“It’s Not Personal, It’s Business”: Why This Classic Myth is Costing You Money
Can you scale a highly profitable company while staying deeply relational? Let’s tackle the tension between culture and the bottom line.
Today, I’m in Greenville, South Carolina. I’m on-site with a client, and we just had an incredibly interesting conversation this morning about trust and its ultimate value to a business.
It brought up this classic tension that almost every leader faces:
We want to create a relational, purposeful, and friendly environment… but we’ve also got to do business, right?
The truth is we’ve got to make money. Nobody wants to end up running what I call a “non-profit, for-profit business”, and let’s be honest, there are a lot of those out there. In fact an accountant I know said it might be up to 40% of American businesses. Staggering!
The topic created a tense, fascinating discussion. It got me thinking: Can we truly balance relationship and business? Should we? Is it really possible to balance the deeply personal side of human connection with the tactical, cold, hard dollars?
We’ve all heard people say, “Look, it’s not personal, it’s business.” But today, I want to call that out as a massive myth. Actually I have been challenging this one now for over 20 years.
Let’s do a quick myth check on how we’re actually doing here.
Summary: The Quick Takeaways
If you’re reading this on the run, here is the quick checklist to review with your team today:
- Trust is your only currency: Put relationships on the back burner, and your leadership currency goes bankrupt, right alongside your business.
- Beware of the “Inattentive Yes!”: In behavioral dynamics like DISC, we learn a nod and a “yes” might mean “I hear you,” and often not “I agree with you.”
- The Hiring Hierarchy: Always evaluate your team on Attitude, Aptitude, and Skill, in that exact order.
1. Trust is the Currency of Leadership
We all know relationships are important. But when we put them on the back burner in favor of raw processes, dollars, and metrics, things start to break down. The first thing to go is trust.
“Trust is the currency of leadership. The idea that I can trust you, you can trust me, and we can get something done together is everything.”
Trust is highly relational and incredibly personal. It’s built on real life tension including expectations, needs, and promises. Interestingly, we all know exactly what it feels like when trust is broken, yet we often struggle to define how we get it and what it is really like.
Trust depends heavily on communication styles. Last night, I was having a conversation with a guy at my son’s soccer match. To me, the chat was fast, entrepreneurial, open, and friendly. I loved it. But the person sitting next to me had a completely different, much more tense experience of that exact same conversation.
As leaders, we have to recognize that trust isn’t just what we say or present, it’s how it is interpreted. If I’m serving someone who is quieter, calmer, or less entrepreneurial, I have to bring a different conversation and a different energy to meet them where they are.
2. When “Yes” Doesn’t Mean “Yes”
In the push to “just get to the point and deliver results,” we often misread our people. This is especially true when we look at behavioral dynamics like DISC (Dominant, Influencer, Stabilizer, Conscientious).
Let’s talk about Stabilizers. These are people who are generally more reserved and poised to action, but they are highly relational. They deeply care about the team, about being liked, and about having a safe environment and frameworks around them.
When you talk to a Stabilizer type about big, fast business ideas, they will often sit there nodding, like they are saying, “Yeah… yeah…”. If you’re a fast-paced entrepreneur like me, it’s easy to misinterpret that as an agreement to take action. I hear this from many stabilizer types:
“Just because I’m nodding doesn’t mean I’m saying yes. I’m letting you know that I hear you, I’m listening, and I understand what you are saying.”
As a leader, be incredibly careful. If you don’t slow down to build the relationship and understand how your style interacts with theirs, you’ll assume you have alignment when you actually just have polite silence. It will become obvious when you try to take action.
3. It Takes a “Company”
Have you ever stopped to think about why we call our businesses companies?
The word originates from a term describing a close-knit group, almost like a family, a connection, or a community where everyone gathers around a common purpose and a common goal. Its early origins referred to breaking bread with close folk.
Things have changed somewhat in companies today. But it is still true, we need other people to survive. We need their styles and their strengths to shore up our weaknesses. We bring other folk around to add color to our teams, develop skill sets we don’t have.
For example, you should never put me in charge of your company’s finances. But if you want someone to lead your people, your culture, your strategy, your marketing, or your communication? That’s my sweet spot. That is what I’ve been doing for over 30 years.
Knowing your own style and letting others fill the gaps plays out in successful marriages, in friendships, on boards, and of course absolutely in business.
We need relationships to keep our businesses alive.
The Growth Framework: Attitude, Aptitude, and Skill
Now, there is a flip side to this myth. Can we get too relational? Absolutely. If we care so much about being liked that we let performance slide, the business won’t survive.
To keep the balance healthy, I use a simple three-part framework to look at the people in my (and my client’s) business world:
- Attitude: Who are they as a person? Do they fit our culture? Do they possess the willingness to show up and serve the mission?
- Aptitude: Do they have the capacity to learn, adapt, and grow with us?
- Skill: Do they have the technical capability to do the job, can they learn it?
Notice the order; Attitude and Aptitude always come before Skill.
Yes, competency and skill matter deeply. But if you don’t start with the person first, their character, their attitude, and how they relate to the team, no amount of raw skill will save your culture.
Over to You
Relationships don’t just “matter” in business, they are the literal engine that drives business success.
How are you balancing the relationship with the results in your team this week? Have you been letting the “dollars” crowd out the “trust”?
And as always… enjoy the journey.
Thanks for reading The Forged Leader!
This article was unpacked further in a recent Monday Myth Check.
Watch the full conversation below: