leading in your skivvies

“At its core, naked service boils down to the ability of a service provider to be vulnerable—to embrace uncommon levels of humility, selflessness and transparency for the good of a client.”

Lencioni’s latest book Getting Naked is written for and about consultants. And yet I can hardly think of a context in which the ideas of this book are not relevant. He claims that too many of us are hampered by three fears:

Fear of losing the business (e.g. the family, the donor, the client, the grant)
Fear of being embarrassed
Fear of feeling inferior

I want to share just two of the many practices Lencioni identifies in this book because they resonated with me and reflect the real challenges of many of my clients.

Tell the Kind Truth
Very often you see something that your client is missing. If you play it safe and keep it to yourself, you are not really serving the client. For example, you know that the fighting at home is making it impossible for the child to learn at school. Or you see that your key donor is working off of mistaken assumptions about her influence. Maybe a customer wants to purchase a product from you that will not really help them. In all these cases, it can feel risky to tell the truth. You could lose the client and anger the donor. Telling the kind truth is about stepping into that danger zone because you care about serving the client. You will want to do it with respect and with humility. And if you are willing to face the risk of losing, you may actually win a more loyal and trusted ally than you had to begin with. It is too rare for any of us to hear the truth—especially when it is a hard one. Ultimately we come to trust the people who level with us.

Ask the Dumb Questions
How many times have you sat in a meeting confused about something? And how many times have you been incredibly grateful when one brave soul asked the question you shied away from? This practice is about having the courage to ask the questions that you think might be obvious to everyone—yet they are not obvious to you. For example, your team is about to move forward on an ambitious plan. You have been adding up the numbers on the cost and it doesn’t seem to match the budget. Math isn’t your thing but still... A board member is taking over a new committee. You want to assume that your board chair has oriented this person to the goals and expectations but you haven’t heard any plans to that effect. Sometimes, it really will be a dumb question. So what? I would much rather we all overdraw our quota on dumb questions than let silence and complicity rule. Sometimes, it will be the question upon which everything turns.

As always this book is a quick and entertaining read. If you are in a service business—read it with your whole staff and talk about which of these practices you already do well. Which could you incorporate more of?