For a community where the real conversation has moved somewhere else
Nobody says what they think any more
Meetings are polite and nothing gets said — four patterns that produce that, and they are usually running together.
5 steps 21 min of reading free, no account
What you will be able to do
01
Tell a quiet group from a silenced one, using something you can count
02
Spot the four mechanisms that produce the same silence
03
Change the format before you try to change anybody's behaviour
04
Know which of these needs a conflict process rather than a facilitation fix
The path
5 steps, in order
- Power nobody voted for Five patterns that hand authority to people the group never chose — and why every one of them is built by somebody being helpful.
- Speakers who fill the room Nothing is blocked and nobody is silenced — but only some people's proposals ever get finished, and the group calls it consensus.
- The clique that decides before the meeting The real conversation happens in the kitchen and the meeting ratifies it — so attendance stops changing anything, and then stops.
- Authority that comes from being compelling Someone is so persuasive that disagreeing with them feels like a failure of understanding rather than a difference of view.
- Conflict that is never named The group is warm, nothing is confronted, and difficulty gets absorbed quietly — until somebody leaves and everyone privately knew why.
- Path complete Then: Conflict that never resolves.
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