Let the Facts Win

I was the kid who figured out how to load sixteen bales on a trailer built for eight.

Twice the bales. Half the trips. I thought I had it solved.

What I burned up in the process cost a lot more than the time I saved.

I was the kid who knew the answers and didn’t hesitate to share them.

Not only would I outwork others, but I also had self-assurance.

It’s one thing to work hard, but to tell others they didn’t know what they were doing. Weren’t doing it the “right way” or even worse, making them feel unvalued.

To me, being right was more important than being liked. So many leaders feel the same.

The most dangerous leader in any room isn’t the one who doesn’t know enough.

It’s the one who stopped asking. Essentially, telling everyone else they have nothing of value to add.

The Things We Hide — Moment

In The Things We Hide, I describe four walls leaders build from their fears and insecurities — Intensity, Isolation, Insensitivity, Inactivity.

Insensitivity is a wall that can hide in plain sight.

It doesn’t have to show up as cruelty, yet it often does. It shows up as a leader who stopped being aware of their own impact. They walk into a room, and people tighten up. They make a call, and no one pushes back. Not because they’re right. Because people have learned it isn’t safe to say they’re wrong.

I’ve been in that room.

The belief underneath it is this: if I show doubt, I lose credibility. If I lose credibility, I lose my place. So certainty becomes the performance, and the performance becomes the wall.

Coupled with Intensity, the person runs roughshod over anyone and everyone.

The beliefs we protect most fiercely are usually the ones doing the most damage.

Letting the facts win starts with being willing to let them in.

The leader who is unwilling to see the facts is the leader who will lose and not know why.

Gradually, then suddenly,” as the great Ernest Hemingway once wrote.

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Podcast

Rich Hagberg built HCG Inc. into a leading leadership and assessment firm, sold it to Accenture, and has spent the decades since studying what actually separates the founders who scale from the ones who stall. His research on 122 founders — tracking personality data against 360-degree peer ratings and investor returns — is one of the most rigorous examinations of entrepreneurial leadership ever conducted.

Founders Keepers distills it all.

Here are three key focus points from my conversation with Rich:

1. Adaptability Is the Single Greatest Predictor

Not vision. Not drive. Not charisma. Adaptability. The founders who succeeded learned to listen to resistance rather than bulldoze through it. They asked for input. They adjusted when the market, the team, or the moment told them something wasn’t working. The unsuccessful ones grew rigid — they fell in love with what had made them successful early on and couldn’t let go when the company outgrew it. Rich put it simply: what got you here won’t get you there. The leaders who internalize that as a gift rather than a threat are the ones who scale.

2. Reflection Is a Competitive Advantage

Rich’s research identified a single personality item that separated successful founders from unsuccessful ones more than anything else: whether they honestly examined their own past. The ones who made it didn’t have better ideas or better timing — they had the discipline to stop and ask what their role was in what went wrong. The ones who didn’t make it pointed everywhere but inward. They had explanations for every failure that left them blameless. And they took those same blind spots into the next company, the next hire, the next decision. Accountability isn’t a personality trait. It’s a practice. And it’s the only thing that keeps the past from running your future.

3. The Space Between Is Where Growth Lives

Rich shared something that stopped me cold. He’s watched founder after founder exit a company — through failure or a sale — and immediately jump into the next thing. No pause. No examination. Just momentum as a substitute for clarity. William Bridges called the space between endings and new beginnings the neutral zone. Most leaders treat it like dead air. Rich sees it as the only real opportunity to figure out what you’re carrying and whether you want to keep carrying it. The leaders who skip it don’t start fresh — they just start over. Same patterns, new circumstances. The work doesn’t disappear because you outran it.

Pull Up A Chair — The IDL Summit, May 7–8, Spokane

Rich’s research keeps coming back to one thing: leaders who can’t let the facts in eventually get taken out by them.

That’s the room we’re building at the IDL Summit this May.

Nikki Barua spent years mimicking what success was supposed to look like — the clothes, the etiquette, the golf lessons — until everything was stripped away in a single week and she had to rebuild from the inside out. She’ll tell you what it actually takes to stop performing and start leading.

Joe Delagrave was told at nineteen he’d never walk again. He spent years hiding behind the face everyone said was inspiring while quietly having no idea who he was anymore. He’s now the head coach of USA Wheelchair Rugby, and his message is simple: an incident doesn’t have to be a verdict — but only if you’re willing to face it.

Dr. Abbie Maroñó studies the science of how we read each other — and how we hide from being read. If Rich’s research shows us what we’re doing wrong, Abbie shows us how it’s showing up in every room we walk into.

Four perspectives. Two days. 120 leaders in a room where nothing gets hidden.

General Admission is $499. Buy two for $900.

VIP is $999 and includes a private dinner with the speakers.

Seats are limited to 120.

Get your tickets: idlsummit.com

Did you catch this podcast? If not, listen to it here.