In 2025, Cameron Conaway was leading one of the best teams of his career at Cisco when the company announced it was laying off 4,000 people. What followed wasn't just grief — it was a quiet, almost invisible shift in behavior. He stopped taking risks. Some colleagues stopped asking for feedback entirely. Others asked for it performatively, hoping visibility would protect them.

In this episode of 3-Minute Reframe, he connects that experience to a landmark 1981 paper by Barry Staw, Lance Sandelands, and Jane Dutton on threat rigidity — and explores why a threat environment is often the exact moment we become least able to give or receive honest feedback.

Show Notes:
Threat-Rigidity Effects in Organizational Behavior — Staw, Sandelands & Dutton (1981)
3-Minute Reframe Archive

For nearly twenty years, Cameron Conaway bit his nails down to nothing every time he sat down to write. He tried willpower, deterrents, accountability — nothing worked. What he didn't know was that he was fixing the behavior without ever questioning the belief underneath it.

In this episode of 3-Minute Reframe, he connects that personal story to organizational psychologist Chris Argyris's landmark research on double-loop learning — and leaves you with one question worth a five-minute timer.

Show Notes:
Double Loop Learning in Organizations — Argyris, HBR (1977)
3-Minute Reframe Archive

Before the championships, before changing the game of basketball forever — Steph Curry spent the worst summer of his life deliberately getting worse. At 15, his father Dell Curry told him his shot had to be completely rebuilt. For three months he could barely make a basket.

In this episode of 3-Minute Reframe, I use Curry's story to explore one of the most underrated growth skills there is — the willingness to get worse before you get better, and how to know whose feedback is actually worth that kind of sacrifice.

Show Notes:

It's More Than Just the Shot — Kevin O’Connor, The Ringer
3-Minute Reframe Archive

"Is everything alright?"

That's what a Chief Marketing Officer asked Cameron before delivering feedback that rattled his ego and left him disoriented in ways he couldn't explain. He didn't have language for what happened next. Virginia Satir did.

In the 1970s, family therapist Virginia Satir mapped something she kept seeing in the families she worked with: change doesn't move in a straight line. After a foreign element arrives — a piece of feedback, a job loss, a diagnosis, a conversation that changes everything — what follows isn't smooth transition. It's chaos. Performance drops. Clarity disappears. You may feel less capable than before the change began.

And then there's the butterfly. Inside the chrysalis, a caterpillar doesn't gradually transform — it dissolves completely into goo. A cellular soup of pure chaos. It is, for a time, neither caterpillar nor butterfly. That dissolution isn't a sign something went wrong. It's the biological prerequisite for what comes next.

The reframe: if you're in the middle of something that feels unresolved right now, consider the possibility that you're not failing to change. You may simply be in the goo.

Show Notes:
Download the Satir Change Model
The Satir Model (Satir et al., 1991)
Giving Feedback for Impact After Receipt

Have you ever felt an emotion that seemed to last all day — long after the moment that triggered it had passed?

In this episode, Cameron shares the story of one of the worst presentations of his life — a packed room, a disaster on stage, and an embarrassment that followed him into the shower and stayed for days. It took years to understand why.

Harvard-trained neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor documented something remarkable while studying her own stroke in real time: the physiological lifespan of an emotion is approximately 90 seconds. The chemicals flood your body, peak, and flush out. After that, if the feeling persists, it's because we're choosing — consciously or not — to keep retriggering it.

The reframe: the next time a feeling hits hard, ask yourself — am I still feeling this, or am I now feeding it?

Show Notes:
Taylor, J.B. (2008). My Stroke of Insight. Viking.
Related: Somatic Literacy

Most of us know what needs to be said. We rehearse it. And then we fall back into niceness at the last moment.

In this episode, Cameron shares a story from his time managing a colleague who had real power in their relationship — and how he discovered there was a name for what he was doing: reciprocity bias.

First identified by sociologist Alvin Gouldner in 1960, reciprocity bias is the unconscious tendency to give what we hope to receive. In feedback relationships, it shows up as softened truths, withheld observations, and the quiet choice to be nice rather than kind.

The reframe: before your next honest conversation, ask yourself — am I saying this because it's true and useful, or because I'm managing what comes back to me?

Show Notes:
The Norm of Reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960)
Attention Feedback Givers — Don't Become the 21%
Recency Bias in Feedback Relationships

Your body isn't just a vehicle for your brain; it is the archive of your life.

We often think we are overreacting to the present when we are actually reacting to a past that our body doesn't realize is over.

Sharing a personal journey of healing from childhood abuse, Cameron discusses Somatic Experiencing and the development of Somatic Literacy—the ability to read our body's unspoken stories of tension, breath, and posture.

Find more tools for personal growth at 3-Minute Reframe.

Show Notes & Resources:

• Book: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
• Institute: Somatic Experiencing International
• Resource: Learn more about Somatic Literacy

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Every Thursday, host ⁠Cameron Conaway⁠ shares a lens that has helped him live with more clarity and courage. No hacks. Just thoughts from a business school professor, former MMA fighter, and investigative journalist trying to wring every last drop out of this wild and precious life.

Let's get beyond psychedelics as tools to "delete" old pain. In my experience, that isn't how they work. But they did help me hold the vast complexity of the human heart and mind, and that led to healing I couldn't have achieved otherwise.

Clinical data from Johns Hopkins suggests that supervised psilocybin use can be among the most spiritually significant experiences of a person's life. In this episode, Cameron shares his "Bird of a Million Feathers" vision to illustrate Emotional Granularity—the ability to move beyond a "primary color" emotional palette to see and feel the full prism of human experience. This helps him show up for himself and others.

For more deep dives into the mind, subscribe to the 3-Minute Reframe newsletter.

Show Notes & Resources:

• Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy Expert: Sergio Rodriguez-Castillo
• Emotional Granularity Expert: Lisa Feldman Barrett
• The Study: Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Research

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Every Thursday, host ⁠Cameron Conaway⁠ shares a lens that has helped him live with more clarity and courage. No hacks. Just thoughts from a business school professor, former MMA fighter, and investigative journalist trying to wring every last drop out of this wild and precious life.

What is the shape of your hate?

We often wonder "why" there is so much hate in the world, yet the world's challenges are largely a reflection of the human mind.

Most global problems are manifestations of internal friction we neglect to heal.

This week, we explore Hate-Mapping: a non-judgmental investigation into the origins, sensations, and tribal systems that feed our internal shadows.

Show Notes & Resources:

• Resource: Learn more about Hate-Mapping

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Every Thursday, host ⁠Cameron Conaway⁠ shares a lens that has helped him live with more clarity and courage. No hacks. Just thoughts from a business school professor, former MMA fighter, and investigative journalist trying to wring every last drop out of this wild and precious life.

Impact is the emergency; intent is the debrief. Lead with the bandage, not the shield.

When we cause harm, we often retreat into a defensive crouch: "That wasn't my intent." But leading with intent when someone is in pain is like explaining your driving record while someone’s foot is still under your tire.

This week, we reframe repair through Impact-First Accountability: witnessing and attending to the experience of the hurt party before attempting to justify your own.

Impact-First Accountability is a cornerstone of effective feedback and healthy workplace culture.

Show Notes & Resources:

• Resource: Learn more about Impact-First Accountability

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Every Thursday, host ⁠Cameron Conaway⁠ shares a lens that has helped him live with more clarity and courage. No hacks. Just thoughts from a business school professor, former MMA fighter, and investigative journalist trying to wring every last drop out of this wild and precious life.