An early look at the framework behind the upcoming book, introduced through live masterclasses within the broader Global IOC ecosystem.
Program Overview
Have you ever experienced something like this?
I wrote a letter to the board of an association I belong to. Nothing inflammatory, just governance. The board had endorsed a candidate ahead of an upcoming election, and I said that's a conflict of interest, especially for an association with a documented history of financial mismanagement. I posted it publicly and asked for a fair process.
A stranger, I'll call him Ned, was the first to respond. Not to the substance of what I'd written, but to me. Was I running for a board seat? It was a familiar redirect: look for a motive so you don't have to engage with the facts.
When I said no, he pivoted to his own credentials: he runs an HOA back home, it's thankless, nobody wants to do the work. I gave that its due and went right back to the point. Individual effort doesn't excuse institutional neutrality.
That's when he shifted to minimizing. People like me write exquisite articles but never actually do anything, he said. Keyboard operatives. Sitting on the sidelines.
I stayed on the record. I named the tactic directly: Although your posts have felt personal, I want to keep the discussion on facts and not opinions. I kept describing exactly what I do, and why oversight matters more, not less, when an organization has a track record like this one's.
It should have ended there. It didn't. A second stranger jumped in on Ned's behalf, telling another commenter to back off. And Ned, out of facts, went for identity instead: guessed at my politics, my state, who I probably vote for, so of course I'd feel the way I did.
None of it landed. Every reply of mine stayed exactly where it started: governance, neutrality, transparency. He never got the reaction he was fishing for. Which is the whole point. Ned wasn't reacting to me specifically. He was running a familiar pattern: provoke, wait, and if the first jab doesn't work, escalate until something lands that can be pointed to as proof you're the difficult one. It happens in HOA forums and it happens in boardrooms, and most of us have been on the receiving end of some version of it.
What stopped me from handing him what he wanted wasn't suppressing anger. It was knowing where my own agency actually lived, so his provocation had nowhere to attach. That's the framework in miniature. Not staying calm because anger is bad, but staying anchored because you know whose voice you're protecting—and why it matters.
Who This Is For
If you're a leader, you know the moment before Ned ever shows up. The meeting where you said sure, no problem and meant the opposite. The decision you disagreed with but let ride because raising it felt like more trouble than it was worth. You called it being professional at the time. This work starts before anyone's provoked you at all. Even experienced leaders can find themselves relying on adaptations that once served them well but no longer reflect how they want to lead. Under pressure, it's easy to default to old patterns without realizing they're no longer serving us.
And then Ned does show up, in some form, because eventually he always does. A stakeholder, a peer, a board member who's decided the fastest way to win an argument is to make you the problem instead of engaging with what you said. This work gives you somewhere to stand that isn't suppression and isn't the reaction he's fishing for. Somewhere that was already yours before he walked in.
If you're a coach, this framework gives language to patterns you may already recognize. A client's silence is rarely just temperament. Their composure under pressure isn't always a sign of health either. Sometimes both are adaptations that once served them well. This work helps distinguish thoughtful regulation from self-abandonment, both in your clients and in yourself.
If you're an organization trying to build real accountability and psychological safety, you've likely already tried the downstream fixes: assertiveness training, conflict resolution workshops, feedback frameworks. They help. They also tend to arrive after someone has already gone quiet in the meeting that mattered, which is why the same people keep absorbing the same cost no matter how many workshops you run. This work goes to the layer underneath: what leads a capable person, in the moment, to set aside their own perspective in order to preserve harmony, certainty, belonging, or safety. Those adaptations often make perfect sense in context. The question is whether they still serve the outcomes we're trying to create.
And if none of those roles quite fit, this is also for you. You don't need a title or a team to have noticed the pattern in yourself: the family gathering you go quiet through, the friendship where you keep absorbing what you'd never accept from a stranger, the version of you that shows up everywhere except in your own life. Restoring agency isn't a workplace skill. It's a way of being with yourself that happens to show up at work too.
Agency Without Anger™ is for anyone who wants to strengthen their capacity to remain the author of their own voice, especially when the conversation becomes difficult.
The Framework
The book, and the masterclasses that introduce it, move in the order the pattern actually unfolds. Each session has its own architecture: a provocation, a master question, the framework itself, the work, the gap it's naming, and where it leads next.
July 23, 11 AM EST, Masterclass 1: Agency Without Anger
Opening Provocation: Something physical, not conceptual. A moment where the body registered a violation before the mind had words for it. The tight chest in the meeting. The stomach drop when you said sure, no problem and meant the opposite. The provocation is this: your body already knows. This session is about learning to listen to it.
Master Question: What is my anger trying to tell me?
Framework Introduction, Part 1
Anger as Data
Reframe anger from moral failing to signal. Anger is information about a boundary, a value, or a perceived violation of agency, not a character flaw to be managed away. When anger is chronically suppressed rather than processed, the nervous system doesn't simply let it go. Drawing on Porges' Polyvagal Theory, we'll explore how chronic suppression can keep the body in a low-grade threat state, contributing to fatigue, disrupted sleep, inflammation, and other physiological consequences. Suppressed anger doesn't simply disappear, it leaves a measurable imprint on the body. Porges's polyvagal theory anchors this piece: chronic suppression keeps the body in a low-grade threat state, which shows up as fatigue, gut issues, inflammation, disrupted sleep. The body keeping score long after the mind has moved on. This is what makes the stakes real. Suppressed anger has a measurable physiological cost.
Framework Introduction, Part 2
The Gentle Turn Toward Self-Abandonment
The pivot point, and it has to be handled carefully. Not that you abandoned yourself. Instead: you adapted, and it worked, until it didn't. Self-abandonment is often an intelligent adaptation to a particular environment not a personal failing. Somewhere along the way, keeping the peace or being professional became the cost of admission, and it's worth honoring that this adaptation likely kept you safe, employed, or connected at some point. The invitation isn't to blame the pattern. It's to notice the pattern may no longer be serving you the way it once did. Kegan's self-authoring mind is the developmental lens: this isn't about becoming a different person, it's about becoming someone whose commitments are their own rather than borrowed from whatever kept the peace.
The Work: Reflection on specific moments, framed as curiosity, not confession. Not where did you fail to speak up but where did your body know something before you did, and what did you do with that information? What did you call the silence at the time (professionalism, diplomacy, being a team player), and what is it possible to call it now, without judgment?
Gap Naming: Not Awareness versus Activation as a failure gap. More like: you can feel it now. What happens the next time it shows up? The tone stays forward-looking rather than retrospective self-criticism.
Opening Provocation: The bully doesn't always yell. The control freak doesn't always control. The unaware doesn't always know. Power that strips agency is more often quiet and procedural than loud, which is exactly why it's so hard to name.
Master Question: Which actor is standing in my way right now, and which one have I been?
Framework Introduction: Archetypes do the stripping: the Bully, the Gaslighter, the Narcissist, the Control Freak, the Unaware, the one who's Just Trying to Help, the Judger, the institution, even AI, each through a different mechanism: force, control, blindness. This is where the Ned case study earns its place, not as a story about one difficult stranger, but as a live demonstration of the Bully archetype's actual mechanics: provoke, wait, escalate until something lands. Anchors: Oshry's Top/Middle/Bottom systems dynamics, which explain why the stripping cascades rather than staying contained, and Heifetz's technical versus adaptive distinction, which explains why the unaware actor mistakes a real challenge to power for insubordination.
The Work: Terrain mapping, in two directions: who are the actors currently operating on you, and, the harder question, which actor have you become under pressure?
Gap Naming: Recognizing versus confronting. You can name the actor. Can you name it out loud, to them?
August 6, 11 AM EST, Masterclass 3: Agency in Action (Restoring Voice)
Opening Provocation: A moment of voice returning, not a script, a felt sense. The point isn't here's what to say, it's recognizing the moment agency stopped being theoretical and became audible.
Master Question: What would I say if I weren't afraid of being called difficult?
Framework Introduction: Voice as the evidence, not the goal: proof that agency has actually been reclaimed, not just intellectually understood. And the second half of the thesis: restoring your own voice while refusing to steal someone else's. This is the session where Awareness (Session 1) and terrain (Session 2) converge into something enacted. Anchors: Kouzes and Posner's Model the Way, the congruence between values and voice, and Collins's Level 5 leadership, fierce resolve without ego.
The Work: Identity-level reflection rather than scripted phrases, which would undercut the whole point: one place where voice has already been reclaimed, and one place it's still missing. What's different between the two?
Gap Naming: Are you protecting your own agency, and everyone else's?
Ten questions to sit with before you decide whether this work is for you right now. No scoring, no diagnosis, just a starting map of your own agency habits.
Can you name a specific moment in the last month when you stayed quiet rather than say what you actually thought?
What word do you reach for to describe that silence: professional, diplomatic, keeping the peace?
Has anger ever shown up late for you, somewhere it didn't belong, after you'd already gone quiet somewhere else?
Is there a person or role in your life who seems to strip your agency without ever raising their voice?
Can you tell force, control, and blindness apart in how that person operates on you?
Under pressure, which of the three (force, control, or blindness) do you notice yourself reaching for?
Do you have your voice ready for the moment that calls for it, or does it only arrive after the moment has passed?
When you imagine saying the honest thing out loud, what are you actually afraid will happen?
Whose agency are you responsible for protecting besides your own, and are you protecting it, or speaking over it?
If nothing changed about how you respond under pressure, what would that cost you a year from now?
1:1 Executive Coaching
For leaders and individuals ready to work the framework against their own real patterns as they surface. Not a package, a conversation about what's actually showing up for you right now.
This isn't generic executive coaching with a framework bolted on top. It starts wherever your week actually put you: the meeting where you went quiet again, the person who keeps operating on you and calling it protocol, the moment your voice didn't show up when you needed it to. We work the three movements, Awareness, The Terrain, Voice, not as a curriculum to complete in order but as a lens for whatever pattern surfaced most recently.
You bring the moment. A text exchange you're still turning over. A decision you let ride. A relationship where you keep absorbing more than you'd ever accept from a stranger. We look at it together: first for what actually happened, underneath the story you've already told yourself about it. Then for who, or what, was operating on you, and whether force, control, or blindness was doing the work. Then for what your voice would have sounded like if it had shown up when it mattered.
Some sessions the pattern is external, someone running the exact playbook Ned ran. Other sessions it's entirely internal, the moment you called self-abandonment peace before anyone provoked you at all. Both belong in the room, and most weeks it's some mixture of the two.
This is where the book's framework gets pressure-tested against your actual life rather than a case study. The outcome isn't a script for your next hard conversation. It's a working relationship with your own agency, sturdy enough that the next Ned, whatever form he takes, has nowhere left to attach.
Format: Six 60-minute, high-impact virtual sessions with Peggy Marshall, PhD, focused on anger as a signal, self-abandonment as the underlying pattern, toxic personalities as the actual trigger, and voice as the tool for addressing them directly. Spaced over an 8-to-12-week integration arc. (Note: this launch option does not include the full systemic organizational landscape audit offered in Unified Terrain and Sustaining Impact partnerships.)
I don't know whether Ned ever understood what happened in that conversation.
He probably walked away believing we'd had a political disagreement, or that he'd won an argument on social media.
We hadn't.
The conversation stopped being about him the moment I realized he wasn't responding to my ideas. He was trying to pull me away from them.
Once I recognized the pattern, I no longer needed him to understand me, validate me, or agree with me. My responsibility was simply to stay anchored to the issue I had come to discuss.
That is agency.
Agency isn't getting the last word.
It isn't winning the argument.
It isn't making someone else see the truth.
It is refusing to surrender authorship of your own voice simply because someone else is trying to change the subject.
Looking back, I realize Ned was never just a difficult stranger.
He became a first real-world test of a framework I am putting into words.
If you've ever met your own version of Ned, I hope you'll join me this summer. Because the next time someone tries to pull you away from your voice, you'll know exactly where to stand.
