Gustavo Razzetti once sat next to a woman at a corporate conference, judging the regional VP presenting on stage until she revealed that was her husband. Instead of backpedaling he apologised, then stood by every word. That instinct of owning the mess without pretending he didn’t mean it is the backbone of his work.

He has spent decades inside corporate and agency life watching great ideas die because of terrible culture. He now works with teams on what he calls conversational debt: the gap between what people nod through in meetings and what they actually act on. His research found that when people are asked why others don't speak up, the answer is fear, but when asked why they themselves don't, the answer becomes pointlessness: a learned belief that nothing will change anyway.

Gustavo refuses to live that way. He fires clients before the work even starts if the fit is wrong. His rule is that he'd rather lose his job over one conversation than avoid a hundred — and he did.

We talked about the power dynamics that shape what is considered professionalism, the most dangerous type of silence in organisations and why we should all drop the invisible contract nobody handed us and stop waiting for permission to speak.

Links to learn more about Gustavo Razzetti:

Forward Talk (Gustavo’s new book)

Website

Substack

Workshops

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