Why smart teams are hesitant

By Dino Zafirakos

Over the past two decades, I’ve seen the same pattern repeated across management teams in very different industries.

Brilliant people. Solid experience. Good intentions.

And even so, decisions are blocked. Everything is moving slowly.

The same conversations reappear over and over again, year after year, with different words, but with the same result.

And then the usual explanations arise:

• Lack of trust
• Misalignment
• Resistance to change

These explanations are not incorrect.

They are simply incomplete.

What is often missing is understanding the political economy of the team.

Dysfunction is usually a rational response

Most management teams are not dysfunctional from a psychological point of view.

They are adaptive.

They adapt to:

• Incentive structures
• The risk to the professional career
• Stakeholder expectations
• Power dynamics
• The unwritten rules about what is safe to say and what is not

When these forces are overlooked, teams do exactly what makes sense: protect themselves.

Not as individuals, but as a system.

What seems like avoidance is usually, in reality, a form of collective self-preservation.

The invisible stakeholders that are also present

In many management teams, the most powerful influences are not even physically present.

• A former CEO whose shadow continues to condition decisions.
• A member of the management committee whom no one wants to disappoint.
• The market.
• The international geopolitical context.
• The latest round of layoffs.
• The bonus system.

They are not metaphors. These are operational realities.

Teams are constantly negotiating with these invisible actors, although they almost never do so explicitly.

Thus, language becomes prudent and decisions are designed to be reversed.

Everyone seems reasonable, but nothing has moved forward.

Why alignment doesn’t generate movement

This is one of the reasons why so many alignment initiatives end up disappointing.

The alignment is based on several assumptions:

• That all relevant voices are present.
• That the risks are properly managed.
• That speaking frankly has no hidden costs.

In practice, the opposite is often true.

When the real constraints are political or economic, alignment produces impeccable paralysis.

The team reaches an agreement and then waits.

Psychological safety has limits

Psychological safety is important.

But it is not above professional safety.

When telling the truth can affect one’s career, the system learns to be intelligent… remaining silent.

Not because leaders lack courage, but because the cost of that courage is not shared equally.

As long as that reality is not recognized, no training in conversational skills will change the behavior of the team.

What really transforms a team

Teams don’t change because they gain greater understanding.

They change when:

• Invisible stakeholders are named.
• Incentives are visible.
• Risks are redistributed.
• Power dynamics can be put on the table.

It is not only a relational intervention. It is a structural intervention.

And it cannot be accelerated, moralized or solved simply with tools.

A different question

Instead of asking, “Why can’t this team engage?”

Perhaps it is more helpful to ask ourselves, “What is this team protecting, and from whom?”

That question completely changes the nature of work.

It shifts leadership development from psychology to reality.

Most teams don’t fail because of a lack of confidence. They fail because they are responding intelligently to a system that rewards caution.

As long as we are not willing to look the political economy of leadership in the face, we will continue to diagnose problems of courage when, in reality, we are facing problems of the system.

Dino Zafirakos is a Faculty Leader at CRR Global and an ORSC™ Organizational and Relational Systems Coach with decades of experience globally accompanying leaders, teams, and organizations to navigate complexity through a systemic approach.

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