I Told Them! (And Other Leadership Lies) with Jeff Conroy
No More Leadership BS
I Told Them! (And Other Leadership Lies) with Jeff Conroy
October 21, 2026
Saying something and being understood are two very different things. This week the panel takes apart the “I told them” excuse with a warehouse disaster, a furnace that took a week of phone calls to fix and a peanut butter sandwich nobody can make correctly. You’ll hear why accountability falls apart when expectations were never clear. And you’ll walk away with one question that beats “Do you understand?” every time.
You Said It. They Didn’t Hear It.
“Well, I told them what to do.” Every manager has said it. Most have said it this month. This week the panel goes after one of the sneakiest myths in leadership: if the words left your mouth, communication happened. Spoiler alert. It didn’t.

Who Owns the Miss?
An employee finishes a task and it’s wrong. Whose fault is that? The panel mostly lands on the manager, with an asterisk. Communication works like a handshake, and both hands have to show up. The employee should ask questions. The leader has to build a place where asking doesn’t feel like a career risk. Skip that part and people start guessing. Guessing is a terrible strategy.

The New Guy Who Unloaded the Wrong Truck
One of the best stories this season. A first-day seasonal warehouse worker gets told to unload a truck. He notices the packages look sorted and ready to ship, so he asks if he’s got the right one. The answer: “Just do what I say.” Seven very efficient minutes later, the whole line shuts down for 35 minutes while everyone hunts for packages that were already loaded and ready to go. He flagged it. Nobody listened. He did not get invited back.

More Apps, Less Information
Email, texts, Teams, Zoom and a dozen messaging tools. People still say nobody tells them anything. The panel compares two service experiences. One company went silent for days until a very uncomfortable call finally got the owner on the phone. The other walked the customer through every diagnostic step, every option and every price range before anyone had to ask. Same week, same kind of problem, completely different trust level at the end.

“But Everybody Knows That”
They don’t. The panel’s answer to holding people accountable for expectations nobody explained is a flat no. Want proof you’re less clear than you think? Have someone make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich doing exactly what you say. Or feed your instructions to an AI chatbot and watch it run off in a direction you never intended. The moment you get defensive, you stop arguing about what’s right and start arguing about who’s right.

The Bottom Line
Accountability matters. What leaders tolerate becomes the standard. But you can’t hold people to a standard they never understood. Three free fixes come out of this one: be specific about what, who, when and what success looks like. Listen before you defend yourself. And swap “Do you understand?” for “Walk me through what you’re gonna do.”

Tune in for 

You said it. Fine. Now go find out what they heard.


Have questions,  suggestions or just a great story to tell about some Leadership BS you have experienced? Let us know by emailing us 
Today's Featured Coach - 

  • Jeff Conroy - Organizational and Non-profit Expert, Motivational Speaker, Coach -  Executive Leader | Difference Maker for nonprofits in strategic planning, operations, and fundraising and development. Owner/Founder of Conroy Leadership Consulting, LLC. Reach Jeff at jeff@ConroyleadershipConsulting.com or  208-215-6285

The rest of the gang: