Move the Room: How to Read the Room Before It Reads You
Every room shapes what can be heard, what can be held, and how much you matter. Learn to read it—before it reads you.
Before you question yourself, ask: have I read the room?
We share a habit so common we rarely question it: treating a room’s reaction to us as the truth about us.
But a room isn’t just a place—it’s the invisible set of conditions within any group that shapes what can be said, what gets heard, and how truth moves. In some rooms, truth can be spoken and effort is recognized. In others, what’s said and what matters have quietly parted ways. In the most broken rooms, the truth is plain to see—and reaches no one.
Move the Room gives you the language to tell the difference, and to protect your judgment no matter which room you’re in.
What you’ll find in these pages.
Move the Room presents eleven principles for understanding a room before you move in it. The early chapters show you how to identify the type of room — functioning, compromised, or broken — and explore why capable people often doubt themselves instead of questioning their environment. The later chapters guide you on what actions to take: how to apply your judgment, when to pause, and how to separate what is yours from what belongs to the room.
It closes with practical tools — a room diagnostic, a meeting prep sheet, and reflection prompts — to return to before a hard conversation or after tough feedback.
What kind of room are you in?
A few quick reads can help you recognize the pattern beneath the signals. Answer for what happens repeatedly—not what the room says it values.
There are no right answers. This is a reflective tool, not a clinical or professional assessment.
Read the pattern—not the promise.
Choose the answer that best reflects what happens repeatedly in the room you have in mind.
See your full room result.
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Whatever the room, the discipline is the same: slow down before you turn a room’s signal into a verdict about yourself.
Move the Room is coming in 2026. You’ll be the first to know when it’s here.
Why I wrote Move the Room.
I know how disorienting it is when a room’s response makes you question what you know, what you saw, or what you have to offer. I’ve watched capable people quietly reorganize themselves around a judgment they accepted before they understood where it came from.
I wrote this book to help people separate what belongs to them from what belongs to the room—so they can stay grounded, and keep offering their judgment in service of the work and the people around them.
What I’m noticing, questioning, and thinking through.
Field Notes is my newsletter—a place for ideas about leadership, judgment, culture, work, the book, and whatever else feels worth examining.
It is where you’ll hear from me between the larger milestones.