A message from 250,000 miles away
A message to you from The Moon:
“It’s not about putting our differences aside. It’s about putting our differences together.”
That’s NASA astronaut Victor Glover, speaking to Earth from 250,000 miles away, aboard the Artemis II mission last week.
Beautiful sentiment, yes. But this is so much more. It’s cultural strategy. And if it’s good enough for NASA, it’s probably good enough for your company. Heck, I wish our country and world adopted it.
I work with some of the fastest growing and scaling companies — the ones that want to go to the moon — so if you want to blast off, have a read…
We’ve been doing this backwards.
We say we value diverse thinking. Then we run meetings where the leader speaks first, last and let’s be honest, speaks most.
I’ve surveyed thousands of leaders. Nearly all of them — 99% — admit that before working with me, meetings were mostly them talking.
Truth be told, I didn’t need a survey for that. But they needed the mirror. I say that because so much of what we do as leaders that is not useful — that inadvertently hurts the performance and potential of our teams — is unconscious. And honestly, the exact opposite of what we intend. So mirrors matter. They show us our blind spots. No one is immune to blind spots. And if you think you are, yikes you’re probably even more dangerous.
Here are the facts:
You hired exceedingly capable people. People with instincts, experience, and perspectives you don’t have. Then you put them in a room and — unconsciously, unintentionally — put them in a box.
No, you’re not a bad leader. But leadership and culture rhetoric from the past few decades is either too theoretical or too philosophical to apply to your Tuesday morning standup.
Plus, nobody taught you that the conversation IS culture. (Ahem, hang out with me more, please.)
So from a conversation expert, with lots of data from leaders and a dorky obsession with the neurological side of things, here’s what’s actually happening:
When your people feel like it’s unsafe to be wrong — to push back, to disagree, to refuse the 27th new project of the week, to say “I can’t do that because it will compromise our standards” — they go quiet.
And it’s not because they have nothing to say:
Maybe no one says no to more work when more is added but nothing subtracted.
Maybe no one says “I don’t know how to do that” because they feel like they should know and might be judged if they don’t.
Maybe no one says “I need support” because it looks like everyone else is fine — when exactly everyone is drowning.
They’re protecting their status, their safety. Because either they don’t see anyone else speaking up, or because they’ve learned — or assumed — it won’t land well.
What does that cost you?
What do not-BRAVE-conversations cost you?
The brilliance you paid for.
The brilliance you searched and interviewed for. It’s in the room. It’s at the table. But the return on investment isn’t coming.
The brilliant people who had the answer, the million dollar question, the flag, the better idea — swallowed it.
That’s not just a culture thing. That’s an impact on your bottom line, your runway, your success.
🚀 You’re going to start seeing this more and more now that we’re in what I call the Acceleration Age. Especially if you’re a start-up or scale-up that’s headed to the moon.
Since humans weren’t designed to move at the pace of our current world, your new job as a leader is to give your people an environment, a culture, an operating system for your humans to function within, that creates the conditions for them to thrive. No matter how fast they’re moving.
Because to perform at their best, humans need a structure to follow that helps them accelerate ant the same speed as everything around them.
So what do you actually shoot for?
The short answer is The BRAVE Framework. The conversation code for high performance. The human operating system for scale.
The longer answer:
Sometimes it’s not more alignment. Sometimes you need the exact opposite. Sometimes you need to seek out misalignment. Difference. Blind spots.
Why? Because making alignment the goal can be the enemy of truth — especially at hyper speed.
You might not be moving at Artemis II speeds of 24,500 mph, but you’re taking your moonshot. And to get to the moon, heck, to get out of the atmosphere, you need to be aerodynamic.
What do I mean?
Aerodynamic doesn’t mean frictionless. It means powered by the forces moving around you.A team isn’t aerodynamic because they all agree. They’re aerodynamic because they’ve learned to use the forces around them — including friction, resistance, different perspectives — to generate lift off.
At high speeds, your conversations need to be the fastest path to truth. So your newest and most essential job (that’ll never be taken by AI) is to learn how to get the best out of your people when moving at high speeds (aka learn BRAVE).
Tolerating difference is not enough. And sadly, we aren’t even good at that :(
The bar isn’t tolerance. It’s invitation.
The leaders who actually get their team’s best thinking, at speed and under pressure — are the ones who actively elicit challenges to their own ideas. Who make it safe, even rewarding, to say “I see it differently.”
Start here ->
Today, ask your team one question:
“What’s one thing we believe as a team that someone should be challenging right now?”
Then be quiet.
AND BE BRAVE.
(B) Be present, build (R) rapport by (A) actively listening and when you sense (V) vulnerability, step into (E) empathy.
Group think won’t get you to the Moon.
Four radically different humans, completely dependent on each other, bringing every distinct strength and honest thought they have — that’s what does.
The difference?
On one side, a moonshot becoming reality.
On the other, the Culture Cliff™.
The scariest part is that you won’t see the Cliff coming. But if you pay attention, you might notice when you took the turn toward it. It often looks like your best people getting quieter. The energy shifting. The meetings getting more agreeable and less alive.
The difference between going to the moon and never getting to the point of lift off all happens in your conversations. In the moments you’re not thinking matter. In the moments you’re in autopilot and just trying to get things done. You don’t intend it, but you’re in one of the five conversation traps that every human falls into when moving fast and under pressure.
🚀If you want to blast off, if you want your moonshot, take notes from this week’s trip to The Moon.
And maybe get signed up for the Fall edition of my How to Talk to Humans Bootcamp —> here.
To the moon 🌙🚀💥,
Elisabeth
