1st Lead U - Leadership Development

Leading with Truth: CHART Ep 330

• John Ballinger • Season 3 • Episode 330

Share episode

Text us. Share your thoughts. Ask Questions. We would love to hear from you.

Want to lead with clarity when facts, feelings, and norms collide? We zoom in on truth as a leadership discipline—how to recognize what kind of truth you’re dealing with and how to communicate it so trust grows rather than frays. We unpack the four types of truth—objective (facts and data), subjective (personal experiences), normative (shared rules), and complex (a mix of all three)—and show how mislabeling the problem fuels conflict, rumor, and wasted effort.

We break down objective, subjective, normative, and complex truth, then show how leaders can communicate hard news without eroding trust. Mediation stories, AI anxiety, and “need-to-know” boundaries reveal how precision and care turn honesty into a cultural asset.

• defining objective, subjective, normative, and complex truth
• why leaders avoid hard truths and the hidden costs
• how rumors form when facts are withheld
• balancing transparency with need-to-know boundaries
• communicating AI and change with clarity and timelines
• building credibility through consistent follow-up
• open forums, anonymous input, and response loops
• leading with care to strengthen trust over time
• training to transparency to teamwork sequence

You’ll get a simple playbook for honest leadership under pressure: hold periodic open forums, invite anonymous questions, close feedback loops quickly, and be explicit about decision rights and next check-ins. Most importantly, learn to care out loud. When people believe you care, they can hear hard news without losing hope. Tie it all together with a progression that works: training builds capability, truth builds credibility, transparency builds understanding, and teamwork turns alignment into action.

If this conversation helped you think differently about truth at work, subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a quick review so more leaders can find it.

Please take time to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite platform to help us reach more people and expand the message of First Lead U. Visit firstleadu.com — that’s the number one, ST, the word lead, and the letter you dot com.

John Ballinger:

You have objective truth, subjective truths, normative truths, and then you have complex truth, which is a combination of all of them combined.

Announcer:

Welcome to First Lead You, a podcast dedicated to building leaders, expanding their capacity, improving their self-awareness through emotional intelligence, and developing deeper understanding of selfless leadership.

John Ballinger:

Hello, America, and welcome to First Lead You, where we believe selfless leadership is essential. America is suffering a leadership crisis. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence is the key to developing selfless leaders.

Announcer:

Now, here is personal growth coach John Ballinger. Hello, leaders, and welcome to First Lead Year.

John Ballinger:

My name is John Ballinger, and I'm here with my co-host, Mr. Douglas Ford.

Douglas Ford:

Good afternoon, John. How are you? Yeah.

John Ballinger:

Hello, Brake. Did a little traveling, spoke at some events. It was interesting to speak at events in different cities to different leaders about the topic of emotional intelligence and how few people in leadership positions really understood that. That was an interesting uh so our hiatus from uh recording the podcast is just traveling and and doing the things that need to be done to go out in the public and actually teach leaders. So we're back um back to our acrostic. We are coming up uh on the word truth, which is the uh last letter in our acrostic chart. And um it's a difficult one. You know, we talk about the acrostic chart itself as difficult. It's um to embrace as a leader. You've got to embrace the chart and its whole self. But when you get to the truth, and as you're gonna learn through this podcast, there's different kinds of truth as a leader that you need to understand. So, but we're gonna read the definition. You know, we're big on making sure everybody knows what the definitions are, and the truth is defined as a quality or state of being true, a true or accepted statement, or the body of real events or facts.

Douglas Ford:

So all that had the word true in it.

John Ballinger:

It did.

Douglas Ford:

Can you use the word to define the word?

