God never intended us to be led by principles, rules, and regulations alone. They are incomplete by themselves. Being directed by principles alone might get you through the lighter stuff in life but they won't get you through the deep woods for many reasons. Sometimes principles stand in opposition to one another. How often are we presented with situations where we don't know exactly which principle to follow. Do we show mercy in this situation or hold them accountable? Do we give in to someone's demand to show our flexibility or do we hold to our strict guidelines? Do we correct a fault we see or do we let it slide?
The ancient Greek word for "truth" (Alethiea) is the same word for "reality". In today's business culture, truth and reality are not generally perceived to be the same. We equate truth with facts - proven, tested, reliable, knowledge. We associate reality with what is genuine, authentic, the intrinsic essence of a matter.
I heard Vince Orza tell a story about one of his employees who stole $3,000 from him. When he confronted the man, the offender began weeping and assuming he was fired got up to leave. Vince told him, "You can't leave, you still owe me $3,000." He made the man pay him in person in installments until the debt was fully paid. Upon paying the last payment, the man handed Vince his letter of resignation but Vince stopped him and said there was no debt now so there was no reason for him to go. Vince restored this man by looking at the "reality" of the situation. The facts indicated he needed to be fired and prosecuted but "reality" had a different view.
Let me illustrate "reality" in a different way. When people go to the camera store to buy a camera, does the associate stop to consider that the patron doesn't really want a camera? They really want pictures, or, thinking even deeper, they want something they can look at that will bring them back to relive a special moment or relationship. Every opportunity, situation, or problem we encounter is an opportunity to grasp the reality and act, speak, or pray according to the real need. Would a doctor listen to a patient complaint of pain in their chest, and respond by giving us some salve to rub where it hurts, or would he look behind the complaint for the actual cause? Many people treat symptoms rather than the cause - facts rather than the reality.
The Greeks had it right. Facts alone do not tell the whole story. Facts by themselves leave out the human element. Facts have no heart or vision. Leading by facts alone will leave you without the passionate pursuit of life and certainly without ever discovering the purpose of life. Truth is inseparable from reality. The heart of truth is reality.
People who lead by empirical evidence live in an intellectual world. They don't have much heart. They find it difficult to influence, persuade, or cast vision because explaining facts to someone alone isn't inspirational. A "solution", to the cerebral person, means creating a new policy or procedure to fix a problem. I'm not knocking policies and procedures but far too often, one is put into place to fix a single event that might have been avoided altogether if someone had been trained to look at the "reality" of a matter. Too many policies and procedures can paralyze a process and put people "under the law" of the process or procedure and make them feel litigated to death without room to maneuver to do the right thing in a difficult situation. There are also a few employees at every company who make it their mission to paralyze a process on purpose by following all the rules to the letter of the law.
Leadership is influence. Influence will not happen without trust. People trust you when they discover you have a habit of pausing to prayerfully see the reality of a matter, form an opinion in an unbiased manner and then take action related to the reality of the matter.
Leaders who live in a world of reality see situations, conflicts, or problems at a deeper level and prayerfully ask, "why does this situation exist at all? What is the real issue? What are the human elements involved. What caused this to happen? What character trait, attribute, virtue or value needs to be developed to fix this and perhaps, keep it from ever occurring again?" Then they move to teach or train someone, which makes their life better, the customer happier, and the company more profitable.
When we lead people, we cannot let ourselves be overpowered by the cacophony of facts. We must lead with compassion. We very often find ourselves in the shepherding role of taking care of our sheep.
The way to shepherd your people is to prayerfully discern the reality of their situation and respond to them according to the real situation. Active listening is one of the critical skills we must "practice" as good managers and leaders of good managers. Active listening involves hearing what people say and then reflecting back to them what you understood them to say with feeling, passion, persuasion, or some other connecting emotion. Active listening is effective when you really care about the person, the situation, the result, and the development of the relationship. This is not a technique.
Finding the reality and responding according to the reality of a matter is a greatly overlooked trait of a great leader. You can
read more about developing your ability to drill down to the reality of a matter in my blog.