Conversation Avoidance Index
Find the conversations your team keeps avoiding.
Most teams don’t break over blowups. They wear down over what never gets said. The CAI measures where hard conversations stall on your team, why they stall, and what it costs you. Then it gives you a plan to fix it.
- 8 minutes per person
- Confidential, combined results only
- Teams of 5 to 100
Sample report · fictional team
Start here: Drift and Silence. Problems that get raised don’t get closed, so people stop raising them.
Sound familiar?
Every team has conversations it keeps putting off.
- The same problem comes up at every meeting, and nothing changes.
- Feedback gets softened until no one knows what needs to change.
- People vent to coworkers instead of talking to each other.
- Leaders hear about problems after the damage is done.
- Everyone agreed on a fix. Three weeks later, no one remembers.
Each of these has a name, a cost, and a fix.
What the CAI measures
Five ways hard conversations go wrong.
Team members rate what they’ve seen over the past 30 days. Each pattern gets a score from 0 to 100, and together they make up the index.
Silence
Concerns held back.
It’s not worth bringing up.
Softening
Feedback too vague to act on.
Just something to think about.
Triangulation
Talking about people instead of to them.
Can I tell you what she did?
Delay
Conversations put off without a plan.
Let’s wait for a better time.
Drift
Agreements that quietly fall apart.
Didn’t we already talk about this?
Behind the score
A score tells you where. These tell you why.
Fear or futility?
Some people stay quiet because speaking up feels risky. Others stay quiet because it never changes anything. The CAI tells you which, because each one needs a different fix.
Harshness
The other way hard conversations fail. When concerns are met with sarcasm, ridicule, or public correction, silence is self-protection. The CAI measures this separately, and when it’s high, the plan changes.
The cost
Time lost working around problems. Good people leaving. Work that suffers. Your team tells you what avoidance is costing, in their own words.
The goal
Clear and Resolved.
Two questions decide how a team handles hard conversations: Do concerns get raised? And do they get resolved?
Your report places your team on that map and shows the shortest path to the top right: concerns are raised clearly, and they get resolved.
How it works
Measure, practice, measure again.
- 1
Measure
Each team member gets a personal link by email: 32 statements, about 8 minutes. No names asked.
- 2
Report
When the round closes, you get a six-page report: your score, the five patterns, the matrix, what sits behind them, and where to start.
- 3
Debrief and practice
A 90-minute session with your leaders to test the results against real examples, then a 30-day plan built on your top two patterns.
- 4
Measure again
A follow-up round at 90 days shows what changed, pattern by pattern.
Confidentiality
Built so people can answer honestly.
People won’t tell the truth about hard conversations if they think it will come back on them. The CAI is designed around that.
- Combined results only. Scores appear only when at least 5 responses meet scoring rules. Harshness needs 8.
- No names. People rate the team, not individuals.
- Comments stay private. Written answers are read by Mind For Life and never shared word for word.
- Not a performance tool. Results are never used for employment decisions. Safety, harassment, and misconduct concerns belong in formal channels.
Who it’s for
Any team that works together and has hard things to talk about.
Who’s behind it
Dr. Jeff Bogaczyk
PhD in Rhetoric and Communication (Duquesne University). Head of School with 15+ years in educational leadership and ACSI Executive Director Certification. Founder of Mind For Life, a 500K+ community learning to handle hard conversations well.
The CAI draws on decades of research on workplace silence, feedback, and follow-through, including Morrison & Milliken, Detert & Burris, and Simons.
Now accepting pilot partners
Join the pilot year.
The CAI is in its pilot year. A limited number of organizations can join at pilot rates in exchange for a follow-up conversation and honest feedback. Scores are descriptive while benchmarks are built from pilot data, and your report says so.
Or email jeff@mindforlife.org
Questions
What leaders usually ask.
How long does it take?
About 8 minutes per person. The round stays open for the number of days you choose, usually one to two weeks.
Is it anonymous?
It’s confidential. No names are asked, and your organization sees combined results only. Because each person receives a personal link, we call it confidential rather than fully anonymous.
How is this different from an engagement or culture survey?
Broad surveys tell you something is wrong. The CAI looks closely at one thing: what happens to hard conversations on your team. That focus is why it leads straight to a plan.
What if the problem is the leader?
The CAI measures harshness separately. When it’s high, the report says so, and the plan starts with a confidential conversation with the sponsor, not a “speak up more” workshop.
How big can the team be?
Between 5 and 100 people who work together. Larger organizations run the CAI team by team.
Is the CAI validated?
Not yet, and we say so plainly. It’s built on established research, and pilot data is being used to test its reliability. Until then, scores are descriptive, not benchmarks.
What does it cost?
Pricing depends on team size and whether you add the debrief, training, and follow-up round. Pilot partners receive reduced rates. Ask for a proposal.
Hard conversations don’t get easier by waiting.
Find out which ones your team is avoiding, and what to do about it.