Staying In It invites readers inside a fast-scaling technology company unraveling under the weight of its own success. Through the eyes of leaders navigating familiar challenges, bottlenecks, and barriers to performance, we learn that behind every risky or uncertain conversation is the possibility of deeper trust.

When discomfort and conflict become the enemy, teams suffer and organizations fail. But when leaders commit to staying in the conversations that matter most, they can transform tension into clarity, commitment, and scalable results.

Building on nearly three decades of work with executive teams, executive coach and facilitator Marsha Acker illuminates with compelling detail that tension is not the problem. Tension is data—the signal that something important is in the room, waiting to move you forward if you have the skill to stay with it. Offering critical insight into the everyday dynamics holding leaders and teams back, as well as a robust, practical framework for transforming reactive moments into opportunities for change, Staying In It helps leaders:

• Surface issues before they become organizational bottlenecks.
• Interrupt the communication patterns that keep teams stuck.
• Turn tension into clearer decisions, stronger relationships, and faster results.
• Build a culture where people speak candidly because they know they'll be heard.

Grounded in proven communication and organizational research, Staying In It is the leader's guide to leading real people through real disagreement. 

The following excerpt comes from Chapter 1: Pressure to Perform. 

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A successful corporation, Horizons Tech, has been struggling to replicate its success as it scales. The leadership team knows there’s a problem, but they’ve created a collective culture based on the premise that if they just work harder and faster, the problems will magically disappear. In this chapter, we see a senior leader go out on a limb by identifying an underlying problem that’s getting in the way. The tension is palpable, but she stays in it until a real conversation about the organization’s problems starts to unfold.

Welcome to Horizons Tech  

By all external factors, “Horizons Tech” had been knocking it out of the park—at least, until recently. From the outside, it looked great: they’d been wildly successful in delivering their first product, they were seen as a cool, hip place to work, and they’d been growing exponentially.  

But lately, things didn’t seem quite so perfect. In fact, if you spoke to someone long enough, the real story of what it was like inside the organization would start to surface. Everything was a crisis, so much so that most people’s work days seeped into their evenings and weekends. Everyone was tired. Many felt like they had to “always be on." Taking a day off meant making up the time later. Work did not stop for anything.  

In no small part, this situation stemmed from Horizons Tech’s unspoken leadership philosophy: when things were urgent, people needed to step up so they could get amazing things accomplished. Urgency, in other words, brought out the highest performance in people. Since the goal was always to keep reaching for that higher performance, the message was that people just needed to keep grinding.  

“What I didn’t know at the time,” said one leader in retrospect, "is that we were actually wearing people out, and I believe that became one of the greatest causes of our inability to continue to scale. The pace we were working at was not sustainable. We were overly focused on getting our product out the door. We undervalued how we were approaching the work process, including our attention to people.”  

This overinvestment in getting things done at all costs played out every day in small and big ways. There was competitiveness among divisions, a pervasive inability to make commitments without having to reschedule, and constant fires needing to be put out. Tension was everywhere. At every turn, seemingly small subjects became huge mountains to cross. There were endless meetings in which leaders and teams would have the same conversations over and over again without ever finding clarity or resolution. And as the company grew, so did the ineffectiveness. So, too, did the frustration.  

It was all exhausting. And it was becoming clear to everyone in the C-suite that the seeming magic of their first successful delivery might not be something they could replicate. 

It was Dara, the COO of Horizons, who called it: it was time for an executive offsite. She’d been watching the leadership team starting to splinter and she was hopeful that this would be just the thing they needed. She’d been part of offsites in a company she worked for in the past, and they had felt really productive. She’d seen things start to shift when the leadership placed their collective focus and intention on the problems at hand. It made sense to her now, at Horizons, to gather the executives together for dedicated time and space to put their heads together and problem solve.  

Of course, she knew it would likely bring some discomfort, especially because of the way Dan, the CEO, always seemed to engage on issues of organizational performance. She was actually hoping that the offsite would help him finally see the light. He’d been driving everyone into the ground but kept dismissing her feedback about his impact on other people. Recently, in fact, she’d found it so frustrating that she backed away from giving any feedback at all. Nothing ever came of it, and it always left her feeling irritable. It just didn’t seem to land for him. In fact, she suspected that his attitude was at least partly to blame for the issues that were swiftly becoming endemic at Horizons. He just didn’t seem to care how people felt or what they experienced—he just wanted things done and done fast.  

As she planned the offsite, she was feeling optimistic. It was a big lift, but something told her it would all be worth it.  

At the retreat: new location, same conversation? 

Dara poured her coffee and dropped down in the middle of the couch. They were now on the second and last day of their retreat, and the sun was shining. The glass-walled conference room looked out over a beautiful mountainside vista, and the warm wood floors and ceiling beams created an inviting space. Large comfy couches formed a circle in the middle of the room and small tables were scattered around behind them. It reminded Dara of a campfire, which was precisely the reason she had chosen to set the room up like this. 

