The Diagnostic Model
60 seconds. That's usually enough.
I watch your leadership team for one meeting. In that time, I'm answering one question: What is everyone protecting?
I'm not reading people. I'm reading the system they're in.
Four layers: What I can observe. What position each person holds. How they understand that position. And what they're afraid of losing.
The first three tell you what's happening. The fourth tells you why it won't change — until you address it.
The Four Layers
Power. Position. Conception. Fear.
Power (The Data)
What I can observe. The half-second glance. Who yields to whom. Whose voice fills the vacuum. Who interrupts, who retreats, where attention flows. This is the visible layer — behavioral signals most people don't register as data.
Position (The Architecture)
The role each person holds in the system. Intellectual authority. Provider. Decision-maker. Gatekeeper. Oracle. Position exists whether named or not — often accumulated through drift, never formally granted.
Conception (The Story)
How each person understands their position. The narrative they hold about who owns what, how the relationship works, what the rules are. Two people can hold the same position and conceive of it completely differently.
Fear (The Engine)
What each person is protecting. Fear of irrelevance. Fear of incompetence. Fear of powerlessness. Fear of lost position. This is why the structure persists. Address everything else without addressing fear, and the system reasserts.
The Core Distinction
Grip versus Claim
Grip is actual power — the ability to move decisions forward, stall them, or veto them. Whose objection stops momentum. Whose support is required for anything to happen.
Claim is formal authority — the title, the org chart, the legitimate right to decide.
When Grip matches Claim, teams are stable.
When someone has Grip without Claim — influence they weren't granted — they become combative, demanding formalization. When someone has Claim without Grip — authority they can't hold — they yield under pressure, and decisions don't stick.
Most team dysfunction traces back to this misalignment. The leader sees — often for the first time — the machine they've been inside.
The Predictive Edge
Drift
Drift is when two parties hold misaligned conceptions about the same position — and neither knows.
She thinks the authority is hers. Leadership thinks it was loaned. Neither has said it aloud. The gap grew through silence — she claimed, they didn't contest. Until they did.
That's drift. Authority accumulated without agreement. A collision waiting to happen.
Drift is the source of conflict that surprises people.
Open conflict can be negotiated — you know you're in it. Drift explodes without warning. One party acts on their conception and discovers reality doesn't match. By then, the relationship is already ruptured.
I don't predict fights everyone already knows are coming. I predict the ones nobody sees.
Why Systems Persist
The Lock
Sometimes everyone's fear aligns to protect the current structure. No one has incentive to change it.
The leader is secure — doesn't need to perform. The second-in-command is comfortable — close to power, no pressure to lead. The challenger can't push back — lacks the relationships to claim space. The dominant voice stays dominant — because genuine brilliance created a halo effect no one can challenge.
The system is locked. Not by malice. By interlocking needs.
Absent intervention, this architecture persists indefinitely. The question for leaders: what would have to shift for the system to move?
The Method
I'm not watching people. I'm watching architecture.
I sit in your leadership team meeting. One meeting. Sometimes two. The pattern reveals itself quickly if you know how to see it.
Then I tell you what everyone's protecting, why the system can't move, and what collision is coming.
Not a 360 review. I don't interview team members about each other.
Not a personality assessment. I'm reading the system, not typing people.
Not team-building. I don't facilitate connection.
Not coaching. I don't develop leaders over time.
Surveys measure perception. Interviews capture retrospective accounts. Live observation captures what's actually happening. Behavior doesn't lie.
I don't analyze in the room. I perceive. The framework comes after — it's how I unpack what I already saw so you can see it too.
You've seen how I think.
Let's talk about what you're seeing.
Start a conversation