Last month, I was enjoying the remarkably good crab cake and poached eggs at Just for You Café in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, when I overheard a mentoring session taking place at the next table. I recognized the mentor as the famous, fifty-something ex-CEO of a household-brand Internet company; the mentee, I pieced together, was the twenty-something CEO of an app on my phone that had raised over $70 million in VC cash.

“My leadership team just gave me anonymous feedback,” Young CEO told Famous CEO. “One thing they said was that I’m not open to being questioned.”

“Are you?” Famous CEO asked.

“Yes!” Young CEO insisted. “After every conversation with my team and every all-hands, I always ask if there are any questions or concerns.”

“Let me guess,” Famous CEO said. “No one ever has any.”

“Right,” the mentee reflected. “Maybe I should hold office hours where people can raise concerns privately?”

“I used to do that,” Famous CEO said. “But here’s what happens. People come in, they talk to you about some important issue, and you give your thoughts. Then they go back to their teams and say, ‘The CEO said ___,’ and they lord your words over colleagues as a weapon. So I stopped doing that.”

“So what should I do?”

By this point, the mentee wasn’t the only one interested in the answer. In my work with CEOs and executive teams around strategic narrative, I often have a similar need—as anyone does who leads groups—to quickly take the pulse in the room.

“Take notes on this,” Famous CEO said. “Because I’m going to tell you what Steve Jobs did, which was related to me by the late [Apple board member] Bill Campbell.”

I ordered another crab cake.