This past summer a couple of other IT executives and I left Austin, Texas, on motorcycles headed for northern Colorado via the back roads of western Texas and New Mexico. This was "middle-aged guy" high adventure complete with a ride to the top of Pikes Peak, on gravel roads with no guardrails, that left us shaky in the knees. (I'm sure it must have been the thin air.)

Road trips like this through small, shabby towns separated by the emptiest stretches you can imagine feature lots of pretty unhealthy "country cookin" and motels so rundown we were grateful our wives hadn't come along. After about three days, we finally pulled into the midsize town of Durango and decided to treat ourselves to the best steak dinner we could find. On the desk clerk's recommendation, we found ourselves seated in what looked like a fairly new place in a strip mall — not terribly busy for a Friday night — with the usual steak house selection and astonishingly high prices. Even more astonishing was that, somehow, the chef managed to ruin the tenderloin I ordered. Ordering a tenderloin is usually a pretty safe bet because they're tender right out of the cow, and preparation is simply a matter of searing it on both sides (and sometimes adding that strip of bacon that nobody eats). But, somehow, someway, Chef Shoemaker managed to transform a filet into a hockey puck, except less tasty than a hockey puck, and he compounded his mistake by stopping by the table to ask us how our meals were.

Don't Ask If You Don't Want to Know

Before I tell you what happened next, I should mention that I've got a fair amount of experience in the restaurant business, having served as CIO for PepsiCo's restaurant divisions, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC and assorted others when they still owned them. As industries go, few are as tough, competitive, hazardous or fickle as the restaurant business — generally, more than 70 percent of new restaurants fail in their first year. Also, according to studies I've seen, customers who have an unsatisfactory meal on their first visit to a new restaurant will not return to try again, on average, for two and a half years, by which time the new restaurant has probably closed.

Ever heard the expression: "Nothing you say will ever teach you anything"? Not true.

I turned to Chef Cinder and calmly and politely said: "This is, without a doubt, the worst filet I've ever had, anywhere." This was followed by a silence so loud it was making the other guys wince. Chef Incendier then mumbled something and walked on to the next table. My travelling companions began glaring at me like I'd just strangled a kitten while I made silent gestures back that said: "What? Was it something I said?"

This was one of those cases where I was clearly right and the chef and my companions clearly wrong. The chef was wrong in that he didn't visit our table because he wanted to know how the meal tasted, he wanted to hear that we liked it. Had I known that, I wouldn't have bothered to speak. It's just one of those things you learn on your way to becoming a CIO and one that managers with less experience trip over all the time. It is the pervasive and persistent misunderstanding among young managers at all levels that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to listen. Getting the message across doesn't depend on articulation, or eloquence or the impeccable logic of your argument, but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. It's absolutely true that your boss, your peers and your team can hear you only when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words have to chase them.

My friends were also wrong in this case, because they thought I was being impolite.

I was being nothing of the sort.