You’re about to sit down at a table with people you’ve known your entire life, and somehow you’re going to spend the next three hours pretending everything’s fine when it’s really not.
And here’s the weird part: everyone at that table is doing the exact same thing.
We call it being polite or not ruining Thanksgiving. Really we’re just practicing the same fake communication we complain about at work, except this time there’s stuffing involved.
The Performance You've Been Rehearsing
There’s this concept in psychology called “surface acting” where you fake the emotions you’re supposed to display. According to a 2022 study in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, it’s directly linked to emotional exhaustion and burnout.
You’re supposed to be grateful even if this year sucked. You’re supposed to be happy to see everyone even if you’re dreading it. By the time dessert hits, you’re more exhausted than if you’d just worked a full day. Everyone’s going to blame it on the turkey when really it’s because you’ve been performing for three hours straight.
Your family probably doesn’t even like each other that much right now. We just don’t say that out loud. We show up, perform “close family,” and then need three days to recover.
Sound familiar? That’s exactly what’s happening in your leadership meetings too.
Your Team Is Having Thanksgiving Every Tuesday
Ken and Grace talk about this all the time: dysfunctional leadership teams where everyone’s performing instead of communicating. You sit in the conference room doing surface acting about how aligned you are, how excited you are about Q1, how supportive you are of that decision you actually think is stupid.
Then the meeting ends and the real conversations happen in the parking lot, over email, in your head while you’re trying to fall asleep.
That’s The Wall, the barrier ego creates that keeps real communication from happening.
What The Agreement Would Look Like at Thanksgiving
Imagine this year you tried something different.
“Will you agree with me on how we’re going to communicate? I want you to be 100 percent honest, meaning be truly and freely yourself, speaking into what you want and how you feel. I promise you I will be 100 percent open to it. I will listen without reservation. I’ll put my needs and wants on pause for you. In return, I will be honest with you, and I ask that you be completely open to it.”
That’s The Agreement, the framework we use with leadership teams. We’re making a deal to communicate for real instead of pretending.
Most people won’t do this at Thanksgiving because it feels too scary. But you know what actually ruins Thanksgiving? Spending three hours with people you supposedly love while everyone’s pretending.
The Gratitude Theater Problem
Forced gratitude where everyone goes around the table performing thankfulness even when their family’s driving them crazy. That’s just compliance with better PR.
There’s research on this called “toxic positivity” where it invalidates real emotions and prevents actual connection. When you share something real and vulnerable, that’s when other people feel safe to do the same. But when everyone’s performing “I’m so blessed,” nobody connects.
What Actually Happens When You Get Honest
If you try The Agreement at Thanksgiving, some people are going to think you’ve lost it. They’re going to push back with “Why do you have to make everything so heavy?”
But when one person gets brave enough to be real, it gives everyone else permission. When someone says “Actually, this year was really hard for me,” suddenly three other people admit their year was hard too.
The Leadership Version
If you lead a team, this matters even more. Your team watches whether you actually mean it when you say you want “open communication.”
And if you’re performing at work the same way you’re performing at Thanksgiving, they know. So they show up to meetings and do the same performance.
The fix is that you have to go first. Use The Agreement in your next leadership meeting. Say what’s true even when it’s uncomfortable. Your team won’t trust it immediately, but if you keep being consistent, they’ll start to believe you.
Bottom Line
You’ve got a choice this Thanksgiving. You can show up and do the performance you’ve always done, or you can be truly and freely yourself even if it makes people uncomfortable.
Your Thanksgiving table is practicing the same dysfunctional patterns as your Tuesday leadership meeting. Both stay dysfunctional until someone gets brave enough to stop pretending.
If you want healthier teams at work, start by practicing real communication at home. It’s all the same skill. We just keep acting like it’s not.