Hello Kind and Curious Leader,
Welcome to a special edition of Fielding Thoughts — and the launch of something I've been wanting to do for a while.
This is Let's Lead Better — a series written specifically for leaders of teams, by someone who has been in your chair. I spent 35 years leading at the highest levels of some of the world's most recognized brands. Today I coach and advise C-suite leaders across industries. I know how hard your job is. And I believe you can do it better.
Over the next four issues, I'm going to share eight lessons I wish someone had told me earlier in my career — and that I now find myself saying to nearly every leader I work with. They're not theories. They're patterns I've lived, watched, and coached through hundreds of times. I am sharing them on Fridays for a thinking moment as you head into the weekend.
This first issue is about something I call The Truth Gap — the dangerous distance between what you think is happening in your organization and what's actually happening.
Let's get into it.
Lesson 1: The Listening Problem
Most of you have stopped listening.
Not because you're bad people. Because the higher you go, the more people tell you what you want to hear. And you've started to believe it.
Your direct reports aren't giving you the real story. They're giving you the version that keeps them safe. Your board sees the deck, not the floor. Your customers are talking — just not to you.
I ran a $2 billion retail operation. I had thousands of employees across multiple countries, and I can tell you with certainty: the answers to my biggest problems were always already inside the building. The challenge was never finding smart people. It was making sure their voices could actually reach me.
And that's the part most leaders miss. You think the problem is that people aren't speaking up. The problem is that you built a system — intentionally or not — that filtered them out. Every layer of management between you and the front line is another place where truth gets softened, repackaged, or buried entirely.
Not through a listening tour. Not through a town hall with pre-screened questions. Somebody three levels down from you has been trying to tell you something important for months. They gave up. Not because they stopped caring, but because the organization taught them it wasn't worth the risk.
If the only voices reaching you sound like yours, that's not alignment. That's an echo chamber. And echo chambers don't challenge you — they comfort you. They make you feel right when you might be dangerously wrong.
Here's your move this week: talk to someone three levels down. Don't bring an agenda. Don't bring your chief of staff. Just show up, sit down, and listen. Ask them what's broken. Ask them what they'd change if they could. Then sit with whatever they tell you.
You might not like what you hear. That's how you know it's working.
Lesson 2: Your Culture Deck Is Lying
I want you to pull up your company's values statement. The one on the website. The one on the wall in the lobby. The one in the onboarding deck.
Now I want you to be honest with yourself: is that what's actually happening inside your building?
Your culture deck says "psychological safety." But your people are afraid to disagree with you in a meeting. It says "we value authenticity." But someone got managed out last quarter for being too direct. It says "people first." But the first move in the last downturn was headcount reduction with no warning and no dignity.
I see this pattern in almost every organization I work with. The words on the wall say one thing. The lived experience says another. And the leaders at the top are usually the last to know — because nobody feels safe enough to tell them the truth. Which, if you think about it, is the most damning proof that the culture deck is fiction.
Here's what I've learned across 35 years and four continents of leading teams: culture isn't what you publish. It's what you permit, what you promote, and what you punish. Those three P's will tell you more about your actual culture than any slide deck ever will.
You permit a senior leader to belittle people in meetings because they "deliver results"? That's your culture. You promote the person who plays politics over the one who builds teams? That's your culture. You punish the person who raises an uncomfortable truth? That is absolutely your culture — and everyone knows it except you.
If you want to know your real culture, stop reading the values statement and start watching. Watch what happens when someone makes a mistake. Watch who gets interrupted in meetings and who does the interrupting. Watch who leaves and — more importantly — ask them why on the way out. Then have the courage to ask yourself: is this what I actually intended?
The gap between your stated culture and your lived culture is where trust goes to die. Closing that gap is some of the hardest, most important work you'll ever do as a leader.
Culture isn't what you post on the wall. It's what you permit in the room.
That's it for this issue. If something in here made you uncomfortable, good. That's the point. Leadership isn't about having all the answers — it's about being brave enough to hear the ones you've been avoiding.
More to come. Next issue, we'll talk about the distance between your good intentions and the experience your people are actually having.
Until then — lead better. We all can.
In Community and Conversation, Jim
