Business leaders often ask themselves if they should hire employees for their skills or for their personalities. First of all, it’s not as black and white as that. A great hire is in the gray. They possess desirable personal qualities and professional skills. Second of all, and more importantly, you’re asking the entirely wrong question. 

To staff and grow your business appropriately and successfully, ask yourself this instead: Is my organization governed by a single truth?

Only when you land on this guiding principle can you hire people who will drive your business forward.

What goes wrong with rote hiring?

Most leaders charged with hiring are, frankly, facile when they go about recruiting. Their search is skills-based, but skills are straightforward to hire for. You can test someone’s skill set, after all. 

Other leaders look for candidates with universally desired characteristics. They want someone with integrity who is a team player and a self starter. Find a firm that isn’t seeking someone with those qualities. Being nondescript is unhelpful when it comes to building an exceptional team.

What is a single truth for a business?

The temptation to lean on trite character traits in new hires comes from a lack of clarity around what you truly need to grow your staff and business in a healthy way. You must pinpoint that single truth about your organization first. Then, enlist team members who will support your single truth because their values — which you can filter for during recruiting — are in alignment with yours. 

What, precisely, serves as a business’s single truth? It’s a guiding principle, moral compass, and universal value. It’s a spotting point for you and your organization. It’s something to keep you in balance as you turn with the tides of your business. 

Despite how it may sound, your single truth does not have to be high-minded. Your guiding principle may be to generate revenue, or to exit the business at maximum value. More specifically, you may choose to be governed and motivated by an outstanding customer journey in an industry that typically operates with little to no regard for the customer experience. Or perhaps you decide to focus on forging long-term relationships in a traditionally transactional sector. 

Every human-scale business (those with few enough people and/or a structure such that the executives functionally know every person who works for them) already has a single truth that everything else is in service of or subjugated to. Below, we will show you how to make this implicit single truth explicit so it can genuinely guide all aspects of your organization, hiring included.

Your organization has factory settings. Your single truth lies in customizing yours.

Like an iPhone, every organization comes with factory settings installed. Initially, your factory settings are pat so you can simply make money for your shareholders (or make a phone call, to sustain our iPhone analogy). 

As time goes on, your business emerges from survival mode. You’re likely to look around and realize you’ve got some freedom to finagle these default settings, and you must do so. They’re no longer serving you or your business. 

Sometimes leaders arrive at this place of unrest because of a crisis, or because they’re consistently disappointed with the culture of their organization. It might be that you yourself are feeling stuck or unhappy, and you simply cannot diagnose why. 

And here you are. It’s time to rework those factory settings so they’re custom to your business’s single truth. Better hiring outcomes are ahead; they’re on the coattails of establishing your guiding principle.

How to arrive at a guiding principle for your business

Superficial brainstorming will not lift you out of your factory settings and reveal your single truth. Your single truth won’t emerge spontaneously either. You must dig deep through reflection, even journaling. What is the motivation behind your organization?

You can ignore this difficult, deep inner work. Complete a hollow values exercise with a dime-a-dozen consultant instead. Hang your penned values in your breakroom. However, does changing the wallpaper on your iPhone alter its factory settings? No. Meaningful settings alteration happens behind the cosmetic, locked exterior of your phone. 

As a leader, it’s your primary job to identify, and then articulate, your organization’s guiding principle. You must also create the processes and organizational design elements to uphold said principle. 

Although the tough inner work necessary to find your single truth does rest on your shoulders, you can, and should, rely on outside counsel to usher you through this discovery. Not a marketing consultant, per se, but a business mentor.

As a leader, it’s your primary job to identify, and then articulate, your organization’s guiding principle.

Manifest your revealed truth, then let it reveal ideal employees

The power of manifestation is driven by the engine of clarity. Once you have the benefit of clarity that comes with identifying your single truth, manifest it for your business. 

Let’s return to achieving better hiring outcomes. Living in your single truth will allow you to form values that can serve as filters during your hiring process. It’s shockingly easy to divine aligned values in another person when they are so evident to you. Suddenly, you’re seeing clues to their character everywhere. It’s akin to when someone points out a subtle imperfection, like a knick on a painted wall or a slightly off kilter picture in a gallery. You might not have noticed it before, but now that you have, it’s all you see. 

Use your newfound powers of perception to select employees who will live in your single truth with you to grow your business.

The haves and have nots: business health hinges on having a guiding principle

Business growth potential is determined by the alignment of three things:

  • You, the leader/owner of your business
  • Your business model/how the organization runs
  • The organization itself

This alignment must take place around your single truth, making it mandatory. If your guiding principle is to make money, fine. You, the leader, must articulate this value. You must run your business to make money. And your organization must exist to fulfill this truth.

Embody your single truth for sustainable success

Energy flows freely when there’s alignment in your organization around your single truth. It’s the uninterrupted flow of this energy that leads to unhindered growth. 

All of this starts and ends with you. Grasp your truth for yourself, personify it for others, and let it steep throughout your business.