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 →

• The most important conversation happening inside your company right now
• Why your best people have already made the decision before you see it coming
• What 15 years of exit conversations taught me that no leadership book ever could

Read Time < 4 minutes

They Were Always Talking. Nobody Was Listening.

I want to tell you about a conversation I've had thousands of times.

It goes like this…

Someone calls me. High performer. Smart. Accomplished. Usually someone their company would describe as a "key person." And somewhere in the first ten minutes, after we've gotten past the resume and the logistics, the real conversation starts.

And what I hear…

It's never what you'd expect.

It's rarely "I hate my boss." It's rarely "the pay isn't enough."

It's something quieter, more specific, and honestly…more heartbreaking.

"I stopped speaking up a while ago. Nobody really wanted to hear it."

"I've been carrying my team for two years. I'm just….tired."

"I don't know what I'm actually supposed to decide versus what I'm supposed to bring to them. So I just wait."

"I used to know if I was doing a good job. Now I genuinely have no idea."

I listened to these stories for a long, long, long time.

The Most Expensive Conversation No One Is Having

This is what I want you to hear today…. clearly… because this took me 15 years to fully understand…

Those people weren’t failing.

The ENVIRONMENT was failing them.

Every single one of those conversations — every frustrated high performer, every burned-out manager, every quietly disengaged leader on their way out the door — was sending a signal about the system they were operating inside.

I just didn’t have the language for it yet.

I was collecting data for 15 years without realizing it. (Funny how that works.)

Because I was the recruiter. I was the one who got the call after the decision was already made. After the resignation was drafted. After the best person in the room had already given up on the idea that things could change.

I got the confession. Not the warning.

And that gap, the one between the warning nobody heard and the confession that came too late, that’s where millions of dollars in lost productivity, lost knowledge, lost momentum just… disappears.

Quietly.

Every single year.

What I Finally Understood

The leaders I worked with weren’t bad people. They weren’t even bad leaders (most of them).

They just never heard what I heard.

They never sat across from their best operator while she explained, in a voice so careful it was almost polite, that she stopped offering ideas six months ago because the last time she did, nothing happened and nobody said why.

They never heard the VP who told me he’d been “accountable” for a major initiative for two years but genuinely wasn’t sure if he had permission to make the call if it came down to it.

They never heard the high performer who said (and I will never forget this) “I used to be so proud of my work here. Now I just… complete tasks.”

Complete tasks.

That’s what happens to someone who used to care deeply about what they were building.

And here’s why I’m so convicted…. the signal is always there. The warning always comes before the confession. Leaders just don’t always know what to listen for.

I spent 15 years collecting those signals, and I’m finally doing something with them.

Now It's Your Turn:

Question #1: Think about the last person who left your company or your team that surprised you. Looking back, were there signals you missed? What do you think they were trying to tell you that never made it to the surface?

Question #2: This one requires you to be honest with yourself. Is there someone on your team right now who has gone quieter than they used to be? What’s that about? Have you approached them with a caring, open heart to find out?

Be honest, because the most expensive conversation in most organizations is the one that stopped happening a long time ago.

How about someone you know who leads a team…could they use this today? Forward it their way. Many of us are managing people right now without ever having been given the signal-reading tools to understand what we’re actually seeing.

And when we know better, we do better.

More on what those signals actually mean (and what to do when you see them) coming next week.

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.

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