Chris Holman welcomes Leadership and Development Coach & Author, Scott Patchin to the Michigan Business Network. They talk about Scott's new book which focuses on how honesty, trust, and teamwork can transform business.

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Now that you've enjoyed the video interview, here's a little more about the book!

Six West Michigan business leaders profiled in new book on “honest culture” in the workplace

Leadership and development coach & author Scott Patchin’s new book focuses on how honesty, trust and teamwork can transform business

(GRAND RAPIDS, MI) – Years of asking highly-successful business leaders “What do you want from your business?” and getting consistent responses focusing on the success and growth of their staff led Grand Rapids-based author and leadership development coach Scott Patchin to write his most recent book Truth at the Heart (Patchin, 2020), which publishes Nov. 18. The second book in the “Honest Culture” series, Patchin gives readers a glimpse of how six West Michigan business leaders answered that question…and much more. 

“So often business leaders tell me that their biggest desire is to help employees grow and succeed while having the business sustain without their 24/7 involvement, but they get so burned out trying to accomplish that,” said Scott Patchin, a professional Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) Implementer, who aside from authoring books owns leadership development firm The trU Group. “The Honest Culture concept centers on building relationships and creating a culture of truth, both hearing truth and speaking truth. The leaders profiled in my book share so much wisdom and firsthand experience on how that concept is at the center of sustainable, successful businesses.” 

The six area business leaders Patchin interviewed, and a key takeaway from each: 

Rick Baker, President & CEO, Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce

“Know your trust tendency. Are you a give it or earn it person?” 

Jane Clark, President, Michigan West Coast Chamber of Commerce

“Great leaders never stop learning, and part of that learning is always finding a way back to what you do best.” 

Paul Doyle, CEO, Coastal Container

“The single biggest way to get people to speak the truth to you is to act on what they tell you, especially when it’s different from what you originally thought. If they change your mind, and they can experience that, they’ll speak truth to you more.” 

Dr. Donna Lowry, President & CEO, Ready For School

“The opposite of truth is not a lie.” 

Javier Olivera, CEO, Supermercado Mexico

“For entrepreneurs, sometimes it is important to slow the business down so that it can be prepared for the next bigger or faster race.” 

Dr. Diana Wong, Associate Professor of Management, Eastern Michigan University

“Leaders must learn to hold the space: The key to doing this is designing time to really listen to what people have to say, bring all the ideas together so people see the impact of their ideas on the plan, and the outcome is a team engaged and supporting the plan they spoke into.”

“The level of transparency, vulnerability and honesty shared with me during interviews for this book was more than I could have ever asked for,” Patchin noted. “Each executive provided me with so many wonderful examples of how they’ve come to embrace the ‘honest culture’ philosophy through successes and failures that I know many readers will resonate with.”  (Watch Patchin describe his “Honest Culture Journey” in this short YouTube overview video.) 

For more than two decades, Patchin has been coaching and equipping leaders with the critical skills to build healthy teams that achieve great results. As a guide on hundreds of these journeys, Patchin took note of several questions that emerged as the critical barriers to a successful leadership journey:

·         Why is it so hard for some leaders to follow through on easy-to-understand principles?

·         While making an effort to build collaboration in teams and honesty between people, what might be simultaneously eroding it?

·         What actions will have the greatest return in building a collaborative, healthy and high performing team? 

Although he wasn’t planning to author books on leadership development, it became clear to him that there was a cycle of behavior and path to success, so Patchin developed his Honest Culture concept and wrote the first book in the Honest Culture series, People-Centered Performance (2019).  In that book (available on Amazon) Patchin answers these questions and challenges leaders to step back and do some of the important internal work so that they are leading from a place of clear beliefs and self-awareness to see the barriers that will derail their success. 

The ink isn’t even dry on Truth at the Heart, but Patchin is already outlining plans for another book in the series that shares lessons and wisdoms 20 to 30 business leaders. 

“My passion is conversations. Building truth and trust with people through great conversations,” adds Patchin. “Sharing findings from my interviews with business leaders is far more engaging to the reader than my own words, so why not produce more books that give readers a peek into the journeys of successful men and women!” 

The book will be available on Patchin’s Amazon site (click here), where other workbooks and publishing’s of Patchin’s are available.  

About Scott Patchin
Scott Patchin has a passion for individuals and organizations in transition. His coaching and leadership development practice is focused on growth-related transitions for leaders and organizations. He has over two decades of experience in coaching, facilitating strategic planning, delivering leadership development programs, and working in and with high growth organizations.

Patchin founded Holland-based The trU Group in 2009 with the intent on helping organizations and leaders in transition realize growth and excellence. His expertise lies in creating strategy, developing leaders, and then building and equipping both leaders and leadership teams to effectively manage growth.

After partnering independently with growth-oriented small and medium-sized businesses over the years, Patchin saw the common obstacles and challenges they faced, so he began to implement elements of the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS®) with clients, with great success. He later went on to become a Certified EOS Implementer®.

EOS has helped thousands of companies around the world achieve healthy growth. Using the proven tools and process of this system, Patchin helps grow leader’s capacity to lead as they work – essentially creating a leadership development class within their business. The person develops as a leader while growing their business.

“I believe that in transitions there are tremendous opportunities for growth, and tremendous risks for both individuals and organizations. I help organizations and leaders seize those opportunities while minimizing the risks,” says Patchin.

Scott resides in Holland, Michigan and is an active blogger, husband, father and keynote speaker.

He has a Bachelor’s of Science in Operations Management for Michigan Technological University and a Masters of Business Administration in Information Technology from University of Illinois-Chicago. Before founding The trU Group, Patchin served in talent management and information systems leadership positions at Northpointe Bank, Spectrum