Behind the scenes at Incite: June 2026
Verbal is good for coaching. Not for business agreements. Clear is kind and vague isn’t as polite as people think. Last months theme was tolerance and accountability. This month’s theme is clear is kind.
Whether I was sitting in a multimillion dollar negotiation or a five minute feedback conversation with a team member, be clear. This isn’t permission to be rude. Clear and rude are not the same thing.
Before I get into lessons learned in June, I’d like you to consider what one decent or even mediocre business idea is worth to you. I think my stuff here’s pretty good, but maybe to you it’s meh. Well, what’s a meh idea worth to you? If one line in here saves you from a bad contract, a bad hire, or a year of tolerating something you shouldn’t, what is that worth? The annual fee for this is $150. I write this because it’s good for me to reflect on what happened last month. But I also believe in value exchange. If you don’t get one idea worth more than $1,000 over the course of 12 months, I’ll refund your $150. I believe in the value that much.
If you’ve been reading my updates, you know I decided to wind down our relationship with a sales vendor that sold 80%+ of our new clients.
I’ll keep this one short because the past months have a lot more detail.
We had seven separate conversations about what a peaceful separation looks like. I told them what I’d agree to and what I wouldn’t. Then they sent over a written document, and it looked nothing like the seven conversations we just had. It went well past anything we discussed. Clear is kind. I understand why they wouldn’t want me to know their strategy, but because of how they handled this, it now makes any future verbal conversation meaningless because what they put in a legal contract, for the last three years, has never matched those verbal conversations.
There is a strange silver lining. Now that they’ve finally put their thinking on paper, I know exactly how they see this, and that gives me a much better direction than any vague, friendly conversation ever did. In a negotiation you cannot trust that the other side is telling you everything. That is the whole reason getting it in writing matters. The document is the truth when in comes to business partnerships, vendor contracts, and client contracts.
The mixed message
Last month I wrote a lot about accountability. This month I want to zoom in on one specific way a well-intentioned manager undercuts it without meaning to.
One of our supervisors is a natural cheerleader. This is a good characteristic. You want people on your team who get others excited, who make a team member feel believed in, who lead with encouragement.
The problem shows up in the feedback conversation. An encourager delivers a correction like this. “Hey, we really need you to improve this. But we know you’re trying your best. You’re doing a great job. We just need you to fix this one thing.”
Put yourself in that team members shoes. What did the team member actually hear? They heard “you’re doing a great job.” The correction got buried under so much cushion that the person walks away thinking everything is fine. A month later nothing has changed, everyone is frustrated, and the team member is confused, because in their mind you told them they were doing great.
You can be warm and still be clear. You can tell someone you believe in them, and then tell them plainly what has to change, without wrapping the second part in so much bubble wrap that it disappears. Say the encouraging thing. Say the corrective thing. Keep them separate so it’s clear. Don’t mix the messages.
Everything past this line is the part I only share here. What I found when I looked closer at a department head who left, the policies she left behind that were quietly hurting us, the expensive hire I decided to make anyway, and the honest math on why. If you’re not ready to upgrade yet, no hard feelings. The two lessons above stand on their own. Come back when the gap between what people say and what they actually do starts costing you real money.