You Can See the Dysfunction. Now What?
Why recognizing unhealthy team dynamics isn't enough—and how leaders can stop avoiding, enabling, and carrying the entire emotional weight of the business.
You know something isn't working.
Meetings feel tense. People complain to you about one another but avoid speaking directly. Small issues become big ones because no one addresses them. All these meetings, but nothing is really changing. You find yourself replaying conversations on the drive home and wondering why you seem to be the only person who sees what's happening. Maybe even wondering if you can keep doing it.
You're frustrated with your team and management, but you're also exhausted from trying to hold everything together. What do you do when you can clearly see the dysfunction but have no idea how to change it?
In my many decades of working in various companies, I’ve seen all kinds of communication. I hear about it all the time from my clients too. Sometimes called ‘poor communication’ it looks like: talking about people rather than to people. The transparent conversations get postponed or avoided altogether. The same problems are on repeat-here we go again, followed by eye rolls. This is the resentment that builds under the niceties. A big one is leaders rescue people, rather than hold them accountable. A toxic team member has too much power and noone is addressing it. Giving feedback feels impossible because everyone gets so defensive. Everyone hopes someone will come along and fix it.
As a therapist, similar t hings happen in families. Work is like a family and it’s a similar dynamic–and from a system lens, it’s noit isolated people with their patterns, it’s the entire system the company has learned to function in.
As a leader, The good news is that you don't have to be responsible for everything in the system. But you do have to become curious about how you participate in it. Learning how you react when the pressure rises, can begin to build awareness around your protective patterns that most leaders default to. And this is the start of the shift.
The most common self protective strategies I see are:
Avoidance “I'll deal with it later.”
Accommodate “I don't want anyone to be upset with me.”
Over-function “It's easier if I just do it myself.”
Control “If I don't manage every detail, everything will fall apart.”
Explode “I've had enough!”
These aren't character flaws. They are often automatic responses to stress, conflict, and perceived threat. What protects you in the short term can create more dysfunction in the long term.
The leader can often identify their self protection mode. But that alone isn’t enough. Just saying to your team “I need to set better boundaries. Delegate more and communicate more clearly.” Knowing isn't the same as being able to do it when you're activated. This is where WorkWell comes in and where I love helping leaders and teams.
Effective leadership requires practicing the actual skills:
preparing for difficult conversations
regulating before reacting
giving clear feedback
making direct requests
tolerating defensiveness
holding boundaries
allowing others to experience consequences
repairing after conflict
Insight helps you see the pattern. Practice helps you change it.
Once the leader starts making some shifts, often a lot of change can ensue. But usually what’s needed is for the whole team to experience a new way of working together. Because remember, this is a system. And one person alone can’t make the entire company vibe change. We need everyone on board. Sustainable change relies on creating some shared responsibility that looks like everyone learning new ways to communicate, what to do when we have conflict, how to address tension before it escalates, and structure to make these things last.
You may not be able to make your coworkers communicate differently. You can't force someone to take accountability. And you can't single-handedly repair every dysfunctional dynamic in your business. But you can stop participating in the patterns that keep the system stuck.
It’s not leaders jobs to carry the emotional weight of everyone around you. It's to help create the conditions where people can take greater responsibility—for their work, their communication, and their role in the team.
You don't have to figure this out alone.
If you're a leader who can see the dysfunction but feels stuck inside it, WorkWell helps small business leaders and teams identify the patterns keeping them stuck and develop practical tools for clearer communication, healthier conflict, and shared accountability.
