Deliberate Leaders Podcast with Allison Dunn · 2026-06-30 · 8 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
29 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
As leaders scale their organizations, the information environment fundamentally shifts. Allison Dunn diagnoses a critical but often invisible performance problem: team members aren't lying, they're filtering. The gap between what's actually happening and what reaches the leader widens gradually through rational self-protection. When someone raises a concern and it gets shut down, ignored, or the person gets labeled as difficult, the signal propagates across the team. Nobody needs to be punished for honesty - just failing to reward it a few times is enough. This filtering happens because people understand that conversations with authority figures have consequences for compensation, standing, and career trajectory. The cost shows up not on dashboards but in decisions made on incomplete information, missed context, and blind spots that surprise only the leader. Dunn makes a counterintuitive argument: asking your team to speak up more freely doesn't solve this because the power structure itself creates the suppression. The real fix is twofold - intentionally creating conditions where honesty is genuinely safe (not just easier), and critically, building relationships outside your organization with peers at your altitude who have no agenda except truth. This is essential reading for any leader scaling beyond the stage where transparency happens by default.
As organizations scale, communication becomes filtered rather than dishonest. Team members rationally manage what they share with authority figures because honesty carries career and compensation consequences. After seeing concerns shut down or the person raising them labeled as difficult, employees learn it's safer to present polished updates than real problems.
Asking people to be more honest puts the burden on them to take personal risk within a power structure that hasn't changed; making honesty safe means changing the conditions so concerns get taken seriously and people who raise hard things get thanked, not managed.
When incomplete information reaches leadership, decisions get made in a vacuum based on filtered versions of reality, missing context that would change the decision and operating on assumptions that frontline workers already know are wrong.
Team members are paying constant attention to how leadership responds to concerns; a single instance where someone raises an issue and it gets dismissed or ignored sends a signal across the organization that adjusts everyone's behavior accordingly.
Build relationships outside your organization with peers at your same level who have no reporting relationship to you and no agenda except truth - these external advisors provide the unfiltered input that your internal power structure makes difficult or impossible.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
There are a handful of genuine non-obvious observations - most notably that filtering is rational behavior driven by power structures, and that honesty disappears through neglect rather than punishment - but the episode is short and padded with obvious leadership truisms. The signal-to-noise ratio is moderate at best.
You don't need to punish honesty to make it disappear. You just need to fail to reward it.
This isn't a culture problem. it's a performance problem.
The distinction between lying and filtering is a useful reframe, and the point that asking for honesty doesn't change the structural conditions is reasonably sharp, but the broader thesis sits firmly in well-worn psychological-safety literature (Edmondson, Lencioni et al.) without advancing it in any meaningful new direction.
You cannot fix this problem by asking your team to be more honest.
Power changes communication, full stop.
This is a solo host monologue with no guest whatsoever; the host presents herself as a leadership coach and author promoting her own book, with no demonstrated operating experience at scale surfaced in the transcript itself.
If this resonates with you, this is exactly the kind of information. and thinking, I go in deeper on my book, Think First.
The entire episode is abstract - no named companies, no cited research, no concrete metrics, no real-world case studies, and no data points of any kind. Every claim is illustrated only through hypothetical or archetypal scenarios.
the gap between what you think is happening and what is actually happening keeps widening quietly and gradually until something breaks in a way that surprises you, except it doesn't surprise anyone else on the team because they've been watching it build for months.
That gap between how you experience the situation and how your team experiences it, that is one of the most expensive problems a growing organization can have and it almost always never shows up on a dashboard.
There is no interview and therefore no host questions, follow-ups, or pushback to evaluate; the monologue has a competent rhetorical structure with audience-directed reflection questions, but it is ultimately a marketing-flavored solo talk that closes with a book promotion.
So here's the question I want to leave you with today. When you get an update from your team, your honest gut reaction, do you believe the full picture?
Until then, think first and lead deliberately.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Why Your Team Stops Telling You the Truth As companies grow, leaders often face an invisible challenge: they hear less of what's really happening. This isn't because employees are dishonest. It's because people naturally filter information when speaking to someone who holds authority over their career, compensation, and future opportunities. In this episode, Allison explores: How growth changes a leader's information environment Why teams begin filtering information The role power plays in workplace communication How leadership blind spots are created Why people stop raising concerns The hidden cost of operating on incomplete information Why asking for honesty isn't enough How to create psychological safety inside organizations The importance of trusted peers outside your business Key Question: When your team gives you an update, do you believe you're getting the full picture? If not, what have you done to make honesty truly safe? Resources: Think First: Stop Being the Bottleneck, Start Building Thinkers Deliberate Directions Leadership Development & Executive Coaching Think First
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Welcome back to the Deliberate Leaders Podcast. I'm Allison Dunn. Last week, we talked about the loneliness that grows as you scale, that gap that widens between you and your team, and the way success can quietly isolate even the most connected leaders. Today, we're going to go one level deeper.
