When Leaders Can’t Hear the Truth: The High Cost of Organisational Immaturity

Last year, I was hired to advise a regional membership body on its ambition to reposition as a UK-wide national entity. It was a pivotal moment for them, or at least, it could have been. They were facing strategic drift, internal friction, and a tired value proposition. What they needed was clarity, insight, and a roadmap forward.

What they got was a mirror. And they didn’t like what they saw.

I spent several months consulting widely. There had been no formal brief, so I scoped the project in consultation with a group of members, a group who had no idea how they’d been selected or why they were there. Still, we forged ahead, agreed a structure for the work, and I proceeded accordingly.

What I found won’t surprise anyone familiar with legacy membership organisations attempting transformation without first confronting their foundations:

• A confused identity, uncertain about what it offered or to whom.

• A culture of internal politics and posturing.

• Staff who were stressed, burnt out, and unclear about priorities.

• Egos jostling for influence, often at the expense of clarity or purpose.

• A leadership team keen to expand nationally, but without addressing the dysfunctions that made local delivery difficult in the first place.

My report was structured, evidenced, and solution-focused. It covered value proposition, organisational design, business development, and internal culture. It wasn’t designed to provoke, only to inform.

But when I presented my draft report to the CEO, he terminated my contract.

No discussion. No questions. Just a blunt statement: “This isn’t what I wanted.”

Except here’s the truth, he'd never articulated what he wanted. No brief. No outcomes defined. No KPIs. Only a vague aspiration and a hope that a consultant might quietly affirm it.

Instead, I’d done the work properly, and the results made him uncomfortable.

This CEO was relatively new in post. He had inherited much of the dysfunction I uncovered, and whilst he hadn’t created the problems, he clearly didn’t want to be the one responsible for confronting them either.

Rather than engage with the findings, he discredited them. Worse, he told the Board that I'd failed in my commission. This, despite the fact that several Board members had already been privately briefed on my findings and had expressed agreement. But when it mattered, they stayed silent.

It was, frankly, an act of leadership immaturity. Not just on his part, but theirs too.

Because this isn’t just a story about a consultant being let go. It’s about the cost of organisational denial; about what happens when leaders value comfort over courage; and what it means when CEOs bring in external help, only to ignore the results when it doesn’t align with their preferred narrative.

Let me be clear: none of my recommendations ever have to be adopted, but the work should at least be heard, especially when it's rooted in evidence and built on the very scope you approved.

Too often, organisations in distress engage consultants in the hope of a tidy, external validation of what they already believe. What they don’t want is disruption, critique, or challenge. They want certainty dressed up as strategy, but transformation doesn’t work like that.

You don’t fix a broken culture by pretending it isn’t broken. You don’t expand nationally while your internal team is burnt out and disengaged. And you certainly don’t build trust with your stakeholders by discrediting the people you’ve asked to help.

Leadership means taking responsibility, even for messes you didn’t create. It means being strong enough to hear uncomfortable truths. And it means recognising that sometimes, the insights you need most are the ones you least want to hear.

I’ve worked with many dozens of membership organisations, local, national, and international. I know what good governance looks like. I know how clarity of purpose, healthy culture, and strategic discipline can turn around even the most faltering bodies. And it always starts with this: the ability to face the truth.

If you're a CEO reading this, please understand that telling your consultant “This isn’t what I wanted” might not be an indictment of their work, but rather a flashing red light about your own leadership.

If you're a Board member, when you commission external advice, you have a duty to support transparency and accountability. If someone has the courage to present the uncomfortable, your role isn’t to flinch, it’s to listen.

And if you’re a consultant or a critical friend, know that when you speak the truth, not everyone will thank you. But you didn’t sign up for flattery, you signed up to make things better. Even if it costs you the gig.

Because ultimately, the real failure isn’t hearing bad news, it’s refusing to act on it.