Relationships
The conversation you are not having
Most drift is not drama. It is two capable people protecting a story, and calling it professionalism.
I watch this in companies and I watch it in leadership teams that still like each other. The avoided conversation is rarely a secret. Everyone can feel the heat of it. They have just agreed, without agreeing, to walk around it.
The work is not to become a more aggressive communicator. The work is to make the room safe enough for the true sentence, and then to stay in the room after it is said.
If that sentence would change the next quarter, it belongs in the work. If it would only make a meeting more interesting, leave it. Intrepid is not a stage for candour. It is a place where candour has somewhere to go.