What I Learned Singing RESPECT in a Room Full of Strangers

And Other Lessons from My First Time Teaching the Say This Thing Framework

I made 100 folders for my first-ever speaking event.

Handouts, worksheets, space for notes. The whole thing. I like paper. I like having something in my hands I can come back to later. I threw them together at the last minute (ask anyone close to me, that's how I work) and figured a few extra couldn't hurt.

We ran out and had just barely enough for every attendee.

That's not a humble brag. It's me telling you there's a hunger for a different way to talk about hard things. At the end of July I got to feed it a little, teaching the Say This Thing framework at my first Rural Peer Group Conference.

Walking Into the Room

I won't pretend I wasn't nervous. First peer group conference, first time presenting this framework to a room. I had a plan, tweaked it that morning, and delivered what I hoped would land.

It landed.

What I didn't expect was how much of the value came from the people in the room. The conversations happened between attendees as much as they happened because of the framework. People new to the space and people with a lot of gray hair, all connected by the same thread: recovering from something, and helping others do the same. Some clinicians, some not.

My own recovery journey is where I learned this work. The conversation you're avoiding with your director, your manager, your coworker, or your sister, it all runs on the same wiring.

Early on I asked why they'd chosen this session. The answers all rhymed:

"This is something I'm going through right now." "I want to learn how to have conversations differently."

If you've ever avoided a conversation because you didn't know how to start it, you're in good company.

The Part Everyone Struggles With

The hardest part of the framework, for almost everyone in the room, wasn't saying the hard thing itself.

It was figuring out what they needed in order to make the request.

We talk a lot about "just be direct" like it's simple advice. It's not. Before you can say the thing, you have to know what you're asking for. That takes more self-reflection than most of us give it credit for.

One woman named it for the whole room: she knew what was bothering her, and had no idea what she wanted the other person to do about it. She'd been waiting for him to work out what she needed. Once she sat with the question, the complaint she'd been carrying for months turned into a request she could say in one sentence. 

Work conversations add a wrinkle. As one person put it: sometimes the competency isn't there but the passion is. That's a real conundrum, and how it lands depends on how much trust you've already built with the person across from you.

Say the Thing, Then Leave the Door Open

Here's the one that stuck with me: the framework is "say the thing, and leave the door open for what comes next." No mic drop.

That took me a while to learn. A hard conversation is the start of something ongoing. When people in that room finally had theirs, the person on the other end was almost always open, almost always grateful, and almost always said some version of please don't wait this long to bring it up again. Avoidance usually costs us more than the conversation would have.

By the end, everyone had drafted a real conversation they need to have: a real person, a real ask, a real date. Written down, with a plan.

Someone in that room also said people are doing the best they can with what they have to offer right now. That rearranged something for me. Almost nobody is showing up with bad intentions, even when the impact lands like they did. Most of the time they're out of what you needed, and they don't know it.

I still catch myself building a case before a hard conversation. Motive, pattern, evidence. The case is usually wrong, and it makes me say the thing worse. Believing the better version doesn't excuse the impact. It just makes it lighter to carry in the door.

Oh, and Yes, I Sang R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Hard conversations are an act of mutual respect. That was the point I was making when the word respect came out of my mouth and kept going. I sang it, to a room of strangers, at my first speaking event. Apparently it looked like something I do all the time (I don't). It made me start wondering about sober karaoke and what that would even look like. If you know, tell me.

Small moments like that are why the room felt safe enough for the real work. Most of the learning didn't come from me. It came from people recognizing their own struggle in someone else's story.

I say this every time I teach this: you know yourself best. Take what resonates, modify it, make it work. Frameworks are suggestions, not scripts.

If you've been putting off a conversation, here's the truth from a room full of people who've been there. It's rarely as bad as the anticipation of it, and waiting just moves the "I wish you'd told me sooner" conversation later than it needed to.

You don't need permission to say the thing. You need a place to start.

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Bring Say The Thing to Your Team

"I face this every day." "I need to learn how to not avoid conflict." That's what people told me when I asked why they picked this session. Every group I've worked with has somebody sitting on a conversation they don't know how to start, and usually more than one.

I teach this as a working session, not a talk. Everybody leaves with one real conversation drafted: a real person, a real ask, a real date. It fits peer groups, project teams, clinical teams, leadership offsites, and any staff that has spent months quietly routing around each other.

I'm booking Q1 dates now. More details about the program can be found here.

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