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This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.

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Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.

What We Don't Say

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by Ken Roden

5.0(2 reviews)

14 episodes

Updated Daily

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Podcast Overview

Most accomplished people have two versions of their story. The one on LinkedIn. And the real one. What We Don't Say is where senior leaders: VPs, C-suite executives, leaders, share the version they don't tell anywhere else. The career zigzags. The personal struggles happening behind the professional wins. The doubt that never went away no matter how high they got. No prep. No talking points. Just honest conversation about what actually happened. Hosted by Ken Roden — VP, Doctoral candidate, and someone who's been in enough rooms to know what people aren't saying.

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Publishing Since

10/8/2025

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Recent Episodes

May 8, 2026

Stop Fixing Yourself. Find the Right Room

Stop Fixing Yourself. Find the Right Room. | Liza Adams, Part 1Liza Adams spent her whole career being the person who shares. Ideas, connections, credit. In the right rooms, that made her invaluable. In the wrong ones, people assumed she had an angle. "What does she want? What is she positioning for?" As if generosity at work always has to be a move.She didn't figure this out from a book. She figured it out by living through both versions. CMO role, acquired out from under her. Job market that wasn't hiring. And a quiet realization that the thing she kept trying to fix about herself was never the problem.This is Part 1 of my conversation with Liza. She's an AI advisor and GTM strategist now, but this episode isn't about AI. It's about what happens when your best instinct keeps getting punished, and what shifts when you stop asking "what's wrong with me?" and start asking "am I in the right room?"Liza also reframes something I think a lot of leaders carry quietly. She stopped saying "they ignored me" and started saying "I allowed that." That's a small shift in language. It changes a lot about what you do next.<ul><li>Your natural style isn't the problem. The environment that punishes it is. Knowing the difference changes every decision after it.</li><li>"I allowed myself to be snuffed" is a different sentence than "they snuffed me." One keeps you stuck. The other gives you something to work with.</li><li>Liza picked her entire career from a magazine list at 16, pivoted out of engineering in 18 months, and made it to CMO. The throughline wasn't a plan. It was knowing when to walk toward the crack that opened.</li></ul>

April 24, 2026

He Asked 9 Executives to Name the Company's Goals. He Got 74 Answers. | Jeff Miller

A CEO rattled off three company goals without hesitation. Then Jeff Miller interviewed nine executives on the same team and collected 74 different answers. That gap between what leaders assume and what teams actually understand is the throughline of this conversation.Jeff Miller is a leadership coach and organizational advisor who works inside executive teams to surface misalignment before it becomes dysfunction. In Part 3 of his conversation with Ken, he breaks down why collaboration fails at work (and traces it back to how conflict was handled in elementary school), shares the framework he uses to move teams from chaos to commitment, and gets personal about risk, regret, and the advice he gives at every career stage.He also shares the story behind the Jester and Farley Fund, a nonprofit founded in memory of his childhood best friend, David Saltzman, who wrote and illustrated a children's book while battling Hodgkin's disease at Yale.3 Specific Realizations:<ul><li>The reason most executive teams can't align isn't strategic disagreement. It's that no one verified whether they were even talking about the same goals.</li><li>Jeff traces workplace collaboration failure to a specific pattern: when kids fought in group work, teachers separated them instead of teaching them to resolve it. That gap never gets closed.</li><li>He went eight years without a day off and doesn't call it a regret. He calls it a wish, which says something different about how high performers process cost.</li></ul>This is Part 3 of a multi-part series with Jeff Miller. Link to the Jester and Farley Fund in the show notes.

April 9, 2026

Why the Best Boss You Ever Had Made You Uncomfortable

Most people have had a boss they didn't fully appreciate while they were there. The one who said the thing everyone else was too careful to say. Jeff Miller has spent a career trying to understand why that kind of feedback is so rare, and what it costs people when they never get it.Jeff is a partner at Door2 and a longtime coach to leaders navigating the gap between how work looks and how it actually feels. This is Part 2 of our conversation. Part 1 is worth going back for, but this one stands on its own.We talk about how to ask for feedback without sounding like you want reassurance, why "soft skills" is a name that undersells the hardest work in most organizations, and what it means to define success when the marker keeps moving and you're a few years from 60.Near the end, Jeff got a Facebook message from a sixth-grade student he taught in 1995. Thirty years later. What that person said is worth staying for.Three things from this conversation:<ul><li>Asking "how am I doing?" is too big a question for someone with 80,000 things going on. Asking for feedback on three specific things changes the whole transaction.</li><li>"Soft" doesn't mean weak. It means the skill changes depending on who's in front of you. That's what makes it hard.</li><li>The best boss most people ever had was someone they didn't fully appreciate at the time, because that person said the thing everyone else was too careful to say.</li></ul>

14 total episodes available

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Frequently asked questions

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What is What We Don't Say?: Most accomplished people have two versions of their story. The one on LinkedIn. And the real one.

What We Don't Say is where senior leaders: VPs, C-suite executives, leaders, share the version they don't tell anywhere else.

The career zigzags. The personal struggles happening behind the professional wins. The doubt that never went away no matter how high they got.

No prep. No talking points. Just honest conversation about what actually happened.

Hosted by Ken Roden — VP, Doctoral candidate, and someone who's been in enough rooms to know what people aren't saying.
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates daily.
Where can I listen to this podcast?: This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
Does this podcast accept guests?: Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.

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