John Ballinger:

I don't know. But what it reminds me of one of my favorite scenes uh in A Few Good Men where uh Tom Cruise is he is um going after uh uh Joe Jack Nicholson and he says, You can't handle the truth. Remember, remember that scene? One of my favorite scenes, uh the interaction between those two two guys. And the reality is there's a lot of people that can handle the truth. Cannot, you hear me say, cannot handle the truth because the truth sometimes hurts. And so you'll find leaders will not be truthful with a team member because they don't want to either hurt their feelings, they don't know how to tell the truth to them, that that turns into a positive conversation, that uh elicits growth, or um sometimes it's gotta be there could be consequences to uh telling the truth and the truth actually coming out uh with the leader or the the uh team member. And as leaders, you face moments where you must find the truth. And I find this very often when I mediate, you have two opposing parties that they think theirs is the truth. The reality is the truth is somewhere in the middle of all that, because their truth and their mind is the truth, and we're gonna get to the different kinds of truth that people actually bring into a conversation, and most of most people don't know the different kinds of truth, so I think it's gonna be interesting to talk about the truth, but the truth is a lot of times in the middle of that, and then when you get to the truth, sometimes the both parties don't like what they're hearing. And um in the next uh well, matter of fact, this weekend I'm gonna be training in Nashville uh in family law uh for mediation on uh not just divorce cases, but it could be estate planning and just anything family related. And those are some of the most difficult mediations you'll do because there's so much emotion tied to them. And um I'll have to get tested in front of judges who will come in and throw different scenarios at me to see if I can grade out and see how how well I compose myself under duress with people in very um emotional situations. So that's that's gonna be interesting because the first the first mediation license I acquired was more civil, you know, contract disputes and things like that. This is family, uh, and there's a lot of emotions, and I've dealt with family uh emotions and family estates and divorces and things like that, and it and it gets very emotional, but the reality is is because the truth usually comes out in the in those discussions. So in a world of social media, opinions, paid influencers, and artificial intelligence, how does a leader find the truth? That's a question that I'm asking our our audience to think about. And it's difficult. I mean, you can look at something on the internet, you can somebody can print something off and bring it to you, somebody can say something. And as a leader, you've got to define the truth, you've got to find the truth, you've got to be subjective, objective to get to the truth, and that's difficult today when there's so much that's not truthful that people read or say or do. And so what I want to discuss is the different categories of truth. There's objective truth, which are facts that are true regardless who is considering them, often based on observation and empirical evidence. For example, water boils at 212 degrees. That's just the truth. Water freezes at 32 degrees. That's just the truth. So the objective truth are is just a set of data, and it's hard to argue. It's like you can put the water on 211 and it's just gonna sit there and it's gonna steam. But when you turn it up one more degree, you'll see it start bullying. That's just the truth. Then you've got subjective truth. Truths that are personal, individual, and based on feelings or experience. For example, chocolate ice cream is the best flavor.

Douglas Ford:

Subjective, yes.

John Ballinger:

That's a subjective truth. Because somebody's gonna say, no, it's not. Cookies and cream is the best. So you got subjective truth. Douglas, I don't think society knows the different truths.

Douglas Ford:

They're definitely getting um there's uh blurring of the lines between objective and subjective truth.

John Ballinger:

Now here's here's another one. Normative truth. Truths based on social agreements, rules are what is considered right or proper within a group. For example, following traffic laws is a normative truth in most societies. Now, I told my daughter recently, I said, you know what? I'm about ready to post something on social media platforms on how to enter and exit a roundabout.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, there's a lot of people that know how to use that.

John Ballinger:

They don't. They literally have no idea. And the people coming from the cross side, the crossroads, you know, of the main, they think they've got right-of-way because they will enter that just, I mean, it's it's like you better close your eyes. Yeah. Full speed. And you're like, do you not understand how this works? The main road goes first. Now, if somebody's in it from the side roads, you've got to yield to them. But I mean, they'll come into the from the sides and they'll just they'll just bury themselves right in the middle of things. But that's that's normative truth. And then the last one, which is the one that's most difficult, is called complex truth. Truths that involve multiple layers of understanding where objective, subjective, and normative truths may all play a role in a single situation. For example, understanding the truth of social issues requires considering the factual data, personal experiences, those involved, and existing social and ethical norms. Now, I want you to think as a leader, and I'm gonna go back over those, you have objective truth, subjective truth, normative truth, and then you have complex truth, which is a combination of all of them combined.

Douglas Ford:

And I would say that uh today most leaders are mostly dealing in complex truth.

John Ballinger:

I would say that is a very accurate statement. But do they know how to deal with complex truth?

Douglas Ford:

Well, they may not recognize that they're in complex truth. They they could they could think that they're dealing in objective or normative, um, maybe with some understanding of the subjective, but they probably have not really thought through the fact that they're dealing with complex truth in most situations today.

