Hi Reader,
A few weeks ago, Joe and I interviewed Gustavo Razzetti, author of Forward Talk, for the Leading Together podcast. There was one concept from our conversation that we think every team would benefit from: conversational debt.
Gustavo describes conversational debt as the price teams pay for the conversations they avoid, or the conversations where they talk around an issue without ever getting to the heart of it.
The financial metaphor is helpful because most of us understand how debt works. If you don’t pay your credit card bill this month, the bill doesn’t disappear. You’ve simply pushed the cost into the future, usually with interest.
Teams do the same thing with difficult conversations.
We notice tension between two leaders but decide it isn’t the right time to address it. Someone repeatedly misses an expectation, but we fail to address it directly. We disagree with a decision but keep our concerns to ourselves. In the moment, avoiding the conversation can feel like the cheaper option.
But we’re not eliminating the cost. We’re deferring it.
Conversational Debt Collects Interest
The interesting thing about conversational debt is that the interest rarely shows up as a line item.
It shows up as another meeting spent discussing an issue you thought you had already resolved. It shows up in the side conversation after the meeting where people finally say what they actually think. It shows up when two leaders begin making assumptions about each other’s motives or when someone finds themselves repeatedly stepping in to resolve something two teammates should be working through directly.
Eventually, a conversation that might have required 30 uncomfortable minutes has consumed hours of the team’s time and begun to erode trust.
Gustavo makes the point that we often assume inaction is harmless. But inaction has consequences. When a leader behaves in a way that is dismissive or unfair and nobody addresses it, for example, the team can inadvertently communicate that the behavior is acceptable.
The debt is still there. And the longer it sits, the more expensive it can become.
When Every Meeting Feels Like Groundhog Day
If you’ve seen the movie Groundhog Day, you know the premise: Bill Murray’s character wakes up every morning only to discover he is living the exact same day all over again.
Leadership teams can experience their own version of Groundhog Day.
An issue comes up in a meeting and the team talks about it. A few weeks later, it comes back. Then it comes back again. Everyone has the slightly disorienting feeling that we’ve had this conversation before, because we have.
The problem is that they may not have had the conversation they actually need to have.
Maybe the discussion keeps focusing on a staffing decision when the deeper disagreement is about strategy. Or perhaps the team keeps trying to solve an accountability problem without ever giving direct feedback to the person involved.
Eventually, someone has to interrupt the pattern:
“This is the third time we’ve come back to this. I wonder if there’s something underneath it that we haven’t actually talked about yet.”
Sometimes the clearest evidence of conversational debt is simply that the same conversation keeps coming back.
Start Paying Down the Debt
Gustavo offers a much more complete framework in Forward Talk, but there’s a simple place any leadership team can begin. Carve out some time in your next team meeting to ask and discuss the following question: What conversation are we not having right now, or not having honestly enough?
Gustavo shared one practice he uses with teams: asking about the “stinky fish.” What issue is beginning to smell because we haven’t dealt with it? Some teams eventually make surfacing these issues a regular part of their meetings.
Of course, teams also need to create the conditions for these conversations to happen. If every minute of your Executive Team meeting is packed with updates and agenda items, there isn’t much room for someone to say, “Something isn’t sitting right with me. Can we talk about it?” A well-designed meeting creates space for issues to surface before they become debt.
Create space for the conversations that need to emerge. Normalize naming tension early. And when an issue keeps finding its way back onto the agenda, ask whether there’s a deeper conversation you’ve been avoiding.
Courage matters here, but so do the systems that make courageous conversations more likely.
A Final Thought
Every team has conversations it would rather postpone. And sometimes there are legitimate reasons to wait.
But the tension doesn’t disappear just because we don’t name it. More often, it finds other places to show up in our meetings, our decisions, our relationships, and eventually our results.
The longer we avoid the conversation, the more likely we are to pay for it somewhere else.
So here’s a question worth asking at your next Executive Team meeting: What conversation are we avoiding that we’re already paying interest on?
-Shaun & Joe
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Check Out Our Latest Podcast Episode
What happens when teams avoid the conversations they most need to have?
Gustavo Razzetti, CEO of Fearless Culture and author of Forward Talk, calls the accumulating cost conversational debt - the price teams pay when important issues go unaddressed, conversations stay on the surface, or people stop speaking up because they no longer believe anything will change.
In this episode, Gustavo joins Shaun and Joe to explore why psychological safety alone isn't enough to get people talking, how avoidance, blame, and groupthink keep teams stuck, and why healthy tension can actually make teams stronger. They also unpack the "alignment trap," the role leaders play in creating more candid conversations, and practical ways teams can surface tension before it becomes something much harder to solve.
If your team has ever danced around an issue, mistaken agreement for alignment, or left an important conversation for another day, this episode offers a practical path forward. You can buy Gustavo’s book, Forward Talk, here: https://gustavorazzetti.com/books/
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