What Happened
At PlayFACTO by Funworks, head of people Karren Batara made a quiet but significant bet: stop relying on formal engagement programmes to build culture and start focusing on how people actually talk to each other day to day. The result was stronger teams, deeper trust, and measurably better collaboration. No flashy initiative required. Just better human interaction, repeated consistently.
The Communication Angle
Picture this. A company spends thousands on an employee engagement retreat. Two weeks later, nobody remembers what was said, and the same team tensions are back. Sound familiar? That is not a budget problem. That is a communication problem.
What Batara figured out at PlayFACTO is something most leaders resist because it is unglamorous: the quality of your team culture is determined by the quality of your everyday conversations, not your quarterly events. A trust-building workshop means nothing if the manager walks out and goes back to sending vague, passive-aggressive emails. The workshop is a signal. The emails are the message.
The communication principle at work here is what I call "behavioural consistency." What you say in a meeting and what you do the following Tuesday have to match. When they do not, people do not just notice the gap. They conclude that the stated values are decorative. Trust collapses quietly, one small contradiction at a time. Batara's approach worked because it moved the focus from performance (the engagement programme) to practice (daily interaction). That is the right move.
There is also something important in how this story frames "human-centred collaboration." That phrase gets thrown around constantly, usually without teeth. But when applied to communication, it means one specific thing: you talk to people in ways that account for how they actually receive information, not just how you prefer to deliver it. You check for understanding. You ask questions before you give directives. You listen long enough to actually change your mind sometimes. These are not soft skills. They are precision tools.
Most organisations reward loudness and punish nuance. The person who speaks first and with the most confidence gets heard. The person who says "wait, I think we are missing something" gets talked over. Batara's model flips that. When daily communication is built on trust and genuine exchange, quieter voices get into the room. And that is where most of the best ideas live.
This is exactly the kind of scenario I break down in Say It Right Every Time. The chapter on daily communication habits gives you a framework for auditing the small, repeated interactions that are quietly shaping how your team sees you. Most people obsess over the big speech and ignore the Monday morning check-in. That chapter shows you why the Monday morning check-in is the big speech.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Never Be Lost
for Words Again
Get word‑for‑word scripts for the conversations that shape your life, from job interviews and negotiations to difficult talks with family and partners, so you always know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Key Takeaway
Before your next team check-in, write down one question you genuinely do not know the answer to and commit to asking it out loud. Not a rhetorical question. A real one. "What is slowing you down that I do not know about?" or "What decision do you think I got wrong this month?" This single habit, done consistently, signals that your team meetings are conversations and not broadcasts. That signal builds more trust over time than any offsite ever will.