John Ballinger:

Right. I'd like to uh I know we're coming up on a break, but I'd like to talk through after we come back off break why it's difficult for a leader to find the truth, understand how to look for the truth, and how to build trust out of telling the truth with their team when most of the team members are used to have being either deceived, lied to, you know, taken advantage of. And we've talked about this for I think almost two and a half years, that the leader of today and tomorrow has got to work much harder to regain the trust of the people and the team members because leaders of the past and the still the present are not doing the job that they need to do to tell the truth to people and do it in a manner that's constructive and builds trust. So we get back, we're gonna talk through that. We'll be back.

Douglas Ford:

Hello, First Lead Youth listeners, Douglas Ford here. I wanted to take just a few seconds during this break to say thank you for spending a few moments with us as we discuss the challenges and opportunities of being a leader. We hope that in every episode you find some bit of information that will help you on your own personal leadership journey. In order to reach more people and to improve our positioning on all the podcasting and social media platforms, it's important that you subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcasting platform like Apple, Spotify, or any other platform where you listen to First Lead You. We would really appreciate you clicking on the subscribe button to help us reach more people and expand the message of First Lead U. And please take time to visit the First Lead You website. That's the number one, ST, the word lead, and the letter you.com. Firstleadu.com. Number one, ST, the word lead, and the letter you.com. I hope you have a great day as you continue to learn to first lead. Uh we are talking today about truth. Uh, that's the second T in our acrostic, the chart acrostic, and uh we are exploring the different types of truth. We have talked about uh objective truth, uh, which is just uh facts and data uh presented as truth. We've talked about subjective truth, which is uh could be labeled as my opinion versus your opinion, is uh subjective truth, what I believe to be true versus what you believe to be true. Uh may not necessarily be based on any facts or reality, it's just what we have decided is uh truth. Then you have normative truth, which is what we all agree upon as a group of people that uh we should all uh accept as truth. Uh like we should all stop at red lights and we should all go at green lights uh as a uh good example of that. And then finally the complex truth, which is a uh uh soup sandwich of all those, uh brings them all in together, and we're uh trying to figure out uh through complex truth really where we can move forward uh as leaders and what we need to do to get to the truth. And so we're gonna talk a little bit more. John's gonna dig into the how-to's of uh achieving truth and sharing truth uh with your team and what you can do as a leader to develop uh truth and trust amongst your team members.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, so um we're gonna dig into why is telling the truth to your team members important and what does it do when you tell them the truth. And we know from working in the past with businesses that team members want the truth. Even when it's ugly, tell me the truth. Maybe they'll help fix it, but they need to know the truth. Not not telling the truth makes people start kind of piecing things together to find their truth.

Douglas Ford:

The subjective truth.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, and that's really dangerous.

Douglas Ford:

They come up with their own truth, yeah.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, and then they start telling that to others, thinking it's the truth. Right. And it's not. So telling the truth to your team actually builds trust and credibility for the leader, establishes credibility, and allows the team to rely on information and make informed decisions. So you will know hey, the leader said this, you can take it to the bank, and here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna build on that because we were told the truth, and we don't have to wonder if it's the truth. It also fosters a positive culture inside the organization. Telling the truth. Even when it's difficult, people can say, all right, I know it's tough, but at least we know what the truth is and we're not having to wonder. Improves communication and collaboration. If you're telling the truth to either team and saying, here's where we're at, you all figure out how we need to communicate through collaboration and get this message out or do this thing for the customer or whatever it is. It also enables better decision making from an organizational leadership standpoint. Uh leaders who define reality accurately by embracing truth can better navigate complex situations and guide their organizations to success. It also mitigates negative consequences. So let's say you didn't tell the truth and then the truth was uncovered through the process, what did that do to the team?

Douglas Ford:

It created distrust.

John Ballinger:

Yeah, it creates distrust and it makes them like, what else, sir, are we not being told?

Douglas Ford:

Right.

