SPEAKING / BARRY MARSHALL-GRAHAM
Leadership Debt
The cost of the conversations we avoid.
A green dashboard can hide a great deal: an engineer carrying the missing work, a commitment everybody works round or a decision that unravels in the chat after the meeting. When we keep postponing the conversation, the friction moves rather than disappears.
THE QUESTION IN THE ROOM
What are we paying for the conversation we haven't had?
A practical talk for technology and engineering leaders, founders and people leading across organisational boundaries.
WHAT THE TALK DOES
Put the hidden work into view.
Through illustrative technology-workplace scenarios and a private reflection, delegates look at where avoided conversations transfer work, uncertainty or risk. Nobody needs to name a colleague or disclose a live workplace conflict.
Delegates leave able to
- Notice where avoided conversations move the cost to somebody else.
- Check expectations, resources and workload before judging a person.
- Choose one responsible next step and an observable way to review it.
AUDIENCE AND FORMAT
Shape it around your room.
Adaptable to a 20, 30 or 45-minute conference slot, with reflection and Q&A shaped to the time available. A focused team workshop can be discussed separately.
Tell me who'll be in the room, the time you have and what you'd like people to leave thinking about. We can work out whether the talk fits.
About Barry
Barry Marshall-Graham is an executive coach and adviser with more than 25 years in software engineering leadership. He works with senior leaders and teams on clarity, standards and difficult conversations.
He's the author of High-Fidelity Leadership. The talk draws on the same territory and is useful in its own right.
Have a room in mind?
For a conference, leadership event or a team that keeps working round the same problem, start with a conversation about what would be useful.
Enquire about speaking