⚠️ BIG NOTE FOR LEADERS & MANAGERS

This session is not a performance. It is a practice. Managers and senior leaders must go first. Before this experience is ever facilitated with employees, those in power need to feel what it’s like to give feedback that shakes, to receive feedback that stings, and to sit in silence without fixing or deflecting.

Not to prep canned responses. Not to rehearse empathy. But to understand — viscerally — how brave it is for someone with less power to speak up at all. Too often, leaders skip straight to rollout. But culture isn’t scalable until it’s embodied. If you haven’t experienced the tension and vulnerability of this session, you have no business asking others to.

Let your team see you wrestle. Let them see you listen. That’s leadership.

🎬 The Analogy: The workplace is like a set.
Everyone’s got a role. There’s a script, a director, and a performance to deliver. But what happens when the lights come up and the real work begins? Most folks are stuck acting. They’re performing care, leadership, and culture—without ever being taught how to embody it for real.

🦷 Root Cause of the Issue
Somewhere along the way, optics became more important than honesty.
Managers weren’t developed—they were handed titles and told to figure it out.
People weren’t developed. Employees learned behavior by watching the people before them, not through intentional modeling. So now, we have a cycle of performative care, shallow feedback, and conflict avoidance.
When you reward surface-level harmony, you erase the full range of human emotion. That’s not culture. That’s theater.

✅ Session One: One Hour. One Focus.
🎭 Theme: Burn the Script, Feel the Scene
If your culture only allows safe feelings and polite conflict, your team is acting. This session is about getting out of your head and into your body. No reading lines. No processing later. You’re going to feel what it’s like to say the hard thing — and hear it.

🧾 Come Prepared With:

• One real piece of feedback you’ve been sitting on (about work, behavior, or impact)

• One moment you’ve struggled to talk about with your manager or a teammate

• An open mind and a closed laptop

🧠 In-Session Focus: Roleplay to Reveal

1. The Feedback Fire Drill
Time: 20 minutes
In pairs or trios, take turns delivering a hard-to-give piece of feedback. Not cruel. Not petty. Hard. Something true that would make your voice shake a little. Use a real example. Then switch roles. The person receiving it can’t interrupt. They only get to say:

• “Thank you.”

• “Here’s what I heard.”
  Then pause. Let it land.

2. The “Say What You See” Round
Time: 15 minutes
Same groups. This time, don’t critique — observe. Give feedback on what you notice about the person’s behavior, energy, or vibe in a moment of tension.
Examples:

• “I notice you tend to smile when something serious is said.”

• “You shut down when things get emotional.”

• “You seem to check out when someone challenges your idea.”
  No analyzing. Just naming. Give and receive once. Then switch.

3. The Prescribed Feeling Check
Time: 10 minutes
Each person writes down the “allowed” feelings at work. (Happy. Grateful. Motivated.)
Now write the “real” feelings you’ve had this week. (Resentful. Embarrassed. Numb.)
Discuss:

• Where’s the gap?

• What happens when people only show what’s safe?

• What does it cost the team?

🧭 End-of-Meeting Deliverables:

• Name one behavior shift you want to work on in yourself

• Choose one conversation you need to stop avoiding

• Write down one feeling you’ll stop hiding at work — and one way you’ll safely express it

🛠️ Action Items

1. Accountability Partner Check-In
Pair up. In two weeks, check in on the conversation you avoided. Did you have it? If not, why? If yes, what happened?

2. Culture Pulse Note
Leaders capture anonymized patterns from the session — what themes showed up? Where are people hiding, performing, or avoiding? Use these notes to build real next steps into your culture strategy.

🗣️ Real Talk from Devin

You might ask, “Devin, what if this exercise goes wrong? What if it makes people uncomfortable? What if someone says the wrong thing?”

Yeah… and that’s exactly why you bring someone like me into the organization.
I’m not here to fix your culture with hypotheticals and handouts. Culture isn’t fixed with “what ifs.” It’s changed through action, nuance, and courage.

Let’s stop focusing on what this could disrupt and start focusing on what it can unlock.
This exercise isn’t about chaos — it’s about clarity. And if it does reveal something heavy?
It wasn’t me. It was already there.
And it wasn’t a culture. It was a ticking time bomb.

Leaders, let me be clear — this exercise has to start with you.
You’re the ones who decide if your culture is ready for real talk or just ready for a rebrand.
This is not doomsday. It’s day one of doing better.