John Ballinger:

When when you when you are not honest with your team, you're gonna erode trust. You're gonna create confusion. Let me tell you something. Confusion is one thing, insecurity is completely different. Like right now in America, there's this scarcity going on with people that AI is taking over jobs. I mean, you can't you really can't turn on the news or watch something that AI so-and-so's laying off 14,000 people because of AI. And so it it's making people like wonder what when am I next? When do I when do I when's my job gonna be eliminated through artificial intelligence? The leader needs to be honest with people and say, hey, if this is coming down the pike, you you need to know that instead of like an article I read recently, it was just sprung on the team, and two days two days after Christmas, they're gonna lay off all these people. That's a tough one.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, well, at least they gave them some warning.

John Ballinger:

That's yeah, they they did give them some warning, but now you're like, all right, do you think that the company just knew in November that they were gonna I mean, they they had been working on artificial intelligence platform to integrate it in the company to say how many people is this gonna eliminate or you know, jobs or whatever. They knew that more than 30 days ago.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, yeah.

John Ballinger:

And the truth is it would have been beneficial to start talking about that to employees, placement, you know, may need to cross-train. I think there's gonna be a lot of people having to cross-train into other jobs because of artificial intelligence, maybe taking their job away. You know, and so that's something that's uh important to be truthful about. When when your team becomes insecure, they become unproductive because they're spending a lot of time wondering on something besides their job. When it lowers productivity, they become not only disengaged, but then you're gonna see increased turnover in the organization. Because now the people are like, Well, I better start looking for a job. You don't know if your job is in jeopardy, all you know is there's a lot of uncertainty going on. Then when that happens, most of the time white lies enter into conversations and leaderships and leadership discussions, it'll be what do we need to do to maintain civility versus being just totally deceptive? And the leaders will sit around tables and talk about that. Now I know in the military uh and in business, there have been times where this information came out and you want it to get to a specific level in the organization, but you don't want it to go any further than that. Because it could potentially create a scare in the organization and people bolt or um start start looking for other jobs or things like that. Is that a need-to-know basis? It it is need to know, and and that's a difficult balance with with the leadership in an organization saying, so I I this is only need to know, and it need it's needed to know at this level only, because there's a lot of people in the let's say in the manager level on down, that that information is not something that they can handle. I mean, we think we think we can handle it. I got in this conversation recently with another veteran on should America know everything that the militar military does.

Douglas Ford:

No.

John Ballinger:

That's what I said. And having been in the military and know some of the things that the military does, I can make the statement the people do not need to know those things. Now, what do people want to know?

Douglas Ford:

They think they want to know everything.

John Ballinger:

They think they want to know everything until you start telling them things and then they're like, there's no way.

Douglas Ford:

Right. I'm like, yeah.

John Ballinger:

Now that's that's the need to know information. Right. And and most people, I I are we that naive, Mr. Ford, that we don't think that businesses have these conversations in boardrooms and meetings, and the military doesn't have these um meetings about doing these things. Are we that naive?

Douglas Ford:

Well, I think that's where we get into some of those complex truths, and people don't really know how to um disseminate that information when you get into all the different when when you have a complex truth that you need to communicate, people don't always understand how to do that most effectively.

John Ballinger:

So they want to know the truth, but they can't handle the truth.

Douglas Ford:

Now we're back to a few good men.

John Ballinger:

There we go. Right. I want people to know as much of the truth as they need to know, given their position in the organization, but I also know that I've got to soft pedal some of the truth because they can't handle it.

Douglas Ford:

Right.

John Ballinger:

And that's difficult in today's society when people have been lied to or not treated well, and they're like, Well, I I need to know everything. How does that leader tell them the truth and say, you know what, you need to know this much information and put put those barriers and boundaries up. But you can't go this far to where you're just telling the big lie all the time. Like, you know, the the ability to have civility and maybe not tell all the truth, all the information, is much different than just saying, I'm just gonna lie. Because those will normally come out at some point. And now you've created uh a destructive, widespread, toxic culture.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, once you create distrust in the organization, it's uh very difficult to get it back.

