Why Entrepreneurs Must Tell the Truth or Pay the Price
Gino Wickman, photo courtesy EOS Worldwide
At the 2025 EOS ConferenceOff-site link., I stood on stage and shared the story behind my 10-year journey of building EOS Worldwide. I told the truth. The whole truth. The uncomfortable, messy, powerful truth. Because I believe with everything in me that the truth is what sets a company free.
There’s one part of that talk that I’ve been thinking about often. It wasn’t the business model or the scorecard or the succession plan. It was this: we built EOS Worldwide on a foundation of brutal, loving honesty. We were obsessed with being open and honest, and we demanded it from everyone.
If you want to build something great, and if you are driven like I know you are, you need this more than you need another hack or another tool. You need truth. Because when the truth goes, the business dies. It dies a slow death that's hard to see.
The Most Dangerous Kind of Dishonesty
Most leaders are not running dishonest companies. But they are running companies filled with polite silence.
People nod in meetings when they should be disagreeing. Someone gets a pass for missing targets month after month. The leadership team avoids one hard conversation because they are afraid of what might happen if they speak the truth.
"Polite silence is the most dangerous form of dishonesty."
Let me say this as clearly as I can. Polite silence is the most dangerous form of dishonesty. It eats away at your team. It poisons your culture. And it always shows up in your numbers. Always. Truth is oxygen. Without it, your business will suffocate.
The Real Reason for Your Dysfunction
If your business is stuck, your team is misaligned, your meetings feel like a waste of time, or your people are checked out, I am telling you right now the root cause is a lack of open and honest communication. Not sort of honest. Not half-truths. Not vague hints. I mean full truth, spoken out loud, in real time, with real people.
This is not a theory. I have seen it play out over 2,000 sessions with 135 entrepreneurial leadership teams. And I lived it for over 10 years inside EOS Worldwide.
We made it a standard that everyone had the right and the responsibility to say what they really thought. If something felt off, we stopped and named it. If someone disagreed, we asked them to speak. And when someone was holding back, we called them out with love.
That is what it means to be healthy. That is what it means to be great.
Leading with Love and Truth
One of the greatest compliments I ever received came from Mike Paton, the visionary who took over for me. When I asked him for feedback on how I showed up during that 10-year journey, he said this: “You were ruthlessly and lovingly honest.”
That one line brought tears to my eyes. Because it captured exactly what I was trying to do.
I was not trying to be liked. I was not trying to win every battle. I was trying to tell the truth, with love, because I cared deeply about the people and the mission.
That is your job as a leader. Tell the truth. Hear the truth. Create a space where truth wins every time.
It Starts with You
The number one reason people are not honest in your organization is you.
Read that again.
If you react, defend, attack, or shut down when someone tells you the truth, they will stop telling you the truth. And so will everyone else. You have to go first. You have to be open to criticism. You have to ask for feedback. You have to say, “Tell me where I am missing it.” And then, you have to shut up and listen. If you cannot do that, you are the bottleneck. And your business will suffer because of it.
One Question to Change Everything
When the opportunity presents itself, in every team session, in every Level 10 Meeting, in every one-on-one conversation, I want you to start asking this question: “Are we being fully open and honest right now?”
Start asking this question in every team session: “Are we being fully open and honest right now?”
And then shut up. Let the silence do its work.
That one question, asked consistently, will change your company. It will force out the truth. It will build trust. It will surface the real issues. And it will create a team that is actually aligned instead of just pretending to be.
Tell the Truth or Pay the Price
You are going to pay one way or another. You either pay the short-term discomfort of hard conversations, or you pay the long-term price of dysfunction, misalignment, turnover, and regret.
Choose the truth.
Make it the standard. Make it the norm. Reward it. Model it. Insist on it. Because once your team experiences the freedom and clarity that comes with total honesty, they will never go back. And neither will you.