THINKING CLEARLY, ENGAGING CONSTRUCTIVELY
When the Pressure is On
Practical ways to improve workplace communication and dialogue, leadership practice, psychological safety, adaptability – and how people think, speak, and work through difficult issues, together and individually, especially in challenging situations.
Effective Under Pressure provides open (Creative Commons-licensed) resources to support high-quality collective and individual thinking, collaboration and dialogue, especially in high-pressure moments. The site also profiles the work of Don Dunoon, a specialist with deep expertise in leadership and relational practice.
When the Pressure is On
Organisations are often full of capable, intelligent people, yet they still struggle with team communication, leadership practice, collaboration and collective thinking.
This is especially true when the pressure is on – the stakes are high, outcomes and results need to be achieved, and progress feels slow. In such circumstances, people tend to hold tightly to their viewpoints, with advocacy overwhelming inquiry. Psychological safety is easily compromised, if it exists at all. Conversations are likely to stay on the surface, avoid difficult issues, rely on untested assumptions, become defensive, or be dominated by a few voices.
When the issues are significant, complex, contested, or not yet well understood, the focus can be more on “doing something” rather than on carefully examining what’s going on and what needs to change.
These more pressured situations call for clear thinking, open dialogue, and relational – connected, minimally defensive – communication, including leadership communication.
The site is not mainly about things like coping, resilience, wellbeing or time management – though there are indirect connections. Nor does the site offer therapeutic or counselling services.
The accent is on supporting more thoughtful, grounded and effective thinking, engagement and action on high-stakes issues, through helping people – groups and individuals – develop their clarity of thinking and ability to engage safely and constructively when it matters most.
Patterns Affecting Team Dynamics and Organisational Culture
Especially in pressure situations, people often fall into familiar and often unhelpful patterns:
Reacting
Assuming we know what’s going on and responding immediately, without pause.
Judging Others Negatively
Dancing Around
While understandable, such responses are essentially protective and defensive. They limit our ability to perceive accurately, engage with the complexity of issues and think productively and safely together.
A Practical Discipline for Thinking and Conversation
OBREAU is a practical discipline for thinking, reflection and dialogue that fosters connected, relational thinking and action, and supports psychological safety, adaptability, and leadership practice.
Developed by Don Dunoon, the person behind this website, OBREAU is built on three core practices:
- Observation – noticing what’s actually happening
- Reasonableness – considering what might make sense from different perspectives
- Authenticity – expressing with care what is true and important to us
The acronym OBREAU comprises the first two letters of each of the three practices.
Together, these practices help people move beyond reacting, judging, and dancing around into a clearer, more thoughtful understanding of issues and more constructive engagement.
OBREAU supports individual and group thinking and reflection; preparing for and engaging in uncomfortable conversations; and team dialogue. It helps people slow down, think more carefully, and tap into their own truths.
OBREAU is simple in form – but more nuanced in practice.
Free Resources
A range of OBREAU-based resources is available to support clearer thinking, reflection and dialogue.
As described on the Resources page, these include:
For Reflection – on what has just happened or is emerging –
- The Personal OBREAU Pause
- The Collective OBREAU Pause
For group Dialogue to explore and better understand issues and challenges:
- Intentional Observation Dialogue
- Perspective-taking Dialogue
- Focused Dialogue with OBREAU
These resources are shared openly under Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial licensing, encouraging experimentation and everyday use.
Note that, on the site, you will sometimes see OBREAU with a trademark symbol attached – OBREAU™. The purpose is not to restrict your use, subject to the Creative Commons provisions, but to prevent unauthorised claims like offering such things as “OBREAU Certification” or “Official Training”. (This is the new official home of OBREAU, replacing Don Dunoon’s former betterworkconversations.com site.) For more information, please see the Contact and Permissions page.
Working Together
For organisations looking to strengthen collective thinking, leadership practice, team effectiveness, and organisational culture, I (Don Dunoon) work with executive and other teams, development cohorts, internal enablers and facilitators, and individual contributors.
The work is tailored to your context but is consistently focused on developing leadership practice capability and is grounded in real situations and practical application.
A first aspect I’d like to highlight is what I call Collective Sense-making Labs. In these labs, group members work on identified organisational issues, practising relational forms of action as they do. These sessions enable clearer thinking, deeper understandings, and insights for action on important issues, and development for participants.
