What if the reason your hard conversations keep landing badly has less to do with you, and more to do with the format you're having them in?
Scott Farmer had the same difficult conversation with two colleagues — same preparation, same general message, same care. One conversation in person, the other via video. He describes the difference like a textbook experiment, and the results were not even close.
Scott spent fifteen years in nonprofit leadership and stepped back from his executive role when his organization went fully remote.
At the same time, he and Natalia Rivera-España built GOAT Santa Cruz on exactly the opposite bet — that people are stronger, braver, and more creative when they're physically together doing something hard. In this conversation we get into what he's learned from living both models at once.
YOU'LL HEAR…
TWO EXPERIMENTS, RUN AT THE SAME TIME
Scott left an executive role as his organization went fully remote, and simultaneously helped build a business founded on being physically together. He shares his lived experience about both models.
COMMUNITY AS A METRIC
When he and Natalia started GOAT, they decided their measure of success would be community rather than revenue — how many people showed up, how many connections formed, how many friendships they watched begin. He describes finding more security in that than in the savings account he'd been chasing.
WHAT WE LOSE WHEN WE CAN'T INTERRUPT EACH OTHER
Turns out interruption is very important. Scott makes the case that the best ideas come from people building on each other's half-finished thoughts — and that this kind of creative collision is nearly impossible on a video call, where interrupting feels rude.
ALL CARROTS, NO STICKS
Having stepped back from his executive role, Scott has no authority to require anyone to come into the office. What he built instead started with him showing up on Thursdays, buying lunch, and promising conversations that had nothing to do with work.
LEVITY AS AÂ BELONGING TOOL
Naming project teams after nineties pop songs. Gremlins. Thundercats. It sounds trivial until you see the belonging it creates on a distributed team.
WHY HEALTHY CONFLICT IS HARDER THROUGH A SCREEN
Both of us care a lot about healthy conflict as the doorway to real commitment. Scott is candid that he hasn't fully cracked the code on this one, but he shares what's helped: starting with people you already trust, preparing and then sharing your preparation with the person you disagree with, and modeling disagreement in front of your team.
THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE
Think of one working relationship needs attention. One where you're still perfectly cordial on video, but you can't remember the last conversation that felt real.
Now consider what it would take to be in the same room with that person. A coffee, a walk, a drive across town? Think about making that effort.
Scott's point is that the format isn't neutral. It's doing something to the relationship whether we're tracking it or not. Noticing which relationships have quietly thinned is how you find the ones worth spending travel on.
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Ep #49: Building your GOAT Mindset with Natalia Rivera-España
GOAT Santa Cruz — Group Open Air Training
Ecology Action
Crucial Conversations — the framework Scott's organization trained on
"Pandemnesia" — Claire's blog post on what we've quietly forgotten since the pandemic
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Ready to go deeper?
If you want to build real trust and cohesion into how your team operates — including when your people are working remotely— reach out for a free consultation.
Visit ClaireLaughlin.com and click "Schedule a Consult" at the top of the page.
Connect with me @Claire Laughlin Consulting on Instagram and LinkedIn.
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