In this insightful episode, Salvatore Manzi, Facilitator of Leadership Communications, shares how to transform fragmented team communication into clear collaboration. If you’re in stage 4 feeling like the hub holding everything together while your leadership team talks past each other, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What simple rules like the 10-second pause and QA framework do to build real alignment
– Why speaking only from your dominant thinking type limits your team’s effectiveness
– How to address all four thinking types (Why, What, How, What If) in every meeting
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello, and welcome, welcome once again to the Start Scale and Succeed podcast, the only podcast that grows with you through all seven levels of your journey as a founder. I’m your host, Scott Retzheimer, and one of the most frustrating things about reaching level four as a founder is discovering that the people on your team have no idea how to actually talk to each other, because for years you’ve been the one holding it all together, you’ve had this conversation here, this conversation there, and you’ve been able to hold it all together yourself. But now that things have gotten as big as they are, as successful as they are, and let’s face it, as complex as they are, something needs to change. We’ve got to figure out how to get these folks to talk to each other, but that is like herding cats. One, you can’t get them in the same room, but even when you do, they just seem to talk at each other and not to each other, let alone listen to one another.
So, here to help us figure out how to get out of babysitting mode and into leading a team that can not only talk together but perform together is the one and only Salvatore Manzi, who is a leadership communications coach who helps turn complexity into clarity. His book, Clear and Compelling, which was released in 2026 combines research in neuroscience, psychology, and organizational behavior with years of communication coaching to deliver practical strategies for turning insights into influence, he helps leaders communicate clearly, lead with authenticity, and navigate complexity with confidence. With over 20 years of experience, he brings a unique blend of strategic insight, real-world leadership, and human-centered communication to every engagement. He’s here with us today. Salvatore, so glad to have you on the show. Welcome. You open up with this scene that a lot of founders will recognize, and there’s this feeling of like being the smartest person in the room, but they’re just kind of tired of.. is kind of a nuance that founders feel, and one of the challenges I think that they start to see at this stage, when they realize, “Hey, I can’t do all of this myself, I need other people to, is that some folks they realize talk way too much, some folks don’t talk even close to enough, and you find yourself actually wanting more and more from the smart but silent types to speak up. How do you get the team to operate on that same wavelength, that same waveform to communicate effectively?
Salvatore Manzi
Well, thank you for inviting me on the show, Scott. And the question of how do you get your team to start communicating with each other when there are both different personality types and different thinking times is critical in order to make that leap and the stage and growth. What I’ve noticed and what I build my practice around is thinking about the different thinking types in the room, and I’ll just go through this quickly. Bernice McCarthy did a lot of research on the learning styles of people, and her work led to a lot of instructional design, but I’ll break down into there are four thinking types. Any room you go into on your leadership team, you have four thinking types: why, what, how, and what if. If you can speak to all four types, the room will start communicating with each other, and I’ll break it down.
The why is the CEO, typically, why are we here? Why are we talking about this? Why are we talking about this right now? The what is the more analytical, technical, the CTO. Well, what’s the background? What’s the history? What has been tried? What worked before? The how is the COO, the operations, or how are we going to implement this? How is this going to unfold? How do we do this from where we did last time? And then the what if is bifurcated into the realist and the optimist, right? The realist is more the CFO. What if we go off schedule? What if we go over budget? What if it collides with this, and the what if optimist is the well, what if we try this? What if we get this going? What if we do this instead? And anybody out there that’s listening is probably like I’m a what if, I’m the founder who has the idea I started it with the what if. Now I’ve got it rolling, and the what if personality and thinking type has to move up to the why to become the CEO. Otherwise, they get stuck in the weeds answering all the questions. Now, here’s the thing that I didn’t know until I studied deeper.
Everybody has a dominant thinking type. Everybody can do all of the thinking types, but everybody has a dominant one. If we only speak from our dominant speaking type, we’re losing the other types of the room. So, what I train leader teams to do is I train them how to speak to all of the thinking types in the room, so that everybody understands. Now, you mentioned consider. Engine, we can go into that if I’m a what, if I’m a what thinking type. I like the engineering, I like the data. I created this incredible technical product, and I want to take it forward. I’ve got to switch and speak to the other types in order for the entire table to voice their opinions, get involved, keep going. How’s this landing so far?
Scott Ritzheimer
This is so good, it’s so good, and folks will recognize we use slightly different language for some of it, this challenge exactly, and and I love this idea of a thinking type, because we’ve always talked about them more in terms of leadership style, which brings some of this into play, but for this conversation in particular, and this challenge in particular, tell me a little, and maybe this, maybe this is there, maybe it’s not, but I would imagine that there’s a different cadence of each of these thinking types. Is that accurate?
Salvatore Manzi
It’s a yes. And, here’s the challenge: if I’m in a dominant thinking type, I’m going to go deep on that thinking type. If I’m a what thinking type, I’m going to give you the entire background of how we got from there to here. Nobody else in the room actually needs that, but because that’s the way my brain thinks, it becomes a challenge. Your question again was, how do we..
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah! my experience in the room is I’m thinking through some of these different what I would imagine is their type, not that it is or isn’t, but some of the more stereotypical ones, the kind of how, and maybe the one side of the what if they might take a little longer to process a new piece of information, they feel a little bit more comfortable if maybe they get data before the meeting than after, where as the what if you know positive optimist side or even the why side is just kind of like new ideas squirrel and they’re often and after it. Do you see that is that part of this thinking type, where some folks like to process a little bit more deeply before they make a comment or a decision.
Salvatore Manzi
I love this question. I wouldn’t put it in the same categorization. I offer two things: one, a good leader is going to require everybody in the room wait 10 seconds before responding to give everybody in the room, a chance to get up to speed. It takes an introverted leader, an analytical, data-driven thinker, up to 10 seconds to formulate the perfect response. Now, those on the more extroverted are going to jump in with the first response, because they will find their way to their point, whereas the more introverted leader is going to think through, and then give you the concrete. There’s a both and here the extroverted is taking us on a journey that’s getting our brains thinking creatively, is helping us, we start to brainstorm, we get to it, but it can sometimes silence the more analytical thinker that is considering all of the variables, and then we’ll just hit you with the punchline with the point. The problem here, giving me just the answer, doesn’t bring me on the journey. So I am starting to think, well, how did you get to there? And then that person starts talking, and then the whole room goes into chaos, and we don’t move forward. So provide that as an opportunity for everybody to stop and think about what it is they want to say and elicit responses from the ones that you see, personality types might be more reserved and hold back the ones that might be more quick on their feet to speak.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I’m tempted to just pause for 10 seconds, so everyone can feel how painstakingly long that is. It sounds so easy, but that’s an eternity, that’s forever. You might use, like, the cows have come home. How well, let’s just.. I think that’s really practical, is really helpful. I don’t hear you saying every time anyone talks, there’s a 10 second gap every time. So, walk us through, how does that actually play out in the leadership team room,
Salvatore Manzi
you have a challenge. You want to present the challenge to the team, set them up for success. If you set them up for success by sending them the topic, the talking points, the agenda of the meeting, it helps the more analytical thinkers prepare. It helps the more extroverted thinkers have an overview, a vision of where it’s going, then when you get into the meeting, you’re not going to do the 10 second rule every time, but if you have that one key question, we’re going to start with this. I need to get everybody in the room to give me their insights on this challenge that we’re facing, and you don’t have to keep silent. Silence is not necessarily during that 10 seconds.
You can reframe the question. So, again, we’re looking at the scope and the longevity. How is this going to affect the budget? What’s going to happen to the team? I’m going to go around the room, and I’d like to get everybody’s impressions and find out what your take is on this. Set them up for success one step further by saying we’re going to start with Mitra over here, and we’ll go around to the right, so everybody think about what is it, and I’m doing this language thing as a leader guiding the room. I just gave Mitra an opportunity to think about their response, and everybody else has had that 10 seconds. It window to begin thinking about theirs. The one challenge I would offer: give them a constraint, keep your insight to one sentence, that way we don’t get somebody monologuing, taking over, and then we don’t get to everybody else. So that’s that’s the practicality of how you play that out in a team meeting.
Scott Ritzheimer
Here’s, here’s the what I think is a principle behind this that I want to touch on, and then talk about how to help each of our team members get the most out of their time, and what they say, but your job at this stage shifts from it’s shifting from being the one to make all the decisions and knowing all the answers to cultivating an environment for those answers to come out, and I love again the practicality of the approach here. Now, one of the, the other challenges to doing that is you may not have prepared them to take on that responsibility, because oftentimes we hire like the best salesperson to become the sales leader, and then we put them in the room with the ops person, and it’s, it’s chaos. So, how do you help folks when they, they even with some of these ground rules, still seem like they’re talking at each other instead of being able to talk with each other?
Salvatore Manzi
I love this, because this is the work that I go into. Do I work with a lot of startups when they’re making that pivot from startup to growth, and they have to pivot the team to get all wrapped around, and we’ll have an offsite where we go through frameworks. The number one framework to practice is Q and A. How do you answer somebody’s question? How do you respond to them? Because this is where most intelligent, smart people miss because that person asked a question on your team because they pose this idea to you, it doesn’t mean they want an answer, what they want is a connection to start building something together, and I’m not going to go into listening 101 here, but there is a fundamental gold to responding to their question by first saying this is what I heard you’re asking, is do I have that right?
