How to lead when no one’s saying what they really think

Silence in a meeting room isn’t always agreement. Sometimes, it’s hesitation. Sometimes, it’s fear. I’ve worked with teams where everyone smiled and nodded, but decisions died quietly in execution. What looked like alignment was really avoidance. In this piece, I share what I’ve learned about leading through unspoken resistance and how to surface the truth before it becomes a problem you can’t solve.