Private Truths, Public Leadership

How listening, strategic restraint, and calibrated silence create influence that lasts.

Many days near the end of work, I get confronted with issues that need to be solved or addressed. A department conflict. An unfair, unresourced request. A leadership misalignment. My assertive personality kicks in, and in my head I start rehearsing responses: planning what I’ll say, how I’ll press my position, how I’ll get what I want.

We’re often tempted to turn to email before heading home, to clear our minds and keep issues from lingering overnight. But the problem with email is we type things we’d never say to someone’s face. We type fast, lead with assertion, and make the next conversation harder. Instead of resolving tension, we lock it in. What could have been collaboration becomes bargaining, and what could have built trust begins to erode it.

What I’ve learned to do instead is pause, and it’s hard. The next morning, I rehash my thoughts and organize them. Then I pick up the phone. I start by asking questions: What’s the ultimate objective? What happened? And almost every time, I find that my initial assumptions were wrong. Without making a single assertion, I can reaffirm shared goals, agree on a path forward, and strengthen trust rather than test it.

In today’s Dispatch, I want to introduce a concept I first learned decades ago as a graduate student, preference falsification, and show how a theory from economics can illuminate what it means to lead, negotiate, and build influence without losing respect.

The big idea

Economist Timur Kuran defined preference falsification as the act of misrepresenting your true beliefs or intentions because it feels unsafe to say what you think. It’s not just politeness. It’s a social survival mechanism, one that helps people avoid punishment, embarrassment, or loss of status when honesty carries risk. Kuran used it to explain how entire societies can appear stable, when in truth they’re sustained by silence. Underneath, everyone knows something is wrong, but because no one dares to speak first, the illusion of agreement holds until one day it suddenly collapses.

Examples of preference falsification are easy to spot once you know what to look for:

• A dean publicly supports a new president’s initiative even though they privately doubt its feasibility, fearing that dissent will brand them as “not a team player.”

• A junior employee nods through a flawed budget proposal to avoid being seen as difficult, even though their silence guarantees future problems.

• A faculty member votes in favor of degree changes they quietly believe will be less helpful to students, simply to stay in good standing with a dominant coalition.

• A CIO states in a board meeting that an ERP project is “on track” when the real issues haven’t yet surfaced, hoping to buy time until they can fix the problems.

In each case, the falsification appears rational in the moment, it protects reputation, relationships, or momentum, but it comes at a cost. Truth deferred becomes truth distorted. And when that distortion spreads across an institution or community, it corrodes trust, clouds decision-making, and ultimately makes the system less resilient.

However, in negotiation and leadership, deliberate, ethical restraint can be powerful. Preference falsification in its pathological form hides truth out of fear. But in its disciplined form, it withholds truth out of purpose: to protect trust long enough for shared understanding to emerge. The difference lies in intent. One distorts reality to avoid consequences. The other manages timing to preserve relationships.

The Trap of Early Disclosure

Leaders often mistake assertiveness for strength. In reality, unfiltered honesty is just noise. Once you state your position, the other side has no choice but to react: to defend, resist, or retreat. You’ve turned a conversation into a contest before you’ve even learned what matters most to them. Real strength lies in patience, not posture, in holding space long enough to see the full picture before choosing where to stand.

Chris Voss calls it calibrated silence, the art of saying less to hear more. Chester Karrass reached the same destination from another path, teaching that persuasion falters when emotion takes the wheel. Karrass viewed negotiation as movement toward agreement, not combat over position, where progress comes through discipline and curiosity rather than assertiveness. Voss builds empathy through silence; Karrass builds trust through calm precision. Both show that influence depends less on assertion than on control of information, emotion, and timing.

Strategic restraint creates room for truth to emerge. It’s the difference between giving orders and achieving alignment. In discussions about change, ERP governance, or setting priorities, the CIO who listens longest, who lets others speak their truths before asserting their own, builds the trust needed to lead the institution forward.

Connecting the Thinkers

Three different disciplines point to the same truth about influence: restraint reveals more than assertion.

• Timur Kuran showed how people often hide their true beliefs to survive in rigid systems. He reminds leaders that failure occurs when everyone pretends to agree.

• Chris Voss taught that silence and calibrated questions reveal what assertion conceals. His approach invites disclosure by signaling curiosity instead of control.

• Chester Karrass emphasized emotional discipline. When negotiators stay calm and fact-based, there is movement toward agreement, not combat over position.

Together, these thinkers describe the art of strategic restraint: best understood as listening longer, timing disclosure, and creating space for others to reveal what really matters to them. Influence grows not from dominating the room, but from holding it.

Applying the Art of Strategic Restraint: ERP Implementations

ERP projects test every dimension of leadership. They are long, complex, and filled with tradeoffs. Everyone wants perfection, which puts go-live at risk. Strategic restraint, the discipline of listening longer, pacing disclosure, and managing timing, can transform conflict into alignment in even the most politically charged moments.

• Choosing a Product. In large, federated enterprises, product selection exposes deep institutional preferences. When one unit’s preferred vendor loses, their support can quietly evaporate. The CIO practicing strategic restraint resists the urge to persuade directly. Instead, they reframe the conversation around shared goals: “How can we ensure your needs are visible in the configuration work?” or “What would success look like for your team, even with this platform?” This shifts the dialogue, drawing reluctant leaders back into ownership of success.

• Selecting Workstream Leaders. Executives often hesitate to assign their best people to ERP projects. “We need them for more important things,” they say, unaware that this choice weakens their own outcomes. Strategic restraint means not arguing the point directly but asking, “Who do you trust most to represent your priorities when decisions move fast?” or “What risks arise if your strongest people aren’t in the room?” Those questions surface a truth: protecting top talent is less valuable than giving them the authority to shape future operations.

• Reducing Scope. As go-live approaches, reality closes in. The list of unfinished tasks grows, and pressure mounts to delay. Delays feel safe; cutting scope feels like failure. Strategic restraint in this moment means listening to those fears before proposing trade-offs. A CIO might ask, “What outcomes truly have to be in place on day one?” or “What would it take to go live successfully with a smaller set of capabilities and expand later?” These questions turn confrontation into collaboration. They acknowledge anxiety while leading the group toward a more sustainable path, accepting imperfection now to achieve stability later.

In each of these moments, restraint is not weakness. It’s leadership through timing. The leader who listens longest and speaks last doesn’t avoid conflict, they absorb it, convert it, and channel it toward shared purpose, enhancing trust and respect.

The final word

Strategic restraint is powerful, but only when used with intention. Taken too far, it becomes opacity. If people never know where you stand, they can’t trust your leadership. The goal should never be complete silence, it’s timing. The mark of a mature leader is knowing when a relationship can hold truth without breaking.

Leadership influence isn’t built by those who speak first or speak loudest. It’s earned by those who listen longest, reveal carefully, and time their truth for when it can do the most good. Kuran showed how fear distorts truth; Voss and Karrass showed how empathy, silence, and reason restore it. For CIOs leading complex change, the same principle applies: say less, learn more, and let others discover the truth with you.