Michael Wallace
Business Consultant

Michael Wallace has more than 30 years experience as both a senior corporate executive for such companies as HartMarx, Levi Strauss, and Private Business, Inc, He is also former President of a privately held multi-million-dollar storage solutions manufacturing company and most recently owned and operated the California Closets franchise in Madison, Wisconsin.

Wallace is open with professional colleagues about his personal relationship with Christ. But he admits when he first became a Christian there was an embarrassing gap between his faith and how he acted on the job.

Wallace: After I became a Christian, it was easy for me to refrain from certain language or to hang a picture on my office wall with a Christian message in it. But basically I was a hypocrite. I was too hard on people. I didn't listen well. I favored certain people because they were more my management style. I didn't empower people or show them the respect they deserved.

LifeChasers: How, then, did you become such a strong advocate and practitioner of "walking the talk?" (To read more from Michael Wallace about building personal credibility, click here to read his " Two Minute Morsel.")

Wallace: I confess the first reason was strictly pragmatic. I realized that being hypocritical doesn't work. It’s an ineffective way to lead and counter-productive to achieving results you’re looking for.

LifeChasers: But a non-Christian could arrive at the same conclusion. How did faith change the equation?

Wallace: It was a process of letting God mature me—hundreds of "aha" moments that finally added up. I spent time on a regular basis letting God's Word soak into my mind. I had other Christians around me who challenged some of my assumptions. And the Holy Spirit constantly used workplace situations to make His point.

LifeChasers: Give us an example.

Wallace: One time when I was a regional sales manager at Levi, I interviewed an excellent candidate for district sales manager. I remember going to my boss and saying, "Here's the guy I want to hire." He said, "No wonder you want to hire him. He's a Michael Wallace clone."

Around that time I was gaining a new spiritual understanding into how God made each of us as unique individuals. Part of creating success in relationships is to appreciate the value of the people God brings into your life who handle things differently than you do. It hit me. I had been only rewarding, recognizing and promoting people who were like me, who thought and acted the way I did! That was a defining moment. I ended up hiring someone who was the opposite of me but who was a great complement. He was much more relational and could pick up on things that were going on in the organization that I couldn’t. But I had to learn to see people as God sees them.

LifeChasers: How does your faith affect tough decisions like terminating someone?

Wallace: : I remember one situation during the time I was president of Closet Works when I had to terminate someone who was well liked and whose identity was quite wrapped up in our company. Unfortunately, though, she was divisive and disruptive and not performing her job.

LifeChasers: What if she had said to you, "How can you call yourself a Christian and fire me?"

Wallace: You always have to ask yourself if you're truly being objective. But you also have to ask what kind of message it sends. If you’ve held out a certain standard of job performance for the rest of the organization, should you tolerate a marginal performer because you’re overly concerned about her impression of you?

I tried to help her see that the likely reason she was not doing well was not because she wanted to perform poorly but because the job was not a good match to her skills and passions. But it's always a tough conversation to have with someone.

The important thing is to be compassionate and as consistent as possible in your decisions. In the end, people in the organization pay more attention to the integrity with which I conduct the affairs of my job than whether I have pictures on my wall with a Christian message.