Your Peak of the Week
Hey Reader,
Welcome back to Peak of the Week — where we talk about what it really takes to perform at your best. As a person. As a leader. And increasingly, as an organization.
This Week →
- 15 years of conversations suddenly made complete sense
- What I noticed the first time I coached inside a leadership team
- What silence inside an organization is actually costing you
Read Time 4-5 minutes
I Had Always Been On The Wrong Side Of The Door
For 15 years, I got the “after story”, when it was too late.
The call that came after someone had already decided to leave. The coffee that happened after the resignation was drafted. The conversation that started with “I’ve been thinking about this for a while now…” — meaning months, sometimes years, of something quietly breaking before it ever reached me.
I was the recruiter. I lived in the “after”.
And I was good at it. I could sit across from someone and within twenty minutes understand what they wanted next and what they’d been carrying for years that they hadn’t said out loud to anyone.
People just share so many things with me…
So much that I could fill up several books of stories, but I won't. Instead, I kept it all confidential.
The thing is, I couldn’t go back inside. I couldn’t take what I heard — all of it, 30,000 conversations worth — and walk it back through the door and say “this is what’s actually happening in your organization right now. This is what your best people are sitting with that will never make it to your desk.”
I just had the after. Never the before.
Until a few months ago.
What I Saw In That Room
A few months ago, I was sitting with a leadership team. Actually inside the room this time….doing the work of understanding how this particular group made decisions together, where things moved and where they stalled.
About forty-five minutes in, I heard something.
Something I had heard before. Dozens of times. Hundreds of times. But always on the other side…always in the after, always in the coffee shop, always in the voice of someone who had already given up on the idea that things could change.
A senior leader. Careful with his words. Smart. Capable. And underneath the professional composure, something so familiar I could have predicted exactly what was coming next.
He had something real to say.
And he didn’t say it.
He’d learned over time, through a hundred small moments where full honesty cost more than staying quiet, that this wasn’t a room where the real thing got said.
So he held it in.
And I sat there thinking…
I have talked to the version of this person who left. I know exactly that aching feeling. I know exactly how this story ends.
What That Silence Actually Costs
And here's what I want you to hear today…. clearly… because this is what drives me mad…
That moment when the senior leader holds back saying what’s really on their mind, the truth… that's not just a communication problem.
That's a business problem.
Because what he was holding might have been the solution to something the leadership team had been circling for six months. Might have been an early warning sign that a client relationship was about to fracture. Might have been the idea that changes the trajectory of how the whole team operates.
Gone, because the room hadn't been designed for that kind of truth.
And it's happening in most organizations. Every single day.
The project that goes sideways in month eight, when someone saw it coming in month two and didn't feel safe saying so. The strategy that gets built in the boardroom without the most important information, because the people who hold that information have learned their voice doesn't change anything. The high performer who starts doing just enough, because they have stopped believing their full contribution is wanted.
This is what I mean when I say the cost isn't just turnover.
Turnover is the part you can measure.
The lost creativity, the buried ideas, the problems that surface too late, the people who are physically present and mentally somewhere else — that's the part that never shows up on a spreadsheet.
And it is SO much more expensive.
I can confidently say that after 15 years of being trusted with the real version of people's professional lives, the signal was almost always there. Long before anyone left. Long before performance dropped. Long before the breakdown, it was undeniable.
Leaders just didn't know what to listen for.
That Was All For Me
I drove home from that session and something clicked.
The accumulation. The pattern recognition built across 30,000 career conversations with people finally saying the real thing.
That was all for me. I can see that now.
Because I walked into that room carrying something very specific: the after. I know what your people will say when they finally stop performing and start telling the truth. I can see the distance between where a team is today and where that conversation lives… the one you'll never hear until it's too late.
That's a very specific thing to be able to see.
I used to wish I could have gotten further upstream. Inside organizations instead of waiting for the fallout.
Turns out I was collecting data the whole time.
I just didn't know what I was building yet.
Now It's Your Turn:
Question #1: Think about your last team meeting. Who in that room has something real to say and isn't saying it? Can you spot it happening, and what do you think created that?
Question #2: Now, this one requires you to be really honest. Pick one problem your team is currently circling — something that keeps coming up without resolution. Is it actually unsolvable? Or is the real information about it sitting with someone who hasn't felt safe enough to say it out loud yet?
Be honest, because the most expensive thing in most organizations isn't the people who leave. It's the ones who stay and stop giving everything they’ve got.
Know a leader who's been circling the same problem for longer than makes sense? Forward this their way. Sometimes the issue isn't strategy. It's that the real conversation hasn't happened yet.
When we know better, we do better.
With belief in our collective rise, one person at a time,
Laura
P.S. — If any of this resonates and you want to talk about what this could look like inside your team or company, book time here.
P.P.S. — If you’re looking for individual support, I work with a small number of people one-on-one. Book an activation session and let’s get into it. Book here.