The Leadership Gap

From Walk With Me · 21:34

Show by Giovanni Dejesus

Send us Fan MailWhat makes someone a trustworthy leader, and what happens when their words, behavior, and the experience they create stop matching?After the 2026 midterm election, Americans are once again debating what voters want from leadership. Democrats won control of Congress. Progressive and democratic-socialist candidates made notable gains. Cost of living, corruption, presidential power, war, and dissatisfaction with current leadership all factored into the political environment.This episode of Walk With Me isn't about declaring one party good and the other bad.It's about a deeper question:What are we actually looking for when we say we want a leader?Recently, I joined Tina Eliana on Jam Sessions for a conversation about the psychological impact of leadership. One idea from that conversation stayed with me:Leaders often judge themselves by what they meant. The people around them experience their patterns.A leader may genuinely say:“I care about you.”“I want honesty.”“I believe in accountability.”“I fight for you.”But people don't live inside a leader's intentions.They experience what happens when someone disagrees. They notice which promises survive when keeping them becomes inconvenient. They learn what gets rewarded, what gets punished, and what becomes normal.That's the leadership gap:What I intend.What I do.What you experience.In this bonus episode, we explore:• what the 2026 election can, and cannot tell us about leadership• why election results should be treated as feedback rather than one unified message• behavioral integrity and the alignment between a leader's words and actions• what happens when people begin managing an unpredictable leader instead of focusing on the work• why political ideology alone is a poor measure of leadership• the growing appeal of anti-establishment and economically populist candidates• why election winners inherit the same leadership test once they gain power• trust, accountability, transparency, and psychological safety• how to evaluate the influence you're living under• the difference between challenging someone and making honesty unsafe• what your own influence may be teaching the people around youOne of the most important questions in this walk is:Who am I becoming in the presence of this influence?Eventually the mirror turns. Because leadership isn't limited to presidents, CEOs, politicians, pastors, coaches, or people with formal titles. If someone adapts to you, you have influence.So instead of asking only:“Am I a good leader?”try asking:“When people experience my influence, what are they learning they have to become?”More honest?More capable?More courageous?More able to trust themselves?Or simply better at managing you?Research Behind the WalkTony Simons (2002) — “Behavioral Integrity: The Perceived Alignment Between Managers' Words and Deeds as a Research Focus.” Organization Science, 13(1), 18–35.DOI: 10.1287/orsc.13.1.18.543This foundational paper defines behavioral integrity as the perceived alignment between a manager's words and deeds, including promise keeping and consistency between stated and enacted values.Han et al. (2025) — “What now? Defining capricious supervision and examining its impact on employee strain.” Human Relations.DOI: 10.1177/00187267251379398Across multiple employee samples, the researchers examined “capricious supervision”—frequent perceived changes in leaders' decisions and treatment—and its relationship with uncertainty, frustration, emotional exhaustion, sleep quality, and counterproductive behavior.Ann-Kristin Kölln (2026) — “A party's pledge fulfillment and procedural transparency affect voters' trust.” West European Politics.DOI: 10.1080/01402382.2026.2647190This survey experiment found that information about both promise fulfillment and how a party behaves while governing can affect political trust, with negative procedural information carrying especially strong consequences.Huzooree et al. (2026) — “A systematic and causal review of the link between leader-driven psychological safety and work outcomes.” The Leadership Quarterly.DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2026.102011This review challenges overly simple claims that leadership behavior automatically creates psychological safety and improved performance, finding that much of the existing evidence remains correlational or causally indeterminate.Current Election ContextAssociated Press and Reuters reporting on the 2026 midterms informed the election discussion in this episode, including voter concerns about affordability, corruption, the Iran war, presidential power, dissatisfaction with President Trump, Democratic control of Congress, and the gains made by candidates associated with progressive and democratic-socialist movements.The election is used here as a leadership case study, not evidence that all voters shared one motivation or ideology.Original Jam Sessions leadership conversation with Tina Eliana:https://youtu.be/SlyHgpXTQNI?is=-WKvcZ99qRHCmE_cSo here's the question to…

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