Great, I think you’re answering this because of this and this, and I can tell in your department you’re probably overseeing this, and you might be looking at that as well. Am I right? Boom, at the end of those two points, your two team you just described, the two people on the team that aren’t listening to each other, now they’ve started to understand each other. People cannot listen until they feel heard. So, those first and second steps, if you practice this, get it ingrained, especially in a leadership team to first make sure you understand the question, second validate why that person is asking the question, and then from that place you can get to an answer. Otherwise, you just have smart people popping answers to each other, and there’s no resonance in the room, because it’s just a bunch of good ideas that aren’t going forward. There’s no collaboration.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, what last question on this thread, and then I’ve got another question I like to ask all my guests. I’m very interested to see what you have to say, but let’s say, let’s say the founder has laid this out, maybe they’re even doing a decent job at modeling it, and someone else breaks one of those rules. Do you find that it’s most effective to like to call it out there in the moment, or is that an offline conversation afterwards?
Salvatore Manzi
Well, there is the call-in-call-out dichotomy, right? Do I call them in, tell them afterwards, ‘Hey, this is what happened, I saw you do this, and you might want to try better. I think that’s good for the first pass, but if I were leading the meeting, I would call it out in a gentle and a kind way, because it sets the tone of these are rules, and we’re all going to play by them. Accountability, if it’s broken once, it’s going to be broken all the way down.
Scott Ritzheimer
So good, so good. Salvatore. There’s a question, like I mentioned, that I asked them, I guess. And here it is. The question is, what is the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish every founder watching or listening today knew?
Salvatore Manzi
Metaphors move minds. You have a brilliant idea, and you can explain it conceptually. You can explain the complexity of it, and they won’t get it. What they will get is the metaphor. If you, as a leader leading a team, or just a small unit, can start practicing using a metaphor, find a metaphor that works for you, and play it all the way through. I have a financial advisor that uses tennis every time he’s talking to a client or to his colleagues, tennis is getting played out in that meeting to explain the theory, to explain the complexity of what he’s saying, and now his teammates and clients get him as a leader. The secret that not enough people use is to practice you. Using metaphors to explain your thinking, and then you can move things faster.
Scott Ritzheimer
So, good, so good. I love that, and I’m so bad at it. But it’s a great reminder, as a great reminder. Salvatore, there are some folks listening who would love, love, love, love to get a copy of your book, we really haven’t talked enough about that so far, but they’d also love to have you come in and work with their team. Where can they find more out about you and the work that you do?
Salvatore Manzi
Oh, Thank you. I would say to anybody out there, if you are sharing ideas and the energy isn’t moving forward, I would love to talk to you about what’s going on there. The easiest way is to join my newsletter, you can go to Salvatoremanzi.com It’s a communication strategy every couple of weeks. My book, Clear and Compelling, will be out in October, and you can pre-order now on whatever, wherever you buy books.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic, fantastic. Get the links to those in the show notes for you all, and highly recommend checking it out. I got to read an early version, and it’s fantastic. Salvatore, thank you so much for being on the show. Really was a privilege and honor, and a very fun conversation. So, thanks for being here, and for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Scott Ritzheimer
Hey everyone, Scott Ritzheimer here. Thank you so much for listening to The Start Scale and Succeed Podcast. I hope this episode gave you exactly what you need for the level you’re in right now. If you want to discover what level you’re in, take our 10 question founders evolution quiz for free at foundersquiz.com that’s foundersquiz.com It’ll pinpoint exactly where you are and give you tailored tips to move forward and reach that next level in your journey as a founder. If you got something out of today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, or review. It helps us reach more founders like you, and let’s be honest, it means a ton to me, my team, and all our incredible guests. So, keep starting, scaling, and succeeding, and I’ll see you in the next episode.
Contact Salvatore Manzi
Salvatore Manzi is a leadership communications coach who helps leaders turn complexity into clarity. His book, Clear and Compelling, releasing in 2026, combines research in neuroscience, psychology, and organizational behavior with years of communication coaching to deliver practical strategies for turning insights into influence. He helps leaders communicate clearly, lead with authenticity, and navigate complexity with confidence. With over 20 years of experience, he brings a unique blend of strategic insight, real-world leadership, and human-centered communication to every engagement.
Want to learn more about Salvatore Manzi’s work at Leadership Communications? Check out his website at https://www.salvatoremanzi.com/
Connect with Salvatore through his LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/salvatorejmanzi/
Get a copy of his book Clear and Compelling: Communication Strategies for Big Thinkers with Bold Ideas at https://www.amazon.com/Clear-Compelling-Communication-Strategies-Thinkers-ebook/dp/B0GQP1W448