Volume 1, Issue 4

June 22, 2010

The Truth Team Mandate

Would a truth team have saved the Gulf?  It is human nature to surround ourselves with people who validate our view of the world.  We seek others to avoid the conflict of disagreement and information that confirms our ideas.  All of this creates an ability to hold sternly onto a skewed perspective.  Leaders need truth teams to combat these liabilities.
To err is human, and two heads are better than one, as long as certain conditions apply.   The most powerful tickets to keeping human nature in check is in the diversity of human beings.   While Abraham Lincoln stands as one of the few presidents who intentionally surrounded himself with people willing to disagree with him, this very act is contrary to human nature.  Instead we create echo chambers choosing others that agree with us, confirm what we already believe, and share similar backgrounds and perspectives.  Indeed, we need a few trusted naysayers to yank us back to reality when we get lost in our bubbles.

Compared to You: Four Basic Players

A truth team is not about hierarchy or rank, but rather the fact that while we are all experts in our unique ways, we differ greatly in specific situations.  While it is human nature to seek out the Advisor, the subject matter expert, the area of unfamiliarity represented by the remaining three players can be the key to unlocking the roadblocks of expertise, culture, emotional involvement and perspective.  The underlying principle of equality is paramount, preventing the dismissal of conflicting ideas with a "well, what do they know".  That may be true, and may yet still hold an elusive key.  Now it is up to you to decide, with a more complete picture than human nature would have allowed.

Behind Barack: Decoding his Appeal and Success

Politics aside, Barack stands as an example of a truth team leader and testament to a different time.  In an interview at Google in 2007, then a senator, Barack explains three reasons why his approach as a president is not only different, but required.

"An Instinct of Bias"

With a diverse family ("sounds like Google", comments Google CEO Eric Schmidt), Obama talks about how he can see issues from many different perspectives and can find common ground - a required skill when politics has boiled down to eking out small victories instead of governing.

"Let You Participate"

Instead of getting others to "buy-in", Obama leads from the bottom up, harnessing technology to gather not just information, but voices.  With a broad foundation of ideas, people feel part of the solution - a notion of managing change novel in government, and rare in business.

"Degree of Credibility"

When Obama can draw upon the first hand experiences of affected people, like his grandmother in Africa, he carries an air of credibility unmatched by numbers, theory and generalities - at a time when trust stands in need in the eyes of the world, and business.
His statements are not limited to presidency, but to leadership in general.  He demonstrates the power and promise of using many voices, openness to other’s ideas, and integrity in word and deed that are the basic premises behind the encouragement of a truth team.

The Bottom Line of Truth Teams

In an age when collaboration, networking and social media are connecting individuals like never before, it is our choice whom to seek out and listen to in a way never before matched.  We can use this capability as human nature would have - to fine tune already strongly held beliefs, find others more closely matched to ourselves, and find and remain with the niche groups in which we find comfort.
If innovation, new solutions, and forward progress are the goals for today’s leaders, then these tendacies of human nature need to be tamed.  Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, so if we want different - better - we must do different.  In creating your truth team, remember, it is people who will disagree with you.  After all, you can’t have the wings of an eagle without the courage to soar.