Most management advice treats knowing your people as a list of questions to ask. The Truth Ladder is a sequence. Each rung is the price of admission to the next.

By the time a working adult brings fear to a job, they have compressed it into something the workplace will accept. The manager sees the currency and misses the fear.

Most managers think drive is a setting on the person. It's a current — and they're often the resistance.

Most managers can tell you what their people are working on in thirty seconds. Ask what those people want or fear, and the silence starts.