Insights
Silence is Communication
When leaders stay silent during organizational change, teams fill the information vacuum with worst-case assumptions. This triggers the brain's threat response, particularly around certainty - one of five domains in David Rock's SCARF model. Effective leaders communicate about uncertainty itself: acknowledge what's unknown, share what they do know, explain how decisions are being made, set update cadence, and give teams actionable steps.
Why Your Team Won't Say No
Stop thinking psychological safety is some touchy-feely HR initiative. It's your organizational immune system. When your team's immune system is strong, problems surface early. Course corrections happen naturally. Disasters get prevented, not managed. When it's weak? People retreat into survival mode. Your team is constantly calibrating: "What happens when I speak up here?" The answer to that question, accumulated over dozens of small interactions, determines whether they'll save your next big initiative or watch it burn.
The Million-Dollar Miscommunication
The best teams don't assume less—they confirm more. They've built a culture where asking "What do you mean by that?" isn't seen as incompetence but as professionalism. Next time you catch yourself making assumptions, try this: "Let me confirm what I'm hearing..." It's the simplest way to turn workplace fiction into workplace facts.
Communication & Team Connection: Building Trust Through Better Relationships
Every team is a collection of unique perspectives, communication styles, and working preferences. What looks like a simple conversation to one person might feel overwhelming to another. The challenge isn't having different viewpoints—it's creating the shared language and understanding that allows these diverse minds to collaborate effectively
The Icebreaker Police
"It's an icebreaker!" the engineer announced. For the third time.
Instead of asking "What do you do?" I asked "What do you love about what you do?"
That's when our self-appointed icebreaker detective felt compelled to blow my cover. Multiple times.
The Hidden Constraints of Communication
We might already be dealing with invisible communication constraints every day. Maybe it's assumptions we make about shared knowledge, specialized jargon that excludes others, or organizational silos that prevent open dialogue.
Communication is challenging enough when we can be direct. Add in artificial constraints, and it becomes a complex dance of trying to get what you need while staying within boundaries you can't even mention.
Use the Contra Code to Level Up Your Team
In today's knowledge economy, no role exists in isolation. Your success is interconnected with adjacent teams and roles – both up and down the organizational hierarchy. Like the Contra code itself, success requires understanding patterns and sequences that might not be immediately obvious.?
Do You Have “That Guy” on Your Team?
Have you had this discussion with your team? Are they holding people accountable in ways you are unaware of?Here’s a tip - Have a theoretical conversation on what it takes to be a good teammate. Have the team list out qualities and agree on a top 5 . If there is an issue on your team, a “quality” will be surfaced that is being broken.
The Hidden Complexity of Team Communcation
When it comes to team communication, things are often more complex than they appear. Just like adding an ingredient to soup changes every bite, adding a new person to a team changes every group interaction. This complexity scales quickly and can become challenging to manage without the right tools and strategies.
Hierarchy of Communication Challenges: Unveiling the Layers
Effective communication is often cited as the cornerstone of successful organizations. However, communication issues are typically symptoms of deeper, underlying challenges. By understanding these layers hierarchically, companies can pinpoint where true communication challenges lie and address them more effectively. Let's explore this hierarchy and uncover the root causes of communication breakdowns.
Solving for Conflict in Teams
I have found that through the many workshops I have done, that MOST of the time, when everyone gets a chance to share their wants and needs, it's not all that hard to build out win-win scenarios. Everyone needs to slow down, define the problem clearly, and flush out all perspectives. Once the nuance of the situation is unearthed, it's simple to see the higher level solution.
Navigating Territorial Expertise in Teams
Imagine a department is represented by physical territory. When someone represents a department, they are a representing the whole territory. Basic expectations, norms, communication modalities and even how the mission, vision, and values show up can be vastly different in each territory. As organizations get larger, so can the variance between these territories.