Personality tests, DiSC assessments, Enneagram numbers, color wheels: these tools are everywhere in modern workplaces. Used well, they can foster self-awareness, empathy, and better communication. They can help us understand conflict styles, leadership tendencies, and how we recharge or respond to stress.

But too often, these tools become shortcuts. Labels. Boxes. And instead of inviting curiosity, they start to limit it.

When metaphors assume a shared cultural background (think sports metaphors, war or militaristic metaphors, and so on). When jokes rely on gender or race stereotypes. When “professionalism” becomes code for assimilation.

Even when well-meaning, these patterns reinforce imbalance. They create an “us” and a “them.” They ask people to translate themselves in order to be taken seriously.

We’ve all been told that transparency builds trust. Say the thing. Be authentic. Show up real. But there’s a difference between being clear and being chaotic. Between honesty and info-dumping. Between being open and being unfiltered.

What happens when the messaging says belonging, but the culture still centers sameness? When the town hall says transparency, but you’re not allowed to name the real issue?

Whether you’re a leader, a manager, a department head, or a communicator and if you’ve ever had to soften a message to make it "fit," you’ve felt it: The fracture between what’s said and what’s lived.

"People are at the heart of what we do."

You've heard it. You've probably written it. But when people hear those words inside a system that exhausts, erases, or exploits them, it doesn’t land as inspiration. It lands as betrayal.

Because what’s claimed in a tagline must be proven in action. And right now, a lot of corporate communication is performative at best, and alienating at worst.

So what would it look like to mean it? What would it take to build communication cultures that don’t just sound good, but do good?

Let’s start with the disconnect.