I was listening to Mark Carney speak last week, and somewhere between his discussion of global economics and the fragility of power, I had a visceral aha moment.

He wasn’t just talking about current leadership dynamics across the globe, he was describing dynamics I’ve seen in many organizations I’ve worked in—and many I still work with today.

Carney referenced Václav Havel’s concept of “Living within a Lie.” He shared the parable of the Greengrocer: a shopkeeper who puts a political slogan in his window, not because he believes it, but because he wants to avoid trouble. He does it to signal obedience. He does it to stay safe.

And that’s when it hit me.

I see this Greengrocer every single day. We all do.

We see it in our companies. There’s a toxic leader in the room—a giant—who dominates the conversation, slows progress, and teaches everyone else to disengage.

We all know they are derailing collaboration and getting to the best outcome.

But what do we do?

We pretend.

We make an “educated choice” to keep up appearances.
We nod along.
Because of the power they hold, we don’t challenge the giant.
We put the sign in the window and tell ourselves we’re being pragmatic, when in reality we’re participating in a ritual of silence that keeps a broken system intact.

This dynamic—this pressure to pretend—is exactly why I started Leader In Motion in 2008.

When I pushed back against it early in my career, I was often labeled “idealistic” or “unrealistic.” I was told this was simply how business worked and that I didn’t understand the inner politics that operate inside organizations.

But I realized something important: surviving in that environment wouldn’t just require compromise. It would require a frontal lobotomy.

To stay seated at those tables, I would have had to cut away the part of myself that recognized truth. I would have had to separate my work self from my values. And that was a price I wasn’t willing to pay for years on end.

I didn’t leave the corporate track because I couldn’t hack it. I left because I refused to live within the lie. Becoming an external advisor gave me something internal roles often don’t: freedom.

Freedom to name what others feel but can’t say.
Freedom to challenge the giant without entering into daily personal combat.
Freedom to speak to values without risking my seat at the table.

Carney’s point was that power built on lies is fragile. It looks strong—right up until the moment people stop pretending. Then it collapses.

The same is true in business. When we silence our best people to appease toxic power, we aren’t protecting the organization—we’re hollowing it out from the inside.

So the next time you find yourself nodding along to a leader you don’t fundamentally agree with, ask yourself:

Am I telling the truth—or am I just putting the sign in the window?

And if enough of us are honest about the answer, bigger questions start to emerge that we should all take seriously:

How do we create environments where everyone can speak what they see as true, even when it challenges those who have more status and power?

How far reaching are the consequences if we don’t create this type of environment at work?