The Great Amplifier

In The Things We Hide, I describe four walls leaders build out of their fears and insecurities. Intensity. Insensitivity. Inactivity. And the quietest one of all, Isolation.

Isolation does not always look like loneliness. Sometimes it looks like strength.

It is the leader who is surrounded by people and still carries everything alone. Who hears “how can I help?” and answers “I’ve got it.” Not because he does. Because letting someone close enough to see the cracks feels more dangerous than the cracks themselves.

While not a wall I lean against most often, it's there.  In one of the hardest seasons of my professional life, after losing a client that represented 25% of my total gross income, I shrank.

I was frustrated, confused, and lost.  I isolated.

Underneath it was a belief I never said out loud. If they knew what I was really carrying, they would think less of me. I was lost and had no idea what to do next.

So I hid it, and a hidden thing never stays one thing. It stacks; one quiet struggle becomes two. Before long, you are spending more energy managing the hiding than you ever spent on the problem.

Beliefs drive thoughts, thoughts drive actions, actions drive results. The belief that I have to handle it alone never made me stronger. It just made me more alone.

The wall I thought was keeping me safe was the thing keeping me stuck.

Podcast

Jeremy Foster is a keynote speaker, executive coach, and founder of FOSCO Leadership Strategies. In 2015, he started a church in Houston that drew more than 1,000 people on its first day and grew to 14,000 across five campuses within five years. Then it came apart. He hid an affair for a year, finally prayed for the secret to be exposed because he could not confess it on his own, and walked away from everything he had built.

What makes Jeremy worth listening to is not the rise. It is what he found in the unmaking.

Here are three takeaways from my conversation with Jeremy.

1. Success Doesn’t Fix You. It Magnifies You.

Jeremy’s church exploded almost overnight, and by every measure that gets counted, he had won. But fast success did not settle what was unresolved underneath it. It enlarged it. The cracks he could manage at a smaller scale became impossible to manage at scale, because growth does not care which parts of you it grows. Most of us assume the next level will finally quiet our insecurities. Jeremy found the opposite. As he put it: “When you give and give and give so much of yourself, then you don’t even know who you are anymore.” A bigger platform never answers the question of who you are when you step off it.

2. The Things We Hide Don’t Stay Hidden. They Stack.

The first secret is rarely the one that sinks you. It is the second, and the third, and the work of keeping them from finding each other. Jeremy described how that pile builds until it falls on you. “The things we hide become like Tetris. Now I’m trying to figure out where to hide the next thing, and before too long, it overwhelms me, and it’s game over.” He spent a full year managing the cover instead of facing the truth. His advice now comes from an old mentor: tell the truth, and tell it quick. The sooner you say it, the less it costs.

3. When You Fail, Your Friends Get to Choose You.

Underneath all of it ran a belief Jeremy could finally name out loud: that he was not good enough as he was, so he had to outwork himself to make up the difference. It pushed him to earn his place in every room until the day he had nothing left to earn it with. He didn’t claw his way back out. People came and got him. One friend, after days of unanswered texts, flew to Houston and showed up at his parents’ door. “When you’re very successful, you get to choose your friends. But when you fail, your friends get to choose you.” The leaders who make it through are the ones who let someone help them up.

Take the Next Step — The Lead Without Hiding Challenge, June 23–25

Jeremy spent a year managing a secret before he ever faced it. Most of us are running a quieter version of the same thing right now.

That is why I built the Lead Without Hiding Challenge. Three days, June 23 through 25, where we take the framework from The Things We Hide and put it to work. You will name your biggest insecurity, find the wall it built, and start reframing the beliefs that keep it standing.

This is the same work that has shaped leaders in the IDL Roundtable for six years, compressed into three days, live with me.

The challenge is $97. If something in this conversation hit a nerve, that is the wall. Come find it with me.

Join the challenge: leadwithouthiding.com

The Things We Hide is available wherever you buy books, and bonus resources are still available at thethingswehidebook.com.

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