Not long ago, I sat across from a senior leader who proudly described the culture of transparency he believed he had built. “My door is always open,” he said. “I tell my team I want the truth, even when it’s hard.”

Later that afternoon, I spoke with one of his direct reports. She paused when I asked her what it was like to work for him.

“He says he wants the truth,” she said quietly, “but the moment we challenge him or bring up a concern, he gets defensive or shuts the conversation down. So we’ve all just stopped trying. He’s not a bad guy. He’s better than a lot of bosses around here. But he doesn’t want the truth the way he claims to.”

She wasn’t angry. Worse, she was resigned to the fact that’s just who he was. And she wasn’t alone. The team had learned that what their leader said an

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