The Missing Conversations: Navigating Awareness, Avoidance, and Adversity at Work

The Missing Conversations will give you and your team a framework to have higher quality conversations that directly and positively impact your business.

What you don’t know can hurt you—and what you don’t talk about can absolutely destroy your team, your organization, and your career!

In The Missing Conversations, speaker and leadership coach Zach “Dr. Z” Schaefer cracks open the playbook he’s used with some of America’s best and brightest companies to reveal the critical but all-too-often overlooked conversations that can make or break an organization.

Drawing on his fifteen years of experience working with high-power, hard-charging executives and team leaders, Dr. Z examines more than forty key conversations you are probably not having. You’ll discover:

• The impact the leader’s “echo” has on employees as it reverberates throughout the organization.
• How to prevent team member burnout by recognizing their accomplishments while giving them a new goal to shoot for.
• The power of embracing effort itself as a talent that leaders can recognize and encourage in their teams.
• Why so many leaders allow groupthink and the “disease to please” to stifle productive problem solving and constructive disagreement.
• How to harness conflict as a catalyst for growth through healthy confrontation.
• Why team members and peers often feel blindsided by feedback and constructive criticism.

In this book, Dr. Z reveals how addressing the root causes of communication breakdowns—lack of awareness, avoidance, and adversity—empowers leaders to unlock their team's full potential, drive innovation, and achieve sustainable success. If you’re ready to create a workplace where open dialogue and collaboration flourish, it’s time to start having The Missing Conversations!

Zach "Dr. Z" Schaefer is a leadership coach, consultant, and mediator, as well as a co-owner of The Post Sports Bar & Grill, a thriving sports bar chain based in St. Louis. With an impressive career spanning both academia and entrepreneurship, Dr. Z has dedicated himself to helping hundreds of organizations bridge the gap between strategy and execution by aligning people and business goals. 

As a thought leader, Dr. Z's insights have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, CNBC, and Fast Company. A retired tenured professor and certified mediator, he brings a wealth of knowledge to his clients, fostering both personal and organizational development that enables leaders to build cohesive, resilient teams. Dr. Z speaks extensively both domestically and internationally on leadership and organizational transformation.

Beyond consulting and coaching, he serves as Chief Culture Officer at The Post Sports Bar & Grill, where he applies his communication-centered philosophy to a team of over 160 employees. Driven by his mission to serve as an action catalyst through communication, Dr. Z's work consistently delivers impactful, sustainable results.