Expanding Agency Book Club & Insights from "Getting Naked"

For years, the Barrel leadership team has read books together. When I moved into the CEO role, I continued the practice.

As I was selecting books in Q4, I asked myself: why isolate this to leadership?

So I created a couple of book clubs across the agency. Yesterday was our first session reflecting on "Getting Naked" by Patrick Lencioni, the book I chose for our client services and growth team.

I first read this years ago. Revisiting it, I realized how much it shaped how I show up today. On client calls, in tough conversations, in how I think about trust. That's what I love about books. You take what you need in the moment and sometimes don't realize the impact until much later. The more you read, the more ideas compound. And reading as a team compounds even further. It creates a shared language people can reference and build on together.

I chose this book because so much of agency work comes down to trust. Lencioni frames trust-building in a way that challenges the instincts most service professionals develop over time. The instinct to protect, to posture, to always have the answer.

Insights from our conversation:

Ask the questions no one wants to ask. When a client says they need X, the real issue is often something else. Our best outcomes come from slowing down and asking "why" before jumping to solutions.

Don't pretend to know more than you do. When you nod along to something you don't understand, it catches up with you. The vulnerability of saying "can you explain that?" builds more trust than faking expertise ever will.

Enter the danger zone. When there's tension on a call, the instinct is to get quiet. The better move is to name it. Calling it out moves things forward faster than letting it fester.

Consult, don't sell. Clients don't choose partners because of a polished pitch. They choose partners who seem more interested in understanding their problems than closing the deal.

Tell the kind truth. Being naked doesn't mean being reckless. It means having the courage to say what needs to be said with genuine care. Push back when a direction isn't right. Own mistakes openly. Always from a place of wanting the best outcome, not proving you're right.

Bad clients are worse than no clients. One nightmare client can wipe out the margins and energy of nine great ones. Learning when to walk away is just as important as learning how to win.

It's never easy to carve 90 minutes out of a busy team's schedule. But there's real power in zooming out and thinking together about how we want to show up. The energy yesterday made it clear this was time well spent.

Looking forward to many more of these.