You Don't Have a Truth
The classic “your truth” from just about every coach out there is a false idol and will inevitably steer you wrong, in business and in life.
“Your truth”, as close as I can tell, most closely relates to a non-negotiable personal opinion. Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality. You can probably see the issue already...
Imagine we’re both sitting and enjoying a cocktail on my patio watching the cars go by. Socially distanced of course. What color was the last car that passed? You say blue, I say black:“our truths”. No matter how much we fight about it, the car is in fact a specific color, whether either of us saw it accurately or not. If we’re lucky, “our truth” is correlated with reality, but it has absolutely no bearing on it. It’s easy enough to see with the car color analogy, but far harder in more complex situations.
A while back I sat down with a CEO to discuss the growth of her company and where they could go. It was interesting to watch “her truths” come up (non-negotiable personal opinions): what marketing channel was worthwhile, how to position something on social media, even what her personality allowed her to do and not do. Of course, she had every metric in the world to back up her thoughts and feelings about it.
What’s a situation you’re sure about right now? It was exactly like that.
Humans are funny creatures because we make a decision (consciously or not) and then find data and stories to back it up. Just because she analyzed what made sense and what didn’t, doesn’t mean that nothing else was possible. In fact, only honing in on what she thought was the way to go without any other considerations is massively limiting. For you, thinking you’re limited to this “personality type” or only good at certain things, or your business is only successful because…(fill in the blank) can all be limiting personal “truths”.
In our meeting, we dove into a few exercises I’ve designed to break preconditioned thought patterns and all of a sudden a new world opened up for her around what direction might be best to consider for her work in pursuit of the truth. Interestingly, none of what was discerned after doing the exercises was considered the right direction to begin with. Following only “her original truth” may have led her and her company astray because she was locked into her “truth’ without considering different and ultimately more valuable perspectives on the realities of the situation.
The real world is cold and uncaring. Not to be insensitive here, but your thoughts and feelings about things in the real world don’t have any bearing on what actually is. Relating to “our truth” as ultimate and real can be an endless rabbit hole of chasing things you’re thinking about or feeling, not chasing something that’s actually real at all. The further we disconnect from the Truth, the less impact we can have on the real world.
As a leader, it’s important to step up to that challenge. To understand there is a real, genuine Truth out there and it’s a leader’s job to discern what it is. In pursuit of that, leaders can actually make a difference.