Because the loneliness isn't just about emotional distance, it's about information, specifically the information you're not getting and why the higher you climb, the less truth you actually hear. So let's dive in. Here's something that doesn't get talked about enough in leadership conversations. Growth changes your information environment.
When you're small, the feedback loop is tight. You can see what's working. You hear what people are actually thinking and doing. The distance between reality and your perception of it is short or tight.
You might make a decision, you watch what happens, you adjust or pivot. The organization is transparent almost by default. However, as you grow, that transparency disappears, not because people become dishonest. That's the part that most leaders miss.
Their team isn't lying to them, their filtering. And there is a big difference. Your team begins to manage what they bring to you, not out of malice, but out of professionalism. They're trying to solve their own problems.
They don't want to be the person who escalates something to the CEO that should have been handled by themselves. They've learned what lands well with you and what doesn't land well with you. So they stop raising concerns that didn't generate a useful response last time. They start presenting polished updates instead of real problems that give you the version of the situation that feels safe to share And you operating on the assumption that you still have a clear view of what actually happening, you start making decisions on incomplete information, often without even knowing it.
Let me give you the honest reason this happens, because it's not complicated even though the implications are complicated. Power changes communication, full stop. When people are talking to someone who has authority over their career, their compensation, their standing on the team, they are not having a neutral conversation. They are managing the relationship while trying to do their job.
That's not a character flaw. It's a rational response to an environment where honesty has consequences. Think about it from their side. They've seen what happens when someone raises a concern and it doesn't land well.
Maybe it was shut down. Maybe the person who raised it got labeled as difficult or not a team player or someone who just can't see the big picture. Maybe nothing overtly bad happened, but nothing good happened either. The concern was noted and quietly filed away.
That is all it takes. You don't need to punish honesty to make it disappear. You just need to fail to reward it. Just a few times and the signal is received by your people.
People are paying attention and they always are and they adjust their behavior accordingly. So now let's talk about what's that actually costing you because this isn't a culture problem. it's a performance problem. When the real information stops reaching the top, decisions get made in a vacuum You solving for a version of the situation that been cleaned up or filtered before it got to you You missing the context that would change the decision You operating on assumptions that the people closest to the work already know are wrong but haven't found a way to tell you.
And the gap between what you think is happening and what is actually happening keeps widening quietly and gradually until something breaks in a way that surprises you, except it doesn't surprise anyone else on the team because they've been watching it build for months. That gap between how you experience the situation and how your team experiences it, that is one of the most expensive problems a growing organization can have and it almost always never shows up on a dashboard.
So here's the part I want you to sit with because it's the one that most leaders find uncomfortable. You cannot fix this problem by asking your team to be more honest. I know that feels counterintuitive, but think about it. If the dynamic that suppresses honesty is the power structure itself, then asking people within that structure to simply speak up more freely doesn't change the conditions.
It just puts the burden on them. And most people rationally are not going to take that risk, not consistently, and not on the things that matter most. The real solution is twofold. First, you work on creating conditions inside the organization where honesty is genuinely safe, where concerns get taken seriously, where the person who raises the hard thing gets thanked, not managed.
That's a culture conversation, and it's important, and it's ongoing work. second and this is the part that gets skipped you build relationships outside the organization where you get the honest input that your internal structure makes difficult or impossible People who are not in your reporting line, they're not on your payroll, they're not managing their relationship with you every time they open their mouth. Peers, real ones, ones that are at the same altitude as you with no agenda except for the truth.
Because here's the reality. As a leader, you will always have an information gap. The question is, how wide will you let it get? So here's the question I want to leave you with today.
When you get an update from your team, your honest gut reaction, do you believe the full picture? Or do you have a sense, even a quiet one internally, that something important is missing? Most leaders, if they're honest, know the answer to that question. And if the answer is that you're not getting a full picture and the next question is worth asking, what have you done intentionally to make honesty safe in your organization?
Not easier, safe. Because there's a difference and the team already knows which one it is. If this resonates with you, this is exactly the kind of information. and thinking, I go in deeper on my book, Think First.
It's built around five strategic thinking habits that help you see more clearly, decide more deliberately, and lead with more intention at every stage of growth. You can grab your copy at Deliberate Directions backslash Think First. I will also include the link in the show notes. Our next episode, we're going to be talking about the inner operating system, the habits and instincts that what got you here, and why they might be the very thing that is holding you back from what comes next.
Until then, think first and lead deliberately.
The Loneliness That Grows With Success
The Hidden Cost of Being Easy to Work With
The Slow Burn Problems Leaders Ignore
The "I'll Just Do It" Habit
The Trust Equation Is Broken