Before we get into it: The Things We Hide is officially out this Tuesday, June 9. Preorder before launch day to lock in the launch bonuses, including a private masterclass and more. Details at thethingswehidebook.com

I’m sitting here writing this on the afternoon of June 4th.

32 years ago at about the same time of day, my world changed forever. I was fourteen the day my brother Joel died on our farm. He was three, and I was the one driving.

The sheriff stood by his car and asked me what happened. I kept saying it was an accident. Somewhere in that moment, I made a decision I would not understand for twenty-five years.

I put my head down. I got intense. I went to work. In the midst of turmoil, I responded in a way that protected and pushed me on.

It was easy in the moment to respond intensely, to occupy myself with work that needed to be done rather than feel, deal with, or think. It's a pattern I see in many leaders I work with.

In the days, months, and even a few years after that afternoon, people were kind to me.

They let me go; they dismissed my intensity, with the acknowledgment that I had been through something difficult and challenging.

Then it turned into people being nice; people told me they admired the work ethic, drive, and passion. They did not ask what the intensity was covering.

It took someone willing to be kind instead of nice, years later, to tell me the truth no one else would. The thing I had been calling strength was a wall. It was a barrier in my ability to know and be known.

The Things We Hide — Moment

In The Things We Hide, I write about the four walls leaders build out of their fears: Intensity, Isolation, Insensitivity, Inactivity.

Intensity is the wall I know best.

It does not look like a problem. It looks like drive. It looks like the person who gets there first, stays latest, and carries the most. The world applauds it, so you keep building it higher.

But intensity is a bulldozer. It moves things. It also leaves carnage. And the leader at the controls is usually the last one to see the wreckage.

Here is the belief cycle underneath it. Beliefs drive thoughts; thoughts drive actions; actions drive results. My belief was simple and unspoken: if I stay intense enough, no one will ask what I am hiding.

That belief built a wall, and the wall produced results that looked like success and felt like exhaustion.

The hardest part is this. You cannot see your own wall. The mirror tells you it is strength. Only someone standing outside the wall can tell you the truth, and only if you let them in.

PRE-ORDERS NOW AVAILABLE - RELEASE DATE JUNE 9

Podcast

Chris Hallberg is a military veteran, leadership coach, and one of the first EOS implementers, known as the Business Sergeant and author of The Business Sergeant’s Field Manual. Inc. magazine named him one of the top ten global leadership and management experts. Today he leads Go Expand, helping founders and CEOs build cultures that hold people accountable without burning them down.

Here are three takeaways from my conversation with Chris.

1. Kind Is Not Nice

Nice protects feelings in the moment and starves people of the truth. Kind goes to the root. Chris has a way of delivering hard feedback that lands rather than wounds: I have high expectations; I believe you can meet them; you are not meeting them yet; and here is how you could. Said that way, even a tough message comes across as care rather than an attack. As he put it, “When you’re being nice to people, you’re also not giving people the truth.” The leaders people trust are not the gentlest in the room. They are the ones honest enough to tell you what you need to hear, in a way you can actually receive.

2. A Blind Spot Is a Gift, Not an Insult

You cannot see your own blind spots. The picture you hold of yourself is the most flattering and least accurate one in the building, and the only way to get the rest is through other people. Chris’s point is that when someone names a blind spot, they are not diminishing you; they are handing you something you could not get on your own. “When someone bothers to give you a blind spot, it’s because they care.” He also offered the simplest tool for catching yourself in real time. When a reaction comes out sideways, a trusted person asking “Are you okay?” can stop it cold and surface where it is really coming from.

3. Failure Teaches What Winning Can’t

Long stretches of success make poor teachers. You stay inside the echo chamber and never test the idea against reality. “We learn much more from our failures than we do from prolonged periods of success.” Failure is raw and inconvenient, which is exactly why it gets through. The move is to not wait for a crisis to invite that honesty. Build it in now: a coach who sees how you actually play rather than how you think you play, a peer group that is not competing with you, and a few friends with standing permission to wake you up when you drift.

The Things We Hide — Out Tuesday, June 9

This conversation is the book in miniature. The wall you mistake for strength. The truth only someone else can show you. The decision to face it instead of hide it.

The Things We Hide is about the walls leaders build and what it takes to face them. What you hide controls you. What you face transforms you.

Foreword by John C. Maxwell. Early readers include Claude Silver, Jeff Henderson, and Jennifer Catron.

Get your copy at thethingswehidebook.com.

Leading a team through it together? There are four bundles, each including the IDL Summit Keynote Speaker Replays (2025 and 2026):

• Bronze ($199): 5 copies. A starter option for shared growth and discussion.

• Silver ($1,399): 25 copies, plus a 1-hour private coaching session.

• Gold ($2,299): 50 copies, a 1-hour private coaching session, and a 90-minute virtual workshop.

• Platinum ($3,999): 100 copies, plus an in-person event with me, your choice of keynote or workshop.

Full details and ordering at thethingswehidebook.com.

DAYS UNTIL RELEASE

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