John Ballinger:

Yeah. So in essence, a commitment to the truth, even when difficult, is a fundamental trait of effective and respected leadership setting a powerful example for an organization. Again, if you go back to the acrostic chart and you start at the very beginning, this is not easy stuff. And we know we knew it when when we sat down and came up with this chart, we both looked at it and like, man, that's that's deep and that's tough. But the leader of today and tomorrow has got to embrace the chart method and the four character traits that they need to learn inside that in order to be the effective leader that they need to be for their teams.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah. And and we really look at this as it's a marathon, it's not a sprint. Like I mean, don't expect that you're gonna uh download the chart acrostick and you're gonna be able to accomplish all those, you know, in in three months, six months. It's really uh lifelong development because even as you create some level of mastery, there's always the next level, right? You can always come back and become a better coach, become a better counselor, become a better uh cop, become a better commander in that in that role. You know, you can better understand how people need human resources, you can better understand your team so that you can resource them with the things that they need. You know, it's all the different things that we go through uh uh when we're looking at that chart across the even once you have a basic understanding of those things, it's like as you grow as a leader, you're gonna get you're gonna have more of a revelation about how those things, how deep those things are.

John Ballinger:

Yeah. So I I want to give the leader this kind of as their homework. And this may be something you do now, but it's my my experience that leaders find this very difficult to do. But the homework is inside your organization, whether it's a department, the company, or whatever it is, learn to hold open session meetings, maybe twice a year, just to get feedback from the team. Get used to having these meetings and let everybody come in and you know, you may assemble a box in the corner that lets people put their suggestions in or comments in or questions in, and face the people and and learn to have a relationship with them. Receive regular feedback. So put out an email that you know says, hey, if you've got a question or concern or something like that, and respond to them. Don't just let those come into your inbox and not do something with them. But here's here's the most important and probably the most difficult. And I said this at one of the meetings that we were uh asked to speak at. Learn how to care. When your people know that you care about them, truly care about them, so much so that you're willing to tell them the truth, you're willing to listen to them, take on, and sometimes it could be harsh criticism, but take it, and then give constructive feedback, you're gonna build relationships with your team. And so the leader of today and the leader of tomorrow needs to learn how to care about their people. And that's a that is a tough subject to discuss, but it's one that the more that we talk about it, the more I get the head bobs up and down of like, yeah, we want leaders that truly care about us. And right now, with what's going on in the corporate world or the government, there's um I made this statement the other day, finger pointing is not a leadership trait. Because we've gotten to the point where in business and government and other organizations, everybody's just finger pointing at each other. And that does absolutely nothing to move any organization or any society forward. So if if the leaders would just kind of think through, am I willing to listen? Am I willing to get regular feedback from the team? But then look at yourself and say, when people think of me, do they think that I truly care about them as my team members? And then reflect on that and even ask. Ask your team, do you think I care about you? And see what kind of feedback you get and be ready to accept it.

Douglas Ford:

Yeah, I mean, what you're talking about really is uh creating a culture in an organization that takes time, that takes nurturing. Um you're not gonna be able to turn a culture around, you know, in a week, in two weeks, but certainly over the course of a month, two months, three months, you can start making inroads and turning the culture. Uh and so the more you're willing to lean into some of these things, the more it's gonna benefit you down the road. And when you get to a point where you have to share a hard truth, you're gonna have a lot better reception of that. People are gonna be more willing to listen and respond appropriately versus you know, just going out and sharing a hard truth, and there's been no preparation, there's no relationship, there's no expectation that what you're saying is the truth. Uh, so it's uh it takes it takes time. Again, it's a marathon, not a sprint. We just want to continue to push forward that building of trust and relationship with our team so that uh you really have more credibility with them and you do care about them, you understand who they are and how to best communicate those truths to them.

John Ballinger:

So we've got two more T's in our acrostic chart transparency and teamwork. And if you think about training, which was the first T, with truth, you get to transparency, transparency, excuse me, transparency, which ultimately creates teamwork.

Douglas Ford:

Which is what we're all looking for.

John Ballinger:

That's what everybody's looking for. So We hope you learned something today. If nothing else, kind of reflect on the four different kinds of truth as a leader and understand what you're looking for with team members when it pertains to the truth. The ones that are just coming in, always giving opinions. No truth behind it whatsoever. I just think this. But know you're dealing with complex truths most of the time in your organization. And then uh do your homework and think about do I truly care about my team enough to tell them the hard truth? And do I really care? So thanks for listening. And remember, in order to lead your team well, you must first lead you. Thanks, everyone.

Contributor

John Ballinger

Host
Contributor

Douglas Ford

Co-host