Why your question gets met with silence


Run the Room

Why your question gets met with silence

Ever ask, “What’s working and what’s not?” and get…

Nothing?

That’s because compound questions split attention.
People freeze, trying to decide which part to answer first — and often answer neither.

At Community Health Impact Coalition, we learned:
if you want depth, separate your asks.

Kill your compounds. Ask one question at a time.

“What’s working?”

Pause.
Discussion.

Then: “What’s not working?”

You’ll get more responses, better thinking, and clearer signals.

Try this:
Before your next check-in, rewrite every compound question as two simple ones.

Ask. Listen. Pause. Move on.

🌿 Clarity is kindness. One question, one answer.

Ever wonder how your influence actually lands?

The next round of Make It Land is open — and this time, it’s super limited: just 7 seats — and only 3 are left!

You’ll walk in with a hunch… and walk out with a written diagnostic showing exactly how you show up in high-stakes rooms — and what to shift.

It’s fast, practical, and designed for people who want their ideas to move.


Weekly insights on building influence without authority—so you can run the room, shape outcomes, and move systems.

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Run the Room

Get in the room. Run it. Change what happens when you leave. That's the work I do with senior leaders moving standards from concept to institutional adoption. My work has been featured in The New York Times, TIME, The Lancet, and Foreign Policy. Each Saturday, one short note on making it easy to move decisions that matter—three minutes to read, used in next week's meeting.

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