You're Making It all Up: Miss Val Turns the Tables on Foster Mobley

Oct 28

Here's something your brain would prefer you didn't know: most of what you "know" about the people around you, you made up. A colleague goes quiet in a meeting, and you've already decided they're annoyed. A direct report misses a deadline, and the story writes itself. Foster has a phrase for this, borrowed from a training he took decades ago. We are meaning-making machines. We grab a scrap of data and build a house on it.

That instinct kept our ancestors alive. It is also, as Foster puts it, helpful right up until it isn't. And it stops being helpful the moment we fill in the blanks instead of asking.

This episode flips the usual script. Valorie Kondos Field, Miss Val to everyone who has ever met her, sat Foster down in her living room in Pacific Grove, California, and took the interviewer's chair. Her subject: Leadershit: Rethinking the True Path to Great Leading, the book Foster published 15 years ago.

who is the wise man?

When Foster sat down to write in 2011, he did some math. Roughly 277,000 books on leadership already existed. He had no interest in becoming one more. So he wrote an allegory: a 114-mile backpacking trip with a mysterious wise man who teaches through seven tales.

The wise man felt real enough that readers still ask Foster where they can find him. Val was one of them. When she learned he was fiction, she was, in her words, pissed off. She'd wanted to meet him.

He was based on someone, though. Foster met him at a sweat lodge ceremony in Seattle, held to honor the daughter of dear friends who had died unexpectedly. A grizzled, bearded man of no clear age ran the ceremony with such intentional movement and care that Foster never forgot him. In the book, he became the wise man.

The lesson in the choice is simple. People forget frameworks. They remember stories.

Fear, Noise, and the Urge to Play It Safe

Val asked about the blockages the wise man talks about. Foster didn't hesitate: fear. Fear of letting go. Fear of trying and failing. Fear of not looking good.

His read is that most of us build accomplished lives on top of some early message that never quite worked. When Foster resists a risk, it's rarely because he ran the numbers. It's because some childhood voice said be safe, hang back, let others talk.

Then there's noise: other people's opinions, controversy, the background roar that gets loud enough to change how you act. Foster admits that as the founder of FMG Leading, there were stretches when he played it down the middle because the noise got too big. Today the firm is drawing bolder lines, and he's glad.

Miss Val pushed back with a question. Is the noise actually a gift? Foster's answer: it can be, if you treat it that way.

It's In There

After decades of coaching CEOs, Foster noticed a problem. When people asked what he believed about leadership, he quoted Michael Porter. Tom Peters. Whoever came to mind. A friend finally asked what he believed, and he had nothing ready.

What he eventually landed on, he calls the Prego theory of leading. Remember the old commercials? Basil? It's in there. Garlic? It's in there. Leadership works the same way. We are born knowing how to connect. Nobody teaches a baby to be present.

So why do so many leaders struggle with presence? Because life piles stuff on top of it. Foster's own teachers were his kids. For years he gave his career everything and brought home whatever was left in the tank. His children, as they grew, taught him how to listen, how to be present, how to get out of his own way.

When people ask him how to become a better leader now, his answer is three words: go do your work. Therapy. Meditation. A walk in nature. Whatever clears the stream. Because after seven decades on the planet, here's what he's figured out: the soul thinks at a much slower pace than the brain. Algorithms can make decisions. Connection takes depth, and depth takes time.

The Empty House

One of the seven tales follows two hikers who stumble on an empty house. They see a few objects lying around and immediately start inventing the story of who lived there. Human nature, Foster says. And leaders under pressure are especially good at it: scant data, a fast narrative, a confident decision.

The teachable moment here has a research backstory. Organizational psychologist Chris Argyris called this the "ladder of inference," the mental staircase we climb from a sliver of observable data to assumptions to conclusions to action, usually without noticing we've left the ground floor. The tale of the empty house is the same idea, wrapped in a story you'll remember.

Ask More. Tell Less.

Foster describes a continuum. On one end sits advocacy: telling. On the other sits inquiry: asking. Most leaders, especially younger ones, assume mastery lives on the telling end. Foster thinks it lives on the asking end.

That's when Val started laughing. Years ago, newly retired, she asked Foster whether she should go into executive coaching. His answer: "Probably not for you, because you're better at telling."

She wasn't offended. She heard it. And ever since, when she's working with athletes or anyone else, she hears his voice: stop telling them what to do, and find the question that helps them figure it out. The irony is that asking is how she learned to coach in the first place. Val was a ballet dancer, not a gymnast. She asked a hundred questions a day. Then she became the leader, and suddenly she had all the answers.

Foster frames the tension as push versus pull. Pushing gets compliance. Pulling (setting a vision, asking a question, drawing people in) gets people fired up. And one fired-up direct report, Foster says, is worth far more than a compliant one.

What the Wise Man Taught Foster

Val saved her best question for last. What did the wise man teach Foster about himself?

That his voice mattered. That he didn't need to lean on the giants whose shoulders he stood on. That he had something of his own to contribute.

The title proved it. One of the firm's largest clients at the time, based in the Bible Belt, refused to buy the book because they found the name profane. Foster took that moment as clarity, not a reason to retreat. Yes, he was going to call it that. And yes, his voice was worth using.

Here's What Works

Catch yourself filling in blanks. When you feel a story forming about someone, swap the conclusion for a question.
Practice observation without meaning. Notice what's there. Hold off on what it means.
Move one step toward inquiry. In your next conversation, ask before you tell.
Go do your work. Find the practice that slows you down enough for the soul to catch up with the brain.

You already have what it takes to lead well. It's in there. The work is clearing the way to it.

More From Foster Mobley

Foster Mobley is an executive coach, author, and founder of FMG Leading. He has worked inside organizations since 1980, with CEOs since 1984, and with athletic leaders since around 2000. Leadershit: Rethinking the True Path to Great Leading is available at fostermobley.com. His next book, Honoring, an approach to leading in a tumultuous world, opens for presale in 2027.

More From Miss Val

Valorie Kondos Field led UCLA women's gymnastics for 29 years and won seven NCAA titles, despite never having competed in gymnastics herself. A former professional ballet dancer, she is now a leadership speaker and the author of Life Is Short, Don't Wait to Dance. If you've ever wondered whether you need to be the expert to lead the experts, start there.

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