Despite the beautiful setting, however, it was not going well. And, not for the first time over the past 24 hours, Dara wished she had considered bringing a professional facilitator to help the conversation move along more productively. She was already losing hope that this experience would produce meaningful change, and she was running out of tools in her toolbox. They’d already had a full day of each department going one by one sharing their briefings about where they currently stood, but there had been no sign of people really talking with one another or trying to wrap their heads around the big picture of why things weren’t working. Ideas were being lobbed, but they were being knocked down right and left. Try as she might, Dara just hadn’t been able to move toward more productive-feeling territory. As she sipped her coffee, she tried her hardest not to give into the frustration. 

Dan was the second person to arrive that morning. Like Dara, he grabbed his coffee and took a seat across the room. He’d also felt heavier and heavier as the day went by yesterday. Quite frankly, he wasn’t looking forward to today either. He had a lot riding on the continued success of the company, and this all felt like a waste of time. The department briefings just felt pointless, and he really just wanted everyone to get back to work. Looking at the problem wasn’t going to magically solve it. He was so irritable, in fact, that as the other leaders gathered, he did little more than nod his good mornings while sipping his coffee. 

As their morning session officially convened, Dan decided to take the reins. “I just don’t get it,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “We’re on day two here, but we’re just going round and round. For every idea that’s offered, there’s someone else saying we’ve already tried that or it won’t work. What’s the vision here?” 

That did it. Dara felt her blood boil a little at his tone and could just barely swallow her anger. “Well, Dan, the vision is for us to actually talk, to put our heads together about what’s going wrong this time around and why everything feels so much harder across the board. But yes, we’ve already been here a full day, and the only thing different is the fact that we’ve got a nice view. I thought we’d be having different conversations here—real conversations. I thought we’d get to the heart of things.” 

Dan snapped back quickly, clearly irritated. “Well, we have a lot on our agenda, Dara. How else should we be talking? And what would you suggest we talk about?” 

His attitude wasn’t lost on Dara. In fact, looking around the room, she didn’t see a lot of goodwill on anyone’s faces. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Todd’s eyes roll. She also noticed Ravi nodding his support, but Todd’s reaction made her pause. This really was the same dynamic as ever. The same eye-roll-inducing back and forth they always got into: Dan coming in strong, searching for practical action as though it was that easy, and Dara pointing out that they were having the same merry-go-round conversations they’d been having for months.  

She sighed. She was really exhausted this morning, and although Dan’s tone rankled, the idea of sitting through another day of the same was not appealing to her, either. But if she knew Dan, his idea would be to cut the time short and just get back to the grind. If she wanted change to come from this offsite, it would clearly have to start now and start with her. There might not be another chance if they just went back to the same old agenda hoping to get different results. 

Diving into discomfort 

Dara took a deep breath. “Okay. So, we’ve had a full day already. We’ve talked ad nauseam about budgets, workload, and missed deadlines. And by the end of yesterday, it felt like we were starting to veer into the blame game. Product needs something from Engineering, Engineering thinks they already gave it to them and assumes everything’s fine. Finance says that an outside stakeholder dropped the ball on funding. I’m sure if we keep going, someone will have something to say about my department and how I’m getting in the way of hiring new people. Honestly, I think we need to put our laptops down. No more presentations from anyone, me included. Let’s talk about what it’s really like to work in this company right now. Maybe from that space we will have different ideas.”  

Dan looked stunned, and more than a few people looked at each other uncomfortably. Dara gritted it out, taking a sip of her coffee in the silence. 

It was Aya, the head of People, who spoke up first. “I could not agree more,” she said. “I think we’re managing to muddle through with what we’re doing, and for now we’re actually fine by all outward measures. But more of the same will just bring more of the same, you know? We all know that everything is getting harder and slower and less effective. If we’re going to get to the next level and stay there, I think we need to think more creatively. I’ve been thinking for a while now that what we really need is to cultivate different ways of working and thinking together across the board. On all teams and at all levels. That’s how I think we’ll find better solutions and, quite frankly, better work product.” 

Dara lit up with surprise and appreciation. She and Aya had always had a good working relationship, but Aya tended to challenge Dara on a lot of her thinking. It was a huge relief to discover that she and Aya were aligned on this topic, and Aya’s perspective on what amounted to organizational culture helped clarify some things for Dara. Already, her wheels were turning.  

But Dan, of course, dug in his heels. “What do you mean ‘different ways of working and thinking together’? We’re not trying to kumbaya here. The way we work together is just fine. We just need to focus and get it done.” 

“I think Aya’s onto something,” Dara said forcefully. “We keep having the same conversations over and over again, but we’re missing the real issues. We keep talking about how to go faster, but we’re forgetting that we are not the same size we were when this started. We’ve grown. We—the people in this room—can’t just make things happen, Dan. It’s not working to tell people to work harder and move faster. It wasn’t working yesterday, and it’s not going to work tomorrow.” 

Before Dan could cut in, Aya took back the lead. “We have to work with our people. And what I can tell you is that they are frustrated and tired. I’m with Dara. I don’t think the way we’re working is fine, or we wouldn’t be meeting this level of difficulty and resistance, right? We should at least consider the possibility that we’re focusing on the wrong things in order to gain speed.”  

“So, what exactly are you suggesting for the day?” asked Dan, barely able to contain his frustration. “We just abandon our whole agenda and… what? Talk about how we work? think together? Do you even hear how unproductive that sounds? Plus, when will we cover the items on the agenda?” 

Todd had been sitting back, but this seemed as good a time as any to chime in. “I have to say, I’m with Dan. I don’t get why we need to abandon our whole agenda. We don’t have that much time to waste. Why don’t we just take the next thirty to sixty minutes, say what we want to say, and then get back to the plan? We’ve got to focus on creating our strategy for what’s next. Otherwise, what’s the point of this offsite?” 

Dara understood where Dan and Todd were coming from. She knew that what she and Aya were suggesting was against the grain. Unheard of, even. But they’d come this far in the conversation, and she didn’t feel ready to back down in the face of opposition. Sometimes new things were worth fighting for.  

“I know it might seem radical,” she responded, “but much of what’s on our agenda can be covered by sending our slides out or giving one another a written update. We don’t need to take this valuable time to look at charts and graphs together. We have a scaling problem, which I’m starting to think means we have a leadership problem. And that’s us. If things aren’t working like we think they should, or if our people are burned out and slowing down, that’s something we need to address. We’re guiding the ship, but it’s like we’re just yelling ‘full speed ahead’ when we’re already sinking. If we just double down on what we’ve been doing, do any of us really think we’ll get better results? If we don’t figure out what the problem actually is, it won’t matter what strategy we set.” 

Dan stood up and started to pace the room. Dara could tell by the look on his face that something she’d said was resonating, but would it be enough? 

Tensions and Capabilities  

In this chapter, we saw Dara stand in the storm of tension as she faced down external pressures to perform and grow combined with her own internal fears of being an effective leader and making the most of an offsite she has organized. These pressures created the perfect conditions for tension to emerge between her and Dan. Below is a brief rundown of the tensions we saw crop up in this chapter, the crucial capabilities we saw demonstrated, and a few major takeaways and guiding principles to carry with you. 

1. Tension between “speed” and “pause”

The stakes were high for Dara and for everyone else in the room. We saw disagreement and irritation as they navigated competing ideas on how the offsite time should be spent. Noticeably, even as frustrating interpersonal dynamics came to the fore, we saw Dara keep herself from giving into her own fatigue and annoyance. Instead, she used adversity as an opportunity to rally her courage and conviction, and she stood up for her perspective that a new conversation was needed — one that centers the company’s leadership and how it has been contributing to the difficulties they’re facing.

CAPABILITIES DEMONSTRATED:

• Courageous voice – naming what’s happening without blame.

• Discernment – knowing what truly matters beyond the surface-level agenda. 

2. Tension between being right and being in relationship 

What we don’t see Dara do in this chapter, which she could have easily done, is launch an attack at Dan. When we’re in “high stakes” (moments when the stakes feel so personal that our nervous system takes over before our reason can engage), we typically exhibit an involuntary behavior response to the situation we’re confronted with. In these moments, it’s easy for us to want to take our frustration out on others and make them wrong so that we can feel right. This can sound like saying “you always do this” or “why don’t you just….”  

CAPABILITIES DEMONSTRATED: 

• Self-management – taking responsibility for your emotions, in the moment, so they don’t drive a reaction. 

• Process and structure awareness – observing group dynamics (how a group works and communicates) and shifting the conversation with intention. 

Leadership Reflection: When you feel the conversation needs to change 

When you sense that a different conversation is needed—like Dara did—it can be tempting to either push hard or shrink back. But new thinking does not come from being forceful or passive. It comes from being clear, staying open, and speaking clearly about what you see.  

GUIDING PRINCIPLES: 

• Your perspective is valuable, even if it’s incomplete. You don’t need to be “right” for your experience and voice to matter. 

• Saying what you’re seeing might open a door no one else can. Sometimes clarity begins with one voice naming what’s been left unsaid. 

• The other person doesn’t have to be wrong for you to be right. Two truths can exist in the same room. 

STAYING IN IT 

You just read Chapter 1, there are thirteen… 

The full book follows the Horizons Tech leadership team as they navigate the complexity of organizational change—pivoting, adapting, and learning to work through the tensions that emerge along the way. 

Learn more at stayinginit.com 

Excerpted from Staying In It: How Great Leaders Transform Tension into Trust, Speed and Scalable Success. Copyright ©2026 by Marsha Acker. Published by TeamCatapult Publishing. This excerpt is offered for free and may be shared in full; it may not be sold or reproduced in part without permission 

About the Author

Marsha Acker is an executive coach and facilitator who has spent more than two decades helping senior leaders at high-growth organizations work through the conversations they’ve been working around. Her Harvard Business Review article, “How to Avoid Common Miscommunications at Work,” lays out the approach at the heart of this book; she has also contributed to Curiosity in HBR’s Emotional Intelligence series.

Marsha is the co-founder of Elevate Dialogue, founder and CEO of TeamCatapult, and host of the Defining Moments of Leadership podcast. Staying In It is her third book.

Her work centers on a simple conviction: the conversations leaders are having—or avoiding—are the most underestimated determinant of organizational success.