Missing Conversations: Navigating Awareness, Avoidance, and Adversity at Work

The Missing Conversations will give you and your team a framework to have higher quality conversations that directly and positively impact your business.

What you don’t know can hurt you—and what you don’t talk about can absolutely destroy your team, your organization, and your career!

In The Missing Conversations, speaker and leadership coach Zach “Dr. Z” Schaefer cracks open the playbook he’s used with some of America’s best and brightest companies to reveal the critical but all-too-often overlooked conversations that can make or break an organization.

Drawing on his fifteen years of experience working with high-power, hard-charging executives and team leaders, Dr. Z examines more than forty key conversations you are probably not having. You’ll discover:

• The impact the leader’s “echo” has on employees as it reverberates throughout the organization.
• How to prevent team member burnout by recognizing their accomplishments while giving them a new goal to shoot for.
• The power of embracing effort itself as a talent that leaders can recognize and encourage in their teams.
• Why so many leaders allow groupthink and the “disease to please” to stifle productive problem solving and constructive disagreement.
• How to harness conflict as a catalyst for growth through healthy confrontation.
• Why team members and peers often feel blindsided by feedback and constructive criticism.

In this book, Dr. Z reveals how addressing the root causes of communication breakdowns—lack of awareness, avoidance, and adversity—empowers leaders to unlock their team's full potential, drive innovation, and achieve sustainable success. If you’re ready to create a workplace where open dialogue and collaboration flourish, it’s time to start having The Missing Conversations!