending, I’ve been asking myself, “What if people could speak their Truth and make money?”
The bulk of employees I saw were suppressing their Truth to make their boss happy and keep their job. Even in relationships with customers and suppliers, people spent significant energy trying to figure out how to communicate in order to get the outcome they wanted, and look like a superstar. Truth was never at the forefront. I wanted to change that.
As I’ve grown I’ve realized that creating a Truth-based company is not as simple as it might seem. It actually requires great courage.
It’s one thing to follow our own Truth in the decisions we make in private, or even about how to market. It’s another to create a space for sharing of Truth among your team and the other professionals.
My goal in my company is that the people who work on my team know that it is safe to be themselves, to try things and have ideas, and even to make mistakes. I am also committed to a culture in which it is safe, and required, for people to speak their Truth. This means owning what isn’t working, and getting to the source of why it isn’t working, just like we do with our clients. Having these kinds of Truth-seeking conversations as a team, will make us unstoppable as an organization.
Last week I again had a chance to first be the type of leader who initiated the conversation about something not working. I also had the opportunity to see how amazing it is when one of my team members brings Truth to the table and is willing to look at what is really going on beneath the surface. Everyone is always doing their best, it’s just that hidden commitments sometimes run the show. When the hidden commitments can surface and Truth can be told, the solution is always easy. If you find someone committed to Truth, the rest is much easier.
I had a second opportunity to speak the Truth last week with one of my vendors. I shared very openly about my needs, what I was doing that worked, what wasn’t working, and the things I had no clue about. I wondered in that moment how often that person had someone get right to the point and not pretend to be better, smarter, or more together than they are. I never pretend to know something I don’t – it only hurts us all. If you work with clients in your business, how much easier is it to help someone when they are straightforward from the start?
I’m writing from my mastermind where we’ve been giving presentations to each other and we could easily see the difference in when someone was simply speaking their Truth and when someone was worrying about what people thought of them. (And we have ALL done this by the way). They might have had great information, but if someone had a concern for how good they looked, they rarely got buy-in from the crowd.
I don’t have a magic formula for you today. No 3 steps or quick exercise. I just want to ask you to consider your own commitment to Truth as you lead and manage all the moving parts of your business, CEO. Truth inspires. People believe people who believe themselves. Don’t forget they are looking to you for your Truth. If you don’t know it, all kinds of trouble is on the way.
[Of course, I can help ☺]