Start with Truth
Many years ago, at the end of the 90's, I was a student at Liverpool University and I read a book by Terry Goodkind. It wasn't some deep meaningful book about leadership, or the nature of business. It doesn't appear in lists of "books to help you become a CEO" or "what great people read". But it contained a line that has stayed with me since then.
The book was Wizard's First Rule and it was the titular first rule that stuck in my head.
"People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true."
I don't necessarily think the first bit, that people are stupid, is accurate. But the second part is and understanding it helps us understand people we interact with every day in and out of work.
We need to understand that people take actions based around their personal beliefs, the things that become true to them, which are often based around a lie.
Our boss lies and tells us the company cares about us and we want it to be true. We want to be more than cogs in an uncaring machine so we believe it despite a company just being a collection of people, many of whom might not even know you exist.
Businesses lie and say individuals are responsible for climate change where in reality 71% of global emissions are caused by just 100 companies. We are afraid it might be true so we brag about changing our diet a couple of days per week.
The problem isn't that these beliefs, these personal truths, hold no value. We believe the company cares so we work hard and get paid. We eat less meat and contribute less to the damaging nature of industrialised farming. These are good things.
The problem is that they distract us from the real issues. We believe our company cares for us so we spend all our time working towards their goals and miss out external opportunities. We believe we are responsible for climate change as individuals so we make a couple of minor changes and assume the issue will go away and let the companies largely responsible continue unaffected.
This is compounded by us only looking at others through the window of what we believe to be true. We believe the company cares for us so we can't understand why someone else would be looking for other jobs and treat them as a "traitor" or "quitter". We believe changing to one meal per week meatless will fix the ozone layer so shout and mock others who don't, regardless of what else they might be doing.
We understand that we take actions based on our beliefs and the values we ascribe to them, but we fail to understand how the beliefs of others create different actions for them.
If we want to understand someone, to work with them, to spend time with them and to discuss issues with them, we need to look at the truths in their life. The truths they hold to which drive them forward. The truths they cling to in times of stress, fear and uncertainty. Once we understand their truths we can understand their actions, even if we don't agree with them.
After all truth is not a reflection on reality, it is merely a facet of the person who holds to it.