The Knowledge Gap
My mom and I were at the farmers market last weekend and sampling coconut water from a little stand. The woman running it mentioned they import the coconuts from Thailand every week. My mom immediately laughed and said, "you must be getting hit hard with tariffs!"
The woman looked at her blankly. "What are tariffs?"
My mom and I looked at each other.
I immediately wondered...how can she not know what tariffs are?! I wondered if the tariffs actually didn't hit on Thai food product imports...or maybe this woman wasn't the owner of the brand, just working the stand? Maybe she genuinely has no idea about the supply chain...also, are these coconuts even from Thailand? Is this just a marketing story with coconut water from Costco?!
I thought about it for the rest of the day, wondering about the knowledge gap between different circles and spaces.
π§ Inside This Issue
If you're new here, ππ½ welcome!
This is The Messy Middle, a newsletter about the leadership journey no one tells you about. I'm Arshiya Kherani, an executive and founder coach & speaker, and I write about the things most people skip in professional spaces: identity shifts, the hard work of building something honest in public, and what it actually takes to lead with intention when life is anything but clear.
This week: tariffs, who's actually feeling them, and what that has to do with leadership.
π Who Has This Top of Mind, And Who Doesn't
In 2026, tariffs are anything but an abstract policy debate. Outside of feeling the cost of every little thing doubling at the grocery store week over week in my own tiny household, my client base talks about tariffs all day long.
In my network, jewelry and clothing founders sourcing from parts of Asia are facing up to 50% increases in import costs. Some food brands are getting hit even harder, facing tariffs up to 70%! The questions I'm hearing are not theoretical, they're existential. Will my margins survive this? Do I raise prices and lose customers? Does my company go under? How do I even forecast around this?
But it's not just founders. Employees are watching their companies make decisions they don't fully understand. Managers are being asked to absorb budget cuts without context. Senior leaders are sitting in board meetings where tariff exposure is suddenly on the agenda and they're expected to have a point of view. People at every level of every organization are being quietly affected by something most of them were never taught to think about.
These are people who built careers, teams, and businesses before this very big shift in global economics, who are now trying to navigate a level of uncertainty that changes week to week. And they are exhausted.
So when I'm standing at a farmers market on a Saturday and someone doesn't know what a tariff is, it clicked: how differently this moment is landing depending on where you sit.
That's the thing about economic disruption. It doesn't hit everyone at the same time or in the same way. Some people are in crisis mode. Some people are reading headlines. Some people are sampling coconut water with no idea the ground is shifting under entire industries.
And I want to be careful here because I don't think ignorance is the same as not caring. But there is a kind of privilege that lets certain people opt out of understanding how economic policy lands on real people. If your business isn't import-dependent, if your team isn't asking hard questions yet, if you've never had to think about where your products come from or what it costs to get them here...tariffs can feel like a news story and not a survival question.
That opt-out is a leadership blind spot. I was in a room recently with a senior leader who had no idea that three people on her team were quietly terrified about their jobs because of supply chain disruption in their industry. She hadn't thought to address tariffs proactively with her team, assuming everyone felt stable.
Your proximity to the problem shapes what you think to ask. And if you're not checking your assumptions, you won't even know what you're missing.
π What This Has To Do With How You Lead
This is actually one of the most underrated leadership skills: knowing who in your organization is carrying a weight you can't see yet.
The most effective leaders I work with don't wait for the crisis to surface. They proactively share information with their team, and ask questions before they assume shared context. They understand that the person across the table from them might be operating from a completely different reality because their proximity to the problem is different, and the company culture isn't exposing them to their knowledge gap.
π‘ Try this: Start 1:1 meetings with one question you haven't been asking. Not "how is everyone doing," that's too easy to answer politely. Try something more specific: "What's feeling uncertain about your role right now?" In a larger team meeting, it's always great to set the tone yourself. You could say something like, "I've been thinking about how the economic uncertainty is affecting our work and I want to make space to talk about it." When the leader goes first, it sets the team culture around being vulnerable, or even agreeing that this topic is top of mind.
Whether it's tariffs or organizational politics or the unwritten rules of getting promoted, the leaders who close that gap, for themselves and for their teams, are the ones who actually move things forward.
β Come Think Out Loud With Me
This is exactly the kind of thing that doesn't get said out loud enough in professional spaces: who's struggling, what nobody's addressing, what we're all assuming about each other.
The *FIRST-EVER* Kismet Coffee Hour on April 30th is a free virtual gathering for senior leaders to have productive conversations about topics like this. This month's theme is The Promotion Gap, designed for leaders with 8+ years of experience, especially those who are recently promoted or managing people who are.
π₯¨ Snacks
The Promotion Gap: Disengaged employees cost the global economy $438 billion last year, according to Gallup. Catch the full LinkedIn Live where Sophia Mikelionis and I dig into why it happens and what to do about it.
β Chai Chats: Episode 2 is live with the thing people don't tell you when you're hiring...
π» On WFH: Emma Grede is out to get us...or is she right?! Is WFH lethal for ambitious women? Personally, I think her take is a little outdated...but I'd love to hear what you think π
π§ Life Hack: I was today years old when I learned I've been using a cheese grater wrong my whole life.
π©° The 90s Are Back: And I don't hate these peep toe jellies....
See you in next week's mess!
Arshiya
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