Why "good manager instincts" misfire, and how the software fixes it
I have been managing people for twenty years. I had a direct report, call her Gabriella, who started every project with "we need to align on this." I read it as caution. I read it wrong.
My motivators are Autonomy, Competition, Altruism. Hers are Feedback and Status. What I heard as hedging was actually a safety behavior, checking whether she was about to do something wrong, before it was too late to correct.
There is a name in instrument flying for the illusion where the cockpit reads true while the aircraft is in fact pointed at the ground: the somatogravic illusion. The dials are honest. The body feels level. The horizon turns out to have been somewhere else the whole time. Managing people works the same way. You feel certain you are reading it right. You are not. A note from instrument flying
TalkCoach reframed the request. The fix was to ask her for concrete proposals she owned, framed so a wrong decision was something we would fix together, and the idea was still hers. I used the script almost verbatim in our next 1-on-1. Her change was immediate.
A misread direct report does not announce that they have checked out. They stay, and their best work walks out the door. 1-on-1 coaching software that cannot see motivators cannot see the misread.
Adapted from the original Attuned essay. Read the full version with author notes →
