Tested Live, Not Just in Theory
Presented at the 2026 Rural Peer Group Conference in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, an event that drew roughly 200 attendees. The session itself filled the room. A hundred printed workbooks went out the door before everyone in it had one.
The Conversation You're Avoiding Is Already Costing You
You let it go once. That's reasonable. It happens again, and you start keeping score. You work around the person instead of with them. Resentment sets in, and it doesn't stay at work. It follows you home, and eventually it stops being a work problem and becomes a health one.
That escalation is quiet enough that most people never notice it happening. If you've rehearsed a conversation more than once and still haven't had it, if you've started warning other people about someone instead of talking to them directly, or if the thing you'd have to say has gotten harder in the last month than it was before, the conversation you're avoiding is already costing you.
The stakes get sharper in high-pressure work where admitting strain gets read as weakness. Most people who hold a team together have already noticed when someone is struggling. What they lack is language for the next sentence.
Is It the Conversation, or the Story You're Telling Yourself?
A handful of sentences keep most people quiet, and one of them is probably yours.
"I don't want to look difficult." "What if I'm wrong?" "I should already know how to handle this." "I don't even know what to say."
Every one is a reasonable thing to think. The problem is that the thought wins by default, and it keeps winning for weeks.
Here's the reframe that tends to land hardest: a hard conversation is an act of mutual respect. When I say the thing, I'm telling you I think you can handle it, and that the relationship is worth the friction.
Staying quiet decides for someone that they can't handle the truth. It feels generous. It's just quieter.
What You Learn in the
Say The Thing Workshop
Saying the thing is the start. The work is leaving the door open for what comes after, and that's what you practice here.
The date is the whole point. Nothing here works if the conversation stays in the notebook, so the drafting happens out loud, in the room, with a date on it before you leave.
You practice out loud, on a situation that's yours, under ground rules we set before anyone speaks. Themes travel, stories don't. It's a four-step structure, and you learn it by using it. Formats vary in length, and the keynote runs without the individual drafting. In the workshop format, by the end of the session you can:
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Recognize the story under your avoidance
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Build the conversation in four lines
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Stay in it when they react
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Leave with a person and a date
Who This Is For
Leaders and teams who know a conversation needs to happen and haven't found the language for it yet.
Anyone who's watched a colleague struggle and wished they'd said something sooner.
No title required, and it travels: the same structure works for whoever owns delivery, whoever owns the numbers, whoever holds the coordination between them, and it works on your sister.
Why This Works
Twenty years of watching the same call get dodged. I spent those years inside construction, where I watched capable people work around one conversation for months rather than have it once. That's where this came from.
Tested live, with strangers in the room. I delivered it whole and unscripted to people who'd never met before that session, and they left with real conversations mapped out by name and date.
Recovery taught me how to own something without shame. Naming a hard truth without turning it into an attack or an apology tour is the same skill, and it's the one this builds.
What Changes Once the Conversation Gets Said
The next time something needs to be said, it gets said, clumsily maybe, with a plan attached instead of another few weeks running it in your head. In the room in Glenwood Springs, people heard it straight from each other: the conversation is almost never as bad as the anticipation of it, and the person on the other end is almost always relieved someone finally brought it up.
Let's Talk About the
Conversation You've Been Avoiding
So, what conversation are you carrying?
If work feels heavier than it should because of something that keeps going unsaid, that's not a personal failing.
No sales pressure. No obligation. Just a straightforward conversation about what's possible.
Confidential • Construction-Focused • Results-Driven
