Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
How the stories leaders tell themselves silently reshape teams
Have you ever won an argument before the conversation even started?
I have.
I’ll be in the shower. On a walk. Rereading an email. And suddenly I’m sure I know what that comment meant. Why they said it. How they’re going to respond when I bring it up.
I replay it.
Add tone.
Add motive.
Rehearse my response.
Win the argument.
All before the other person knows we’re even having one.
And then I finally talk to them.
The Story Is Never As Clean As It Felt
Every time I have the real conversation, the story I told myself shifts.
Not because everything becomes fine. Not because I was completely wrong. But because it was never as clean or certain as it felt in my head.
There’s more context.
More mess.
Sometimes more care than I expected.
Sometimes less.
Almost always something I didn’t account for.
And here’s the part that matters.
Before I even have the real conversation, I’m already showing up differently. Tighter. Less patient. Less curious. More certain than I should be.
The story doesn’t just live in your head. It changes how you show up.
Nothing Dramatic Happened
Here’s what makes this pattern dangerous.
Most of the time, nothing dramatic happens.
No shouting match.
No public fallout.
No single moment you can point to and say, “That’s when it broke.”
Instead, someone rereads an email five times and chooses not to ask.
Someone edits feedback down so it feels safer.
Someone decides not to bring something up because they’ve already predicted the reaction.
A working relationship cools off. Just slightly.
Nothing explicit was said.
But a lot was assumed.
And those assumptions add up.
How Leaders Shape the Pattern
This matters even more if you lead other people.
Teams learn how to handle conflict by watching how leaders handle their own assumptions.
If you act on stories you haven’t checked out, your team feels it. Your tone shifts. Your timing changes. The questions you ask narrow. People adjust.
And if you don’t name this pattern when you see it in others, it spreads.
People start telling stories about you.
About each other.
About what a reaction might mean.
That’s how culture shifts.
Not from one dramatic conflict.
From untested assumptions that quietly guide behavior.
Interrupting the Pattern
The work isn’t pretending you don’t tell stories. We all do.
The work is catching it earlier.
Am I telling myself a story?
Or is this something I actually know?
What do I have evidence for?
What have I only filled in?
Can I tolerate the discomfort of asking instead of assuming?
The goal isn’t to make conflict pleasant. It’s to make it accurate.
One real conversation can introduce nuance that months of private rehearsal never will.
I unpack this pattern more fully on an episode of Five with Fry. Not because I’ve mastered it, but because I can catch myself doing it and then interrupt the story.
This is also the work I’m brought in to do inside organizations. Helping leaders recognize when internal arguments are shaping external behavior. Helping teams separate what they actually know from what they’re filling in. Practicing how to move conversations out of our heads and into the room earlier.
Do you and your team need help with this? Let